Page 421 of Eternal
I loved taking pictures of them.
Before Oleg and Yuri got caught in Slovenia. Before Roman took a bullet to the skull after they tortured him for days, because command forced him into a cover he wasn’t ready for.
Before Vlad got killed.
Everyone was dead, but me.
I left after that. I walked away from the only people I had left. Not because I didn’t care, but because I did. Because grief hollowed me out, and I couldn’t take losing another person.
It was easier to disappear, easier to lose myself.
And then she showed up. Kicking doors, breaking rules, smiling like the sun, comforting like the moon.
And somehow… I’m here now.
She’s laughing again, mouth full of food, head thrown back on my pillow like she belongs there. God, she does. She’s the only thing I’ve ever let belong.
I watch her chew with mock drama, one eye narrowed at me like she knows I’m being ridiculous for feeding her. “I can use a spoon, you know,” she says, mouth still half-full, playful.
I grin. “Not tonight. Birthday girls don’t lift a finger when I’m around.”
She snorts. “That’s a threat.”
“That’s apromise.”
She laughs again and I swear I could bottle the sound.
There’s a song playing faintly from the other room, drifting through the cracked door, one I picked.
“Starlight” by Muse.
Loud enough to fill the background, quiet enough not to interrupt the moment.
Hold you in my arms… I just wanted to hold…You in my arms…
I wipe the last trace of rice from her lip with my thumb, I want to kiss her again, I want to keep kissing her until time forgets us.
But instead I say, “Come with me.”
She eyes me suspiciously, but takes my hand when I offer it. I lead her to my bed, the lights low, her presence louder than anything else in the room.
She looks up and gasps, soft and breathless.
“You… kept them?”
Stars. The ones she painted on the ceiling in glow-in-the-dark ink when she couldn’t sleep one night. Small, imperfect constellations. She used to do that as a kid, she said, to make herself feel safe, to pretend the sky was always watching.
“I did more than keep them,” I say.
I grab the pen from the nightstand. She watches me climb up beside her, both of us lying back against the pillows, and I raise the pen and tap the ceiling once.
“I’m going to draw you in this apartment,” I tell her.
She giggles, wide-eyed. “You’re what?”
I shift onto one elbow, grinning. “You heard me. And then you’re going to draw me.”
“That’s not how this works,” she laughs, warm and bright.
