My Last Seven Days On Earth Started With A Broken Promise Chapter 10

My Last Seven Days On Earth Started With A Broken Promise Chapter 10

I looked down at the three of them through the glass.

I felt nothing.

If anything, the crying was getting annoying.

“You gave up all of that just to say this?”

My voice carried through the mirror without a trace of warmth.

Reid went still.

He stared at me like he was looking at someone he’d never met.

“Mari… You don’t love me anymore?”

“Love?”

I laughed, dropped from the branch, and walked to the mirror.

“Love is a human thing. I’m a lunar spirit.”

“Those ten years with you were just a trial I had to survive.”

“The trial’s over. I’m awake now.”

I let my eyes pass over each of their ruined faces.

“Every scrap of affection you gave me, I’ve paid back in full.”

“Now leave me alone.”

“No! Mari, don’t…”

Reid slammed his fists against the mirror, trying to break through.

“I can’t do this without you! One more chance. That’s all I’m asking. One.”

He coughed up more blood.

It ran into the lines of the circle.

Graham was on the ground, slamming his head against the dirt, over and over.

“Please, Mari… Don’t do this. Just look at me. Please just look at me.”

Blood still streaming from his blind eyes, Nolan clawed at the ground, searching for something to hold onto

Celeste had appeared at my side.

She studied the scene in the mirror, her lips pressing thin.

“Ugly creatures, humans.”

She lifted one flowing sleeve and flicked her wrist.

The mirror exploded.

A thousand points of light scattered upward and dissolved into nothing.

“No!”

Three voices, screaming the same word, echoed off the walls.

They clawed at the dirt where the circle had been, but there was nothing left to piece together.

The connection was gone.

The old man looked at them one last time, then turned and walked away, his cane tapping the

stone.

“You had her. You lost her. That’s the story. Live with it.”

The Moon Court went quiet again.

I stretched and picked up the pestle from the grass.

“Celeste, come on. The herbs aren’t going to grind themselves.”

Celeste smoothed my hair back and smiled.

“All right. My Mari’s finally grown up.”

After that.

I stopped watching the human world.

Every now and then, while grinding herbs, I caught whispers from the younger attendants.

Apparently, a city down on Earth had three men everyone said had gone insane.

One used to run a company. After he lost everything, he lived on the streets, picking through

garbage cans for a stone that glowed.

One was a blind painter who used his own blood to draw rabbits on any wall he could find. Nobody could tell what they were.

The last was a gaunt man with white hair who’d spent every cent he had left buying a hill.

Every year during the Fall Lantern Festival.

Rain or wind, it didn’t matter.

Thousands of wish lanterns rose from that hill.

Every single one had the same name written in blood. Marielle Caldwell.

The flames lit up the sky.

The white-haired man knelt at the summit and called out, voice shredded raw.

“Mari, the lanterns are going up…”

“Can you see them? Every single one. They’re all yours this time…”

“Please come back…”

But.

Every time the lanterns rose high enough, an invisible wind ripped them apart. The ashes drifted back down like snow.

The barrier around the Moon Court never opened. Not once.

I sat under the magnolia tree and watched the faint flicker of light from below.

I bit into the sweet carrot in my hand.

It was delicious.

was happiest this way. A little lunar spirit with no heart at all.