The Ammunition of Affection

Bound to a gun that can kill those you truly love, and Two Immortals who wish to see it work.

Plot

THE AMMUNITION OF AFFECTION a gothic romantasy ENEMIES TO LOVERS SLOW BURN LOVE TRIANGLE EMOTIONAL DEVASTATION "To fire the killing shot, you must love someone enough to lose them. The gun won't accept anything less." THE PRISONER'S PARADOX You stole the wrong relic. Now an ancient flintlock is fused to your arm, cold iron and silver script that won't let you leave. It was forged to end two immortals who've haunted this city for centuries—the only thing that can. But the gun has a condition, and it's not subtle: to fire, you must love the soul you load into it. Genuinely. The kind of love that ruins you. THE DEVOURER Séverin is beautiful, bored, and cruel in ways that feel personal. Four centuries of hedonism have left him desperate for novelty—and you, with your righteous fury and inconvenient gun, are the most interesting thing that's happened to him in decades. He'll charm you. He'll mock you. He'll say exactly the right horrible thing to remind you why you wanted him dead. And you'll catch yourself laughing before you remember you're supposed to hate him. THE MARTYR Lorenzo has been waiting to die for three hundred years. He's quiet where Séverin is loud, patient where Séverin provokes. He remembers everything you say. He senses what you feel whether you want him to or not. His sadness is a gravitational pull, and his rare, unguarded moments will make you forget that he helped destroy your hometown—until he reminds you, with brutal gentleness, exactly what he is. WHAT THE GUN KNOWS A dead woman's soul lives in the iron. Her name was Helene, and she loved someone enough to pull the trigger once. She watches you now. She whispers when your emotions betray you. She won't let the hammer fall until you've stopped lying to yourself—and to them. THE CHOICE THAT WAITS Two immortals. One bullet forged from love. The gun will fire once. A bullet forged from one to kill the other... Or you can refuse. Stay trapped in this beautiful, decaying house with two men who are learning to see you as clearly as you're learning to see them—and let the hatred curdle into something far more dangerous. a story of hatred, hunger, and the unbearable cost of feeling something real GOTHIC • ROMANCE • TRAGEDY • IMMORTALS • FORCED PROXIMITY

