Page 32 of Not Her Day to Die (Star-Crossed #2)

B ang!

A distant gunshot causes Luna to startle, for her grip to loosen.

It is all I need, I buck up from below, wriggling against her as best as I can.

Luna isn’t large, she’s small and malnourished and clearly weak.

With her off balance, I manage to flip us until I am on top of her.

My hands find her wrists, pinning her down.

It is the wrong move to make–before, Luna was a dead-eyed girl, but now she is a wild creature.

She screeches and shakes, her panic overwhelming her system.

I jump off of her, my back hitting a wall, knocking my breath out of me.

Panting and coughing and heaving, it takes me a few minutes before I can finally get a grasp on what is happening. On Luna in the corner, arms wrapped around her knees as she rocks herself.

“Luna?” Confusion and uncertainty splice in my gut. I want to go to her, to comfort her. I want to run from her, to never see her again.

My empathy wins out.

“Are you okay? What’s going on? What do you mean one hundred lifetimes?” I think I know the answer. But I need her to say it. To confirm.

Luna remains silent for so long, I almost expect her not to speak at all. My ears hyper fixate on all the other sounds instead. I expect more signs of chaos after the shot went off, but it’s silent again, save for the fan above us .

A single jolt in an otherwise still chest.

Finally, she stops rocking, unwraps her arms, and unsteadily makes her way to her feet.

I stiffen, my hand attempting to find the razor in my pocket. I don’t want to hurt her. But I will if I have to.

Except it isn’t there.

I try to locate it in the dim light.

Should I run from her? What is going on?

“Sunday, this isn’t the first time you have been here,” Luna tells me.

She straightens, making her way to the wall the bulb is on, she cranes her neck all the way up towards it.

The light ignites her. The purple thread tangles around her several times, it pulsates and breathes. But underneath it is another thread.

Red.

As the purple moves, I can see it. A crimson cloak that shrouds her.

Dread wells inside of me.

I don’t know what the red means exactly.

But it isn’t good.

“Several months ago. Years? A decade? However you want to say it. There was a falling star. And I made a wish.”

My heart pounds into my throat.

“When I was little, my momma promised me that no matter what happened if I was ever in trouble she would come for me. She promised me, Sunday. And why wouldn’t I believe her?

She was larger than life. An FBI agent.” Luna spins on her heel.

“And so, when I was taken out of this cage, when I was given my first fresh air in months, when I was hurt in a way I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, when I was lying on my back, staring up and wanting to be anywhere else, I saw the shooting star.

And I made a wish. I wished for us to be reunited.

I wished to return to her. I wished with all my might. To escape this hell.”

Luna opens her hand to reveal the razor. I tense.

She flips it over and over in her palms. “I kept them from touching you. Whenever you made it here, which was more and more as time progressed, I kept you safe.”

Tears well up, blurring my vision. My mind races.

“You…you remember everything, don’t you?” I ask.

Luna narrows her eyes, she squares her shoulders.

“They couldn’t kill me, Sunday. But there are worse things than death.

I remember every time they came for me. And then the timeline would restart, but it didn’t mean anything.

I couldn’t change anything. I just had to wait and wait and wait and know .

Know that it would happen over and over again.

It didn’t take long to find out your death triggered the restarts.

It wouldn’t be immediate but usually within a day of it.

” Luna’s voice is eerily steady as she continues.

I don’t know what to do. What to say. And so I listen to her pain, her suffering.

“Sunday, I have been stuck in this hell in this horrible prison for years. I have done everything I could to help you remember. To be rescued. Anything I could fucking do. But I am a girl stuck in a cage in the pits of an inescapable nightmare. All because I followed a boy I loved to a party.” Luna tightens her hold on the razor blade.

I want to go to her, to hug her, to reassure her.

But if I were Luna. I would hate me.

Despise that I wasn’t trapped here, that I was making her go through this over and over again.

“You found me the first time pretty early on in these loops, and it made me realize what would restart them. Your death. But I don’t want to restart them anymore Sunday. I’m tired. I want to finally end this. I want to fulfill my wish. I want to reunite with my mother.”

“She never stopped looking for you.” I make my way to my feet. “We can leave. We can escape and never return here. We can end this.”

A red thread wraps around the razor blade, it reaches out to Luna, spreads across her skin, a sinister crimson netting that covers the purple entirely now.

“We can’t,” Luna attests. “My mother is dead. And I’ve decided, I don’t want to keep trying. I don’t want to go through another loop. Another possibility.”

Understanding hits me.

The boys carried out the plan early, they must have. That must be where everyone went, why this place is a ghost town.

At what Luna must think.

At what she is going to do.

I need to stop her. I need to stop all of this.

Because, in this moment, I know with certainty.

If Luna dies, we will have to go through all of this.

Again and again and again and again and again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

A series of bangs and crashes sound outside our cell, but I ignore them. Focusing on the woman before me.

“No Luna!” I’m jumping forward now.

I want to save her. I want to stop this loop. I want to march to my own beat.

To escape this insanity .

My head bangs against the brick wall as I fall onto her, the razor bouncing along the floor.

I register that Luna is okay as my vision darkens.

And just like that, I forge my own path.

The Wildflower.