Chapter 4

They didn't run.

Dimitri decided running looked like weakness. Instead he fortified, boards on the lower windows. Tripwires in the trees she wasn't allowed to watch him set.

A second gun taped under the bathroom sink. Elena learned the weight of a pistol in her hands in twenty brutal minutes of instruction while rain returned like a living thing and power flickered and died.

He lit oil lamps and poured vodka neat. He didn't offer her any. He poured a second glass anyway and set it in front of her.

"Drink. It'll steady your hands if you have to shoot."