My breath catches. "Alaric?"
He checks the magazine. Full. He chambers a round.Click-clack.He holds it out to me. Handle first.
"Take it," he says.
I stare at the weapon. It looks heavy. Lethal. "Why?"
"Because I was weak," he says, his voice hard. "Because for twelve hours, I couldn't protect you. And that can never happen again." He presses the gun into my hand. It is cold and heavy. "Vance's partner is still out there. Sterling is playing games. The walls are not enough, Elodie."
He wraps my fingers around the grip. "You learned to ride the horse. You learned to play the duet. Now..." He looks me dead in the eye. "Now you learn to kill."
I look down at the gun in my hand. It feels... right. It feels like the missing piece of the puzzle. The final transformation. The girl who played piano is gone. The girl who holds the gun is here.
"Okay," I whisper. "Teach me."
Alaric leans forward and kisses me. It is a kiss of blood and iron. "Get dressed,petite," he growls against my mouth. "School is in session."
CHAPTER 15
CRIMSON SNOW
POV: Elodie Fray
Location:The Clearing (Outside the Glass House)
Track:Way Down We Go– KALEO (Stripped / Acoustic Version)
Sensory:The biting frost on exposed skin, the smell of gun oil and cordite, the deafening crack of a gunshot shattering the silence.
Mood:Lethal Focus & Adrenaline.
The gun is heavier than it looks.
It sits in my hand, a dense, matte-black lump of metal that feels unnaturally cold against my palm. The SIG Sauer P365. Alaric told me the model name as if he were introducing me to a guest at a dinner party.Compact. Reliable. Deadly.
I stare at it. My fingers—fingers that have spent twenty years caressing ivory keys, learning the delicate pressure required to make a nocturne weep—are now wrapped around a gripdesigned to kill. It feels like a violation of my anatomy. And yet, there is a terrifying rightness to it. The weight anchors me.
"Stop overthinking it," Alaric says. His voice is a cloud of white mist in the freezing air.
He stands three feet away from me, arms crossed over his chest. He is wearing his leather jacket over a thick wool sweater, but I can see the stiffness in his posture. His right hand—the one I stitched up less than twenty-four hours ago—is tucked into his pocket, useless. He is running on adrenaline, painkillers, and pure, unadulterated will. He looks pale against the stark white of the snow-covered clearing, but his eyes are burning with that silver fire. The fever burned away the haze, leaving only the diamond-hard predator underneath.
"I'm not overthinking," I lie, adjusting my grip. "I'm freezing."
"The cold is a variable," he instructs, ignoring my complaint. "Just like the wind. Just like your heart rate. You account for it, and then you ignore it."
He steps closer. The snow crunches loudly under his heavy boots. The sound echoes in the clearing, bouncing off the wall of pine trees that surrounds the glass house. "Stance," he commands.
I shuffle my feet. Shoulder-width apart. Knees slightly bent. I lean forward aggressively, just like he showed me inside. "Elbows unlocked," he corrects, moving behind me. He doesn't touch me with his hands. He nudges my elbows with his chest, forcing them to bend slightly. "If your arms are stiff, the recoil will travel straight up your neck. You want to be a shock absorber, not a brick wall."
He is so close I can feel the heat radiating from him, a stark contrast to the biting wind. He smells of antiseptic—from the wound dressing—and the wild, pine-scented air. "Raise it."
I lift the gun. I aim at the target we set up—a piece of firewood balanced on a tree stump twenty yards away. The sights waver. The front sight dances left, then right. My tremor is back. Not the withdrawal tremor. The fear tremor.
"I can't keep it steady," I whisper, frustration tightening my chest.
"That's because you're holding your breath," Alaric murmurs, his mouth right at my ear. "You're treating the trigger like a detonator. Treat it like a piano key."
"It's a gun, Alaric. Itisa detonator."
