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 grip designed 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. It is a detonator."
"It is a mechanism," he counters. "It requires rhythm.
Breathe in." I inhale. The cold air stings my lungs.
"Breathe out." I exhale. The gun settles slightly.
"At the bottom of the breath... in the pause between the exhale and the inhale.
.. that is your moment. That is the silence between the notes. "
He presses his body against my back. His left hand comes around my waist, grounding me. "Find the silence, Elodie. And then... press. Don't pull. Press."
I focus. The log on the stump blurs. I focus on the front sight. Breathe in. Breathe out. The pause. The world stops spinning. The wind seems to die down. I squeeze my index finger. Smooth. Slow.
CRACK.
The sound is violent. It rips through the serenity of the forest like a thunderclap. The gun kicks in my hand, jumping up, the recoil shocking my wrists. I blink, stunned by the violence of it. The smell of burnt gunpowder—sulfur and ash—fills my nose instantly.
"Missed," Alaric notes dryly. He points to the snow, three feet to the left of the stump. A small black hole marks the impact. "You anticipated the recoil. You pushed the gun down right before the break."
"It’s loud," I defend, my ears ringing.
"Death usually is," he says without sympathy. "Again."
We spend an hour in the snow. My hands go numb. My shoulders ache with a dull, throbbing pain that rivals the soreness between my legs. Bang. Miss. Bang. Miss. Bang. A chip of bark flies off the stump.
"Hit," Alaric says. He doesn't cheer. He just nods. "Again."
It is grueling. It is monotonous. But it is also intoxicating.
With every shot, the fear of the weapon diminishes.
It stops being a foreign object and starts becoming an extension of my will.
I start to understand what Alaric meant about the rhythm.
Load. Rack. Aim. Breathe. Fire. It is a loop. A cadence.
And watching Alaric... that is a lesson in itself.
He is clearly in pain. I see the way his jaw tightens when he moves too fast. I see the sweat beading on his upper lip despite the freezing temperature.
But he never sits down. He never takes his hand out of his pocket to cradle it.
He stands guard, scanning the tree line, watching the perimeter, watching me.
"Break," he finally says, after I empty the fourth magazine.
I lower the gun, exhaling a cloud of steam. My arms are trembling. "Did I pass?"
"You didn't shoot your foot off," he says, taking the gun from me. He ejects the empty magazine and checks the chamber with one hand—a practiced, fluid motion. "So, you passed Level One."
He hands the empty gun back to me. "Reload it. Keep it holstered. We’re going to walk the perimeter."
"Alaric, you need to rest," I say, looking at his pale face. "Your hand..."
"My hand is attached," he snaps, then softens. He sighs, running his good hand through his wind-blown hair. "I need to check the sensors, Elodie. The storm knocked out the remote feed. I can't rest until I know the circle is unbroken."
"I'll come with you."
"That wasn't a request. You are my shadow now."
He grabs his rifle from where he leaned it against a tree. He slings it over his left shoulder. "Stay behind me. Step where I step. The snow hides holes, roots... and traps."
We leave the clearing, entering the dense forest. The light changes instantly. Under the canopy of the giant pines, the world is a twilight blue. The snow is shallower here, protected by the branches, but the silence is deeper. It feels like walking into a cathedral. A cold, indifferent cathedral.
We walk for twenty minutes. Alaric stops at small metal boxes mounted on trees—the thermal sensors. He checks the lights. He brushes off the snow. "Green," he mutters at the third one. "System is active. It was just signal interference from the blizzard."
"So we're safe?" I ask, stepping over a fallen log.
"Safe is a relative term," he says, moving to the next tree. "But we are alone."
I relax slightly. The tension that has been coiling in my stomach loosens.
We are alone. Just the snow, the trees, and us.
I look at Alaric’s back. The broad shoulders.
The leather jacket. He is a monster, yes.
But out here, in the wild, he makes sense.
He fits. And strangely, I feel like I fit too.
The porcelain doll Elodie would have frozen to death in ten minutes.
The new Elodie—the one with the gun on her hip—is breathing the cold air and feeling alive.
"Alaric," I say softly. He pauses, turning to look at me. "What?"
"Thank you."
He frowns, confused. "For what? Making you freeze your fingers off?"
"For giving me the gun," I say. "For trusting me with it."
He studies me. His eyes travel over my face, lingering on my mouth. "I don't trust you with the gun, Elodie," he says, his voice low. "I trust the gun to protect you when I can't."
He steps closer, closing the distance between us.
The rifle swings at his side. "You think I'm teaching you to be a soldier," he whispers, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear.
His fingers are cold. "I'm not. I'm teaching you to be a survivor.
Because the world I dragged you into... it doesn't forgive weakness. "
"I'm not weak anymore," I vow.
"I know," he says. And there is pride in his voice. "I saw you stitch my skin. I saw you hold the recoil." He leans down. He kisses me. It is a hard, cold kiss. His lips are chapped. "You are becoming dangerous, petite. It turns me on."
He pulls back, a smirk ghosting on his lips. "Let's check the north ridge. Then we go back. I believe I promised you a lesson in anatomy if you passed the shooting test."
I flush, heat blooming in my cheeks despite the cold. "I thought you were dying of sepsis."
"I heal fast," he lies. "Come on."
He turns back to the path. I follow him. We walk another hundred yards. The trees begin to thin out near the ridge. Suddenly, Alaric stops. He stops so fast I almost bump into him.
He doesn't speak. He doesn't move. He just stares at the ground.
"What is it?" I whisper, sensing the shift in his energy. The relaxed predator is gone. The hunter is back.
Alaric raises his hand. Silence. He points to the snow.
I look down. At first, I don't see it. Just the undisturbed white blanket. Then, I see the anomaly. Near the base of a massive oak tree, the snow is disturbed. Not a footprint. A depression. Small. Rectangular.
Alaric crouches down, his movements silent. He brushes the snow away from the depression. Beneath the fresh powder, the snow is packed down hard. And in the center of the depression, there is something grey. Ash.
Alaric touches it with his finger. He brings it to his nose. "Tobacco," he whispers.
My stomach drops. "You don't smoke."