Page 323 of Eternal
Elijah nods like it’s actually a fact. “Mine tried to kill me.”
I smile and lift my shirt to show a still-healing scar. “So did mine.”
Niko looks at us both, then turns and heads back inside. “Mine makes me pancakes in the morning. You two are fucking weird.”
I stayed out there with Elijah a while longer.
We don’t talk much. We like the silence.
Maybe he thinks like I do. Like the noise is actually too intrusive. Like we never knew it before and it’s almost comforting.
Then his phone rings. I can tell by how fast he moves like his other half needs him that it’s the Emira.
He answers and says, “I’m coming back,Milaya.” Then he turns toward me, nodding toward the blood on my shirt. “We’re heading in. Don’t worry about the bloodstains, shit happens.”
That makes me laugh again.
We go back inside.
My partner’s on the balcony with Zanae, both of them lost in the night sky, smiling, drinking, talking like the world isn’t broken around them.
I watch her.
She’s…happy. And I feelhappy. And I hate how much that terrifies me.
Terrified of what that means. Terrified of how much I feel.
91
AZRA
“Saturn” by Sleeping at Last
Present
Idon’t see Alexander. Or Damir.
My eyes scan the room, brush over familiar faces, but neither of them is here.
But I didn’t care, I was alone on the balcony, smoking quietly.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Tired but happy.
Zanae joined me with a drink, smiling delicately. “You came out to escape too?”
I leaned against the railing, staring out at the distant stars. We see them so clearly from here.
“Something like that. Too many people in there.”
She laughed and looked back up at the sky, like she always does.
Maybe she’s used to it.
Maybe it’s her escape, the same way I used to draw them on the ceiling and pretend I was somewhere else. I saw the tattoo on her thigh. It’s small, but visible, next to a quote. A constellation. My favorite one.Andromeda.
“Brian would’ve liked to see you on your last day,” she says. “But she’s pretty swamped…”
