When Damien reached the top of the Stargazer’s Spire, I was sitting on the ledge, my feet dangling in the empty air.
Nooked up at the vast expanse of stars.
Long ago, my mother told me that when people die, they become stars in the sky.
I wondered which of them was my mother, and which was my child.
When I died, would I be with them?
Damien’s eyes were bloodshot, roiling with a fury that could no longer conceal b
“Elara, what a clever trick. To threaten me with your own death.”
“Get over here now, if you know what’s good for you!”
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My vacant eyes slowly turned to him.
“Damien.”
abject terror.
In the five years since it all began, I had called his name in anger, in supplication, in hatred.
But never like this. Never so
calmly.
Perhaps, when one is about to die, all the love, all the hate, ceases to matter.
“I’m not trying to threaten you.”
“I’ve been thinking, these past few days. The two of us… we are cursed. A tragedy bound together.”
“We torment each other. You are not happy, and I am not happy. What is the point?”
Damien’s lips trembled, his hands clenched into fists inside his sleeves.
“Your happiness is not for you to decide!”
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“Your debt is not yet paid. By what right do you seek death?”
I paused, then turned my face away to look at the stars again.
“It can never be repaid. I no longer hope for your forgiveness.”
Damien… for the sake of the ten years I loved you, will you just… let me go?”
The cold wind carried my light, airy words to his ears, and they struck him like a physical blow.
05.07
Chapter 2
The cold wind carried my light, airy words to his ears, and they struck him like a physical blow.
He looked into my dead, empty eyes and finally understood. This was not a game.
The tremor in his voice was more pronounced now. His body moved toward me, seemingly of its own accord.
“Elara, you can’t die!”
“Don’t you want to know… where our child is buried?”
Seeing my body lean further out over the edge, he finally played his last card: our child.
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As he hoped, myment stopped. I turned to look at him again.
I saw the raw panic on his face, and then I remembered his cold, final command that day, the order to bring the tinder and branches.
Ball de
