We move together, pressed shoulder to shoulder, ducking and weaving through the ballroom’s broken composure. It’s like slipping into muscle memory—he takes one side, I take the other, our movements too aligned to be anything but instinctive.
Almost as if we’re on that mountain again, having each other’s backs.
Yulian shoves me behind another statue just as the air saturates with a new spray of bullets. Plaster rains down, and I taste the dust and gunmetal on the back of my tongue.
The statue takes the hit that should’ve been mine. My breath hitches, my chest tight, not from fear but from the sick realization that he’s just…tooattunedto me, almost more than he is to himself.
And I don’t like that.
“Watch your own back, Yulian,” I mutter in a firm tone.
He just laughs, the sound quiet, breathless, and a bit husky. “Is that my thank-you? In that case, you’re welcome.”
I shake my head as we peel away from the crowd and slip into the side corridor reserved for staff. The lights are dim, shadows crawling over splintered furniture and gaping holes in the walls.
Yulian’s shoulders tense, both of us realizing the carnage has bled into this space, too.
I cover his back as we jog toward the musicians’ dressing room. When we enter, the silence hits instantly. No shattered wood, no holes in the walls—the room is untouched, spared from the chaos seeping through the building.
And yet the stillness doesn’t ease us. Neither of us dares to breathe.
Something’s wrong.
Yulian freezes, his hand on the gun twitching.
I follow his gaze and pause upon seeing the discarded wheelchair, lying sideways, one wheel still turning.
Alina’s shawl, which she had around her shoulders, is on the floor next to the chair, but there’s no sign of her.
“Alya,” he breathes her name, then shouts, “Alina!”
No reply.
He rushes to the balcony, and when he finds nothing, he comes back inside, his face drained of color.
“I need to…” His hand shakes around the gun, rage and terror barely contained in the taut muscles as he looks at me, his lips trembling. “Ineedto find her.”
“We will,” I say in a steady voice, trying to calm him.
“You don’t understand, she…she’s like that because of me. I can’t…I can’t…”
“Hey.” I grab his shoulder, squeezing slightly as I bore my eyes into his. “We’ll find her. Trust me.”
He gives a sharp nod as he bolts again, his fury barely leashed. I follow without question, keeping my attention on our surroundings, having his back.
I never thought there’d be the day when Yulian and I would be in another dangerous situation and I’d be covering for him, but here we are.
The irony doesn’t escape me.
Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been separated from Yulian—one incident and I’m fully back in the mindset from four years ago.
The mansion’s corridors feel endless now—too wide, too gilded, too much of a maze.
Even though I told Yulian we would find Alina, my strongest theory is that a guard took her to safety. At least, I hope it’s that and she wasn’t abducted, because if she didn’t crawl to hide, she was clearly taken.
Hopefully, she was taken willingly, since there was no sign of struggle in the room.
We turn a corner and come to a halt.
