Page 441 of Eternal
The fire catches fast, and I walk away, not even looking back. The fire’s eating the walls, the velvet, the bones of their house.
Her fire. Her vengeance. Her truth.
But it’s not over yet, not if I let him die.
I turn to look at the dependency behind me.
They’re coming out slowly now, teenagers, and a few women. Some were barely walking, some not even speaking.
I tell them it’s okay.
I tell them help is coming.
And it burns something deep in my chest when I realize I sound like her.
Like Azra, when she talked about what she lived through, that quiet ache when she still thought someone might come, that someone might save her.
I couldn’t saveher.
But I can savethem.
I walk back to the small dependencies this bastard had hidden in his enormous hell on earth.
Now, it’s burning. I take a gun from a dead guard and shoot every closed door, one by one. Room by room. I kick open a door. Three girls, young. Fourteen? Maybe younger.
They stare at me like I’m death, I don’t say anything, I simply step aside. “Leave. Now. You’re free.”
Another door. People. Again. And again.
Hell.Fucking hell.
Under our noses for so long.
The last door, the one I came through when I found her.
A boy, curled under a desk, trembling, arms locked around his knees.Alone.
No one else.
And he’s crying, quiet, wrecked, not even looking at me when I step in.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. Again. Again. Again. Like a mantra. “I’m sorry, I didn’t… I didn’t mean…”
It’s him, the one who shot her. I feel it like a knife in my throat, and for a second, a stupid, selfish second, I want to kill him.
This small, shaking thing. I want to put my hand around his neck and scream,You took her. You took her from me.
But I don’t move.
Because then he looks up, and I seeher.
The same hollow fear in his eyes she used to have when the memories got too close.
The same silence. The one screaming ‘I didn’t mean to survive this way.’
I swallow, my hands are fists, my whole body’s a fuse. But I kneel anyway.
“Hey,” I say. It comes out hoarse. Too soft for what I feel. “Come on, buddy. It’s okay. Get up.”