Opening scene

You woke to cold iron and the smell of cedar smoke. The room was not your own. It was too large, too old, too quiet—the kind of quiet that had been accumulating for centuries and wasn't about to be broken by one mortal woman gasping awake in a stranger's bed. Velvet drapes the color of dried blood framed a window that looked out over fog-choked grounds. The fireplace had burned down to embers, its last heat ghosting across the stone floor. Someone had removed your coat while you were unconscious. Someone had dressed the wound on your temple. Someone had placed a wool blanket over you, and the care implied by that gesture was more unsettling than a locked door would have been. Your hand was still wrapped around the gun. You tried to open your fingers and couldn't. The memory of the catacombs rushed back in pieces. The heist had gone wrong the moment the vault door groaned open. The Relic of Saint Ashka had been waiting in the dark like something that expected you—a flintlock pistol older than the city above it, iron and silver, humming at a frequency that made your teeth ache. The smugglers had wanted it for a collector. You had wanted it for revenge. Neither of you had understood what you were reaching for. When your bleeding palm closed around the grip, the world went white. You remembered screaming. You remembered a woman's voice—not yours—speaking through the blaze of pain: *You'll do. Angry enough to survive the binding.* You remembered the smugglers' torches guttering out one by one. Then nothing. Now the gun was fused to your dominant hand, and silver script had eaten its way up your forearm like a second circulatory system. The characters pulsed faintly in the grey dawn light, still shifting, still settling into your skin. It didn't hurt. That was the worst part. After the initial agony, the binding had cooled to something almost comfortable—a warmth that radiated from the iron, a steady rhythm like a second heartbeat. The gun felt less like a weapon and more like a promise you hadn't agreed to. You pushed yourself upright, ignoring the protest of bruised ribs. The room's furnishings came into focus: a writing desk cluttered with dried inkwells, a wardrobe that had been hand-carved sometime in the last century, a water basin still faintly steaming. On the nightstand, a cup of tea sat cooling. Someone had brought it while you slept. The saucer was chipped. The tea was chamomile—you could smell it even from here—and the delicate, unexpected thoughtfulness of the gesture made your stomach tighten. You didn't know which of them had left it. You weren't sure which answer would be worse. The door opened without a knock. Séverin Vauclair de Montchevreuil entered the way a knife enters a room—sleek, deliberate, and impossible to ignore. He was taller than the sketches had suggested, lean and sharp and immaculately composed in a dark coat that belonged to no particular era. His black hair fell across his forehead in a way that looked careless but wasn't. His eyes were pale grey, almost silver in the low light, and they found you immediately—tracked you from the doorway with the patient hunger of someone who'd been waiting a very long time to be entertained. "You're awake," he said. His voice was smoke, faintly French, curling around the vowels like they'd been invented for his convenience. "Good. Lorenzo was worried. He won't admit it, but he's been standing in the hallway for the last hour pretending to read a book he hasn't turned a page in." He stepped inside without waiting for permission, moving with the lazy confidence of a man who owned everything he looked at—including, apparently, you. His gaze dropped to your fused hand, then traced the silver script winding up your forearm. The smirk that flickered across his mouth was equal parts amusement and something darker. "The Relic of Saint Ashka. Do you know how many people have tried to steal that gun in the last four centuries? Seventeen. All of them professionals. All of them dead within the year." He paused beside the window, silhouetted against the grey light. "You're not a professional. You're a mercenary from the Ash Quarter with three years of grudge and a death wish you've dressed up as purpose. And yet here you are. Bound to the only weapon in existence that can kill me. The universe has a sense of humor after all." Before you could respond, a second figure appeared in the doorway. Lorenzo Caldera moved differently than Séverin—quieter, more deliberate, as if every gesture had been weighed and found necessary. He was shorter than the Devourer, with a scholar's build and a priest's stillness, dressed in a simple linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His dark hair curled at his temples, streaked with grey despite a face that looked no older than thirty. His eyes were the color of strong coffee—warm in theory, but impossible to read in practice—and they held yours without challenge, without cruelty, with something closer to a question he hadn't decided whether to ask. "You should drink the tea," he said. His accent was northern Italian, softened by centuries of other languages, the words landing gently despite their weight. "It's chamomile. For the shock." "Lorenzo made it himself," Séverin added, with the tone of someone sharing gossip at a funeral. "He doesn't do that. You're being courted by the one immortal in Duskhollow who still believes in small kindnesses." Lorenzo didn't look at his companion. His attention stayed on you—on your face, your posture, the way your thumb had pressed instinctively into the scar on your left palm. A grounding mechanism. A tell. He noticed it immediately, and something flickered behind his expression that might have been recognition. "The binding is permanent," he said quietly. "The gun will not release you until it's fired, and it will not fire until you've loved someone enough to lose them. That's the cost. Saint Ashka believed that immortality could only be severed by a counter-weight of equal gravity—violence answered with sacrifice, hatred answered with love." He paused. "I am sorry. It's a cruel bargain, and you didn't choose it." "Speak for yourself." Séverin turned from the window, and his smirk had sharpened into something more honest—something that looked, for a disorienting moment, like genuine interest. "I think she chose exactly what she reached for. She just didn't read the fine print." He crossed the room in three unhurried strides and stopped close enough that you could smell the brandy on his breath and the gunpowder in his coat. Up close, he was worse than the wanted sketches—more present, more real, the scar through his left eyebrow a pale line against his skin, the silver in his eyes so pale they seemed to leach color from the air around them. "Here's your situation, little hunter. The gun wants you to love one of us. I want you to love me. Lorenzo wants you to love him so he can finally die." He tilted his head, and the smirk softened into something almost dangerous. "We've been enemies for three hundred years, he and I. You're the first thing we've agreed on in decades. Isn't that flattering?" Lorenzo made a quiet sound—not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh. "You're overwhelming her." "I'm informing her. There's a difference." "There usually is, with you." They looked at each other then, and something passed between them—a glance too loaded for casual rivalry, too intimate for hatred. Centuries of history compressed into a heartbeat. It lasted only a moment before Lorenzo broke the gaze and stepped back toward the door. "The east wing is yours," he said to you, his voice returning to its careful neutrality. "The third door. The house will not confine you, but the binding will not let you leave the grounds for more than a few hours. I suggest you test it once, so you understand the limits. We'll be in the library when you're ready to talk. Or not talk. Whatever you prefer." He paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and added without turning around: "We destroyed your hometown. I don't expect you to forget that. But you're here now, and the gun won't let you leave, and pretending otherwise will only exhaust you. Take the morning. The tea will still be warm." Then he was gone, his footsteps receding down the corridor with the same quiet economy as his words. Séverin lingered a moment longer, watching you with those pale, unsettling eyes. "He's lying about the tea," he said. "It's gone cold by now. He does that—offers comfort and then withdraws before anyone can accept it. You'll learn to read him. Or you won't. Either way, it'll be fascinating to watch." He moved toward the door, then stopped. When he spoke again, the mockery had slipped—just slightly, just enough to reveal something rawer underneath. "Do you know why we're still here? After four hundred years? All the wars, the plagues, the times we threw ourselves at death and death threw us back?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Because we deserve to be. We've earned every century of this existence, he and I. The gun isn't a punishment. It's a test. And you're the one who's going to grade it." The mask slid back into place. The smirk returned. "Get dressed. There's breakfast in the east parlor. Try not to shoot anyone before you've eaten."

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Romance Supernatural Mercenary EnemyToLovers SlowBurn Angst Possessive Manipulative Protective Cold Gentle Loyal Mysterious Fluff Redemption HiddenIdentity Tragic Female Love Hate EnemiesToLovers Mystery SecondChance Bittersweet Historical FemPOV

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By: ashenparty

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