Page 106 of Eternal
My grin widens beneath the mask. She doesn’t even know who she’s talking to, and yet, I feel my pulse quicken, I’ve never wanted to be seen more than I do now.
Weirdly enough I want to talk to her, to touch her face and look at her when she’s in trance like she is right now, but I can’t.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t so much as breathe too quickly or too slow. She simply stands there, shoulders squared, her body still shaking with the fight she finished. Blood, hers, theirs, painting her soft tan skin, staining her clothes, the curve of her jaw, even her eyelid.
And somehow, she looksgorgeous.
I crouch on the ledge for another second, watching her. It’s almost a shame to break the moment.Almost.
Then, I drop.
She follows my silhouette when my boots hit the floor, she doesn’t even flinch, she tilts her head, assessing, waiting for what I’ll say or what I’ll do.
Again, I smile under the mask, she has no idea all I want to do now is talk to her.
“Took you long enough to see me.” I say, using my voice modifier.
I fucking hate this gadget, but I have no choice than to use it when I follow her.
I watch as she unties her braid, shaking it loose with slow and delicate movements. Blood streaks through the strands, dark against the low light around us, but it doesn’t bother her, doesn’t even seem to register.
My fingers flex at my sides, I always wanted to touch them and feel how soft they feel under my touch.
I shouldn’t be watching her like this, shouldn’t be thinking like this, not about her, nor about this whole situation. Because when I listened to her, I almost wanted to defend her and help her.
When all I’m supposed to do is stop her.
But I do, because she looks wrongly, devastatingly beautiful in this chaos, in the havoc she created all alone. I should have stopped her before she killed them all. Should have ended this before her blade carved through the last man’s throat, before her grief left a trail of bodies across the floor.
But Iunderstand.
That rage, that precision, that need to avenge. I know it. I’ve lived it, but I changed it all and shut off my whole identity to forget about that despair and grief that made me crave chaos.
I became entirelyViper.
And now, as she breathes through the blood and silence around us, I wonder if I made a mistake.
I’ve spent years not being him. Not beingDamir.
I let that name die, buried it deep beneath every mission, everybody, every kill that didn’t belong to the man I was born to be.
Then shesaidit.
She looked at me with cautiousness and pure confidence and used that name like it was something real. Like it was mine. Like it wasme. And I remembered.
Now, I stand in front of her asViper. Masked, hidden, but something about it irritates me.
Because she doesn’t know, because she looks at me like I’m a stranger when I’m the only man who has touched her wounds, who knows what she looks like when she’s unconscious, vulnerable.
That should be enough, but it’s not.
The room’s a mess, bodies on the floor, blood and death in the air like it’s its own oxygen. Her breath? Calm.
Like it’s another normal day for her. The hell is wrong with this woman? And why am I almost turned on by the way she looks right now?
“I saw you the moment I entered, but you didn’t move, and I was in a hurry, you see?” She finally talks again, taking back the knife that was still in Donovan’s flesh. “Now, who are you?”
A laugh escapes, it’s almost nervous because now I get it, the whole legend behind her these past two years. She is a magnificent killer.
