The Prince or the Crown

chapter seven

“Oh dear,” Marko said as I started posing with the handgun the instructor had just given me. “I fear for my life.”

“It’s only loaded with blanks,” I protested. “I don’t think I can actually kill you.”

“Well, let’s not test that theory,” he mumbled. 

After learning how to manage the recoil of the gun, I was allowed to put real bullets inside. They gave both of us ear plugs and safety glasses and told us to put them on before loading the gun. 

“Okay,” the instructor said. “To load the gun, you slide the magazine up in here until it clicks, and then pull back this thing here and let it slide into place. Got it?” 

“Uh… Yeah,” I said, trying not to get freaked out. I’d never touched a gun before, and I’d never trusted people who went to gun ranges to shoot out their anger. It made me nervous. And now, here I was, becoming one of those people. 

“Good. To unload it, let the magazine drop into your hand and then sharply pull this thing back. Clear?”

I nodded and took the gun from her hand, staring at the little human-shaped target at the end of the tunnel. “Why does that have to be a human?” I asked.

The employee frowned. “Because you need to learn where to aim. Look, you want to-”

“I’ll take it from here,” Marko said, taking the gun from my hand. “Thank you.”

The instructor rolled her eyes and walked away. 

“Why’d you do that? She was just about to tell me how to aim the gun!”

“Don’t listen to her,” Marko said quietly. “You see all those Xs on that target back there? Those targets are the most likely to be fatal. You want to try as best as you can to not shoot those targets.”

 I blinked. “I thought the point was to kill the other person.”

Marko turned and glared down at me, his gaze sharpening. “You need to listen to me very closely, Ms. Adere. The point is to disarm or seriously injure the other person. Not to kill. Never to kill.” 

I turned back to the target. “Okay.”

“Give it a go.” He handed me the gun.

I slowly raised the handgun and found my target just as the instructor had said. I took a deep breath, narrowed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. 

And missed the target entirely. 

“There goes the hostage,” Marko said from behind me. “Try again.”

We kept trying for another couple of hours, but I never managed to get the target unless you counted barely missing the edge of a shoulder or arm. 

“Okay,” Marko said. “Since guns… aren’t working out very well, we can try the sword.”
I gasped. “Like fencing?”

He looked at me curiously. “Well, hopefully you would be using a real sword, and those are usually weighted a little differently, but the tactics are similar, yes.”

“I love fencing,” I said, unloading the gun and setting down the ear plugs and safety glasses. “I did it competitively when I was in high school.”

“Really?” Marko asked, raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t peg you for the athletic type.”

“Well, I was super athletic when I was a kid.”

“You are still a kid, Ms. Adere,” he protested, setting his ear plugs and safety glasses next to mine. 

“I’m twenty-one.”