He looked like a warlord.
Like a pirate king.
Like a man who had paid a brutal price and worn it openly instead of hiding it.
Three years had passed.
Three years since he drove that dagger into his own face — right in front of me.
Three years since he offered me his sight as if it could somehow balance the destruction he caused.
He had lost so much blood that night he didn’t wake for seven full days.
Seven.
Machines had breathed for him.
Petros had not left the hospital room once.
Neither had I.
I had sat beside his bed in sterile silence, staring at the steady rise and fall of his chest through the monitor readings.
At first, I told myself I didn’t care.
I convinced myself that whether he lived or died no longer altered my reality.
I had survived without him before.
I could survive again.
But the longer his body lay motionless, the louder the fear became.
Not fear of losing control.
Fear of losing him.
I hated that realization.
I fought it.
I denied it.
Until the day his eyelashes finally trembled.
Until that single blue eye opened slowly — unfocused at first — scanning the room through morphine haze.
And then it found me.
Locked onto me.
Even weak.
Even half-blind.
He recognized me immediately.
Something inside my chest shattered open at that moment.
