My Last Seven Days On Earth Started With A Broken Promise Chapter 05

My Last Seven Days On Earth Started With A Broken Promise Chapter 05

The last day.

Tonight, the night after the Fall Lantern Festival, the moon hung fuller than it had all week.

I woke up early.

I spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen.

Graham’s favorite Cajun fish stew. The buffalo chicken bites Reid always went for. The lemon herb shrimp Nolan had been asking about for months.

Six dishes covered the table.

I packed up every gift and keepsake in my room.

There wasn’t much.

Besides the one old photograph my adoptive parents left me, it was mostly small things the three of them had given me over the years.

A broken music box. A silver bracelet. A few of Nolan’s old sketchbooks.

I put it all in a cardboard box and left it in the middle of the living room.

The clock read seven.

I heard the lock.

They came in laughing, Tessa out front with an armful of shopping bags.

“Oh my God, something smells amazing! Who cooked?”

Tessa breathed in deep and rushed to the table, face lit up.

Graham kicked off his shoes at the door and glanced at the spread. Something shifted in his expression.

“What’s all this?”

He looked at me. Still guarded, but softer than he’d been in days.

“Good. About time you came around. Go grab plates. Tessa’s starving.”

Reid dropped the shopping bags on the sofa and loosened his tie.

Then he spotted the box.

“What’s this junk doing in the middle of the room?”

He walked over and kicked the lid off.

The silver bracelet sat on top.

Its pendant was a stone that pulsed with a faint blue glow.

The Starlight Stone. Celeste had left it with me four years ago, the last time she visited, to keep me safe.

I’d thought it was too conspicuous on its own, so Reid had it set into the bracelet.

The only gift he’d ever given me.

“Oh wow, this is gorgeous!”

Tessa scooped it out of the box like she’d struck gold.

The stone glowed softly against her skin.

“Reid, did you buy this? I love it!”

Reid hesitated, like he was only just placing it.

His eyes flicked to me, then back to Tessa’s waiting face.

“Keep it. Obviously someone didn’t want it.”

“That’s mine, Reid.”

I stood by the table. My voice didn’t waver.

I crossed the room and held my hand out to Tessa.

“Give it back.”

Tessa pulled her hand away, eyes darting to Reid, wounded.

“Mari, it’s just a bracelet. Reid already said I could have it. You can always get another one.”

“I said give it back.”

My eyes didn’t leave the stone.

Celeste left it for me. I couldn’t let it stay in human hands.

“That’s enough, Marielle!”

Graham closed the distance in two steps and shoved me.

I wasn’t braced for it. My back hit the entryway cabinet hard.

“It’s a cheap bracelet! If Tessa likes it, let her have it! Do you seriously have to blow up over every little thing?”

Nolan leaned against the doorframe, laughing under his breath.

“Right. Aren’t you heading back to the Moon Court any day now? What does a lunar spirit need with a cheap bracelet?”

I looked at the three of them. They stood shoulder to shoulder, a wall, with Tessa tucked safely behind it.

Something broke loose inside me, and what replaced it was calm. The wrong kind of calm.

This was the human world I’d treasured for ten years.

These were the people I’d poured everything into. The ones I’d almost traded my place in the Moon Court for.

“Okay.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t care.”

I looked at the clock.

Seven fifty-five.

Five minutes until Celeste came for me.

I walked to the table and picked up the Cajun fish stew.

They all stared. I let go.

The plate hit the floor and exploded.

Hot oil sprayed across the tile.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

Graham’s voice cracked across the room.

I didn’t answer. I picked up the buffalo chicken bites. Then the lemon herb shrimp.

One by one.

I smashed every last one on the floor.

Oil, sauce, and food bled together into a mess across the carpet.

“Sixth wish, done. Everything you ever gave me, returned. And you don’t get the dinner, either.”

I wiped my hands and walked to the balcony doors.

I pushed one open.

The full moon hung dead center in the sky, pale and close, flooding everything in silver.

“Marielle! You walk out that door, don’t you ever come back!”

Reid’s voice shook. He was pointing at me, hand trembling.

“Reid, don’t…” Tessa’s hand was on his arm, playing peacemaker. “She’s probably just upset…”

I didn’t turn around.

The second hand ticked.

Eight o’clock.

A column of white light split the sky and poured down onto the balcony, so bright it burned to look at.

The scent of magnolia flooded the air, cool and sweet and impossibly clean.

A voice spoke inside my head, warm and ancient and certain.

[Mari, you’ve suffered enough in their world. It’s time to come home.]

I closed my eyes and whispered into the light.

“My seventh wish is that we never see each other again.”

My human shell dissolved. Every ache, every chill, every human hurt lifted off me all at once.

The light closed around me.

Behind me, heavy footsteps. Then Reid’s voice, low and fed up.

“Marielle, you done with the performance?”

He never finished the sentence.