Page 37 of Cherry Moon

“Akira?” he asked.

It took me a moment to sign back at him. “I think he’s…” I couldn’t say it.

Zach’s eye narrowed into an angry slit.

“I’ll fix it. I promise I’ll fix it.”

Like you promised him you’d still be married?

Bile burned in the back of my throat.

There has to be a solution…

I saw Aki in my mind, in happier days. Baking, laughing, being him. Running around the central garden with a bubble machine one day like a big kid, enjoying every moment of that pleasant summer day.

He deserved more days like that.

I wanted to see them, to live them for real and not in memory.

“I failed to protect him,” I said aloud, Zach still watching me, able to read my lips. “But let me prove…” The lump in my throat made it hard to speak.

Please just give him back, I prayed internally instead. I’ll do better. I’ll make sure he never hurts again.

I really would do anything to make this right. Swan dive into a pool of acid, walk over broken glass, sacrifice myself to a pantheon of vicious gods so he could live.

And leave him all alone.

Great plan.

Why was this happening? Why couldn’t the magic of the Cherry Moon sweep the mazoku aside, change the world, and leave Aki be? Why couldn’t it weave us a utopia to live in instead of this continuous shift from peace to chaos?

My Aki can’t be dead.

It didn’t make sense. One moment he was here, then he was dust. Did the mazoku attack remotely somehow with a vicious new form of magic to pierce the anti-magic?

Sakura fell from the ceiling, the sweet scent of cherries wafting into my nostrils. Rosy light flooded the room, and my heart hiccupped when I felt Aki struggling.

Alive, out there in the darkness. Too far away, his heartbeat thumping with mine.

“Aki!” I gasped.

There was a jolt of pain in my chest, and the connection dropped. But the light and the blossoms and the smell of cherries remained.

That same light shone in my fingertips, hot and powerful.

Zach signed, “You’ve tapped into something.”

The light brightened, ribbons of sparkling energy curling across the floor toward me.

“Babies?” I heard Aki’s voice. “Have you⁠—”

It cut off.

“Aki!” I cried, stepping forward.

His babies. Bob and Rose.

“Aki? Can you hear me?”