Mikhail’s face lit up with unmistakable delight.
“Oh, you don’t know?” he said.
I groaned. “Please don’t.”
But he was already laughing, eyes bright. “When we were little, we often had sleepovers,” he said. “Sometimes we would share a bed. And Ethan here would let these farts rip, long ones. Lethal ones. I swear I haven’t smelled anything like it since.”
“Stop,” I muttered.
“They were biological weapons,” Mikhail continued, nearly crying with laughter.
Ben chuckled drunkenly. I shook my head.
“You’re both idiots,” I said.
The tension in my chest eased despite myself. And for the first time in days, I felt something close to normal.
Chapter 17
Ethan
The laughter faded eventually, settling into something more comfortable.
Mikhail leaned against the bar, elbows braced, nursing his beer with a thoughtful look on his face. Ben sat beside me, relaxed but observant, like he always had been. The pub noise wrapped around us, voices rising and falling, glasses sliding across wood, music low enough to ignore.
For a while, it felt easy.
“So,” I said finally, turning toward Mikhail. “When did you come back?”
He didn’t answer right away.
He stared into his glass, rolling it slightly between his palms. The grin he’d worn most of the evening slipped, replaced by something inward. Something distant.
“I was back a few years ago,” he said. “Didn’t stay long.”
“And now?” I asked.
He took a slow sip, then set the glass down carefully.
“Been back about a week.”
I waited. Ben did too. The silence stretched.
“What brought you home?” I probed.
Mikhail lifted his head.
For just a second, I didn’t recognize him.
The warmth was gone. The easy humor. His blue eyes sharpened, dark and focused in a way that made my spine prickle. It wasn’t anger; it was something colder. More controlled.
Ben shifted slightly beside me. I felt it without looking.
Mikhail leaned in and lowered his voice.
“If I told you,” He said calmly, “I’d have to kill you.”
Then he threw his head back and laughed. Loud. Booming. The sound cracked the tension clean in half.
