Page 105 of Eternal
A long, shuddering breath from him, then… “She found the shipments.”
Silence.
I feel the shift in the air, the weight of those words settling over us.
Shipments. Of what?
Voron’s eyes narrow, unreadable, and then she lets out a soft laugh, shaking her head. “Of course she did.”
Donovan’s body trembles, his voice strained, desperate. “I—I didn’t—I swear, I didn’t know who she was… I needed to scare her to stop looking for this…”
“But you knew what she found.”
Voron crouches again, gripping his jaw tightly, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“She was digging into something, Donovan. Something so big that you and your people made sure she’d never walk away from it, and you made sure no one would survive after that night, to repeat what she found.”
And there it is. The confirmation.
“But your people forgot to check on the bodies after killing. Because see, I was still there. And I was still alive.”
I get it now, the reason she’s here, the reason she’s spent years hunting them down, killing them one by one. They had her mother killed, and Donovan, whether he pulled the trigger or not, was involved.
I exhale slowly; my hands clenched into fists. This is vengeance, this is why she’s doing this.
But what did her mother find? What was so important that some people decided she had to die for it?
I watch as he whimpers, his body sagging, eyes darting toward the scattered bullets on the floor.
“Tell me,” She whispers, her fingers tightening around his jaw. “What was she looking for?”
His lips tremble, and then, barely audible, “A name.”
My heart slows.
Voron tilts her head, her grip tightening even more. “Whose? The girl?”
Donovan gasps, struggling for air, his bloodied hands clawing at the chair, agonizing. “It’s not a ‘whose,’ it’s a ‘what.’” His breath stutters. “You… You’re looking in the wrong place.” She tilts her head again, studying him, her gaze narrowing. “You’re hunting monsters,” he rasps, coughing up blood, his voice weak. “But it’s the ones pretending to be saints that you should be afraid of.”
Her eyes narrow further. “What do you mean?”
His head lolls back against the chair, a dry, humorless laugh rattling in his chest. His lips part. Maybe to say more, maybe to beg?
But she’s done waiting. “Thank you for participating,” she says, a smirk curling at the corner of her lips before his voice cracks, starting to beg.
“You can now go to hell, Donovan.”
The blade slices clean through his throat, the sound wet and gurgling, his body jerks violently before slumping forward, lifeless.
She watches him for a moment, her expression unreadable, then exhales slowly, wiping the blade on his shirt, silence, stillness, the scent of blood and death hangs in the whole place.
She turns on her heel, preparing to leave. Then, suddenly, her fingers tighten around the hilt of her knife, with barely a glance upward, she throws it.
The blade cuts through the air, straight toward me. I don’t flinch, but I laugh, because the knife landed a breath away from my face, the tip buried deep into the wall beside me.
And my beautiful partner stays where she is, head slightly tilted, waiting for me to react.
“I could’ve aimed for your throat,” she says, voice cold, not the same tone I grew accustomed to. “Get down here and tell me who the fuck you are.”
