Page 232 of Eternal
She was... beautiful. Not the fragile kind, the kind of beauty that made you stare before your brain caught up. Her skin was pale, like snow, and she had soft freckles, mostly around her nose. Her eyes were almond-shaped, hazel-gold, amber and warm like the sun but cold enough to make you wonder if youwere imagining it. She looked like someone who had seen every kind of violence and made peace with it.
She smiled, soft but not sweet. Just… real. Still holding the kid on her hip, she offered her hand to me. “Hi. Voron, I suppose?” A soft and raspy voice, exactly how I imagined it.
I nodded, shaking her hand, trying not to let it show how much I was thrown off. “Hi, yeah, that’s me.”
And then I saw them, the scars.
Faint but clear, horizontal lines along her wrist, too many to be anything but what they were. Except one, vertical, it cut straight down the middle, deeper and angrier. That one was different, that one looked like the time she really meant it.
She had a tattoo over them, the Pakhan’s name inked just above her veins with a heartbeat running through it.
I didn’t mean to stare, but I did, because I knew those marks, not hers, specifically. But the kind you carry long after they’ve healed. I wondered how many people looked at her and just saw the beautiful woman, the magical eyes, the power, not the aftermath, not her past.
And suddenly I didn’t feel like some assassin or enforcer or drunk girl playing grown-up in a city that wasn’t mine. I just felt like a woman looking at another woman.
And for a second, I didn’t know what hit harder… her beauty, or the quiet proof that she survived herself.
“I’m Zanae Dellé. Nice to meet you,” she said, still smiling.
The Huntress.
She kissed the kid again, softly and whispered to him, “I’ll let you stay with mama, okay? Aunt Zee’s working, Juny baby.”
Then she turned back to me, and I still hadn’t moved.
“I’ll be right back,” she added gently, before nodding toward the table. “You can sit with Niko and Elijah.”
So I did, I dragged myself toward the two men like I hadn’t just been internally spiraling five minutes ago in front of themost beautiful woman I’d seen in my life. The Venom Reapers were mid-conversation, cups of coffee in front of them.
They looked so… normal?
Nikolai looked up from his espresso and smiled, his eyes always carried that glint, somewhere between amused and predatory.
“Rough night?” he asked.
“Comfortable.”
My eyes found the other pair of green eyes staring at me. Elijah. I had never met him in person before.
Viktor told me stories, they were close in age. He used to say Elijah was lethal in the way that didn’t show, methodical, unhinged… Dyavol.
I always thought it was underground myth-making, a title passed around to scare rookies.
But now? Sitting across from him? I wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Azra,” Elijah said, offering his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I took it, and his grip was firm. “Likewise,” I said.
He let go, and the moment passed just as Zanae returned to the table with the coffee.
She placed mine in front of me gently, then sat beside him like it was muscle memory. He reached out with one hand and caressed her chin. “Milaya, put some sugar in yours,” he murmured.
She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted, Elijah didn’t even look at her.. He just reached out again, calmly, and pulled her chair even closer. Nikolai chuckled at the sight, like it was the most normal thing in the world. In their world.
How do they find love in the world we live in? It seems so genuine.
“I’m sorry I had to come this quickly,” I started, not even sure where to begin. “But Viktor told me we might be fighting the same people.”
