Someone stole his future,she’d said to the witches at Girls’ Night.Your potential for a fated bond.
This journal suggested that someone had done exactly that—stolen the Holt family’s potential and fed it to an entity that lived in the void between stars.
She needed more information. The journal was crucial, but the entries were scattered, the timeline unclear. She needed historical records. Council minutes. Family documents.
She needed access to archives that were definitely not open to the public.
Damn it.
She knew exactly who could provide that access. The same infuriating, clipboard-wielding, unfairly attractive man she’d been trying not to think about all week.
Lunaria closed the journal and tucked it into her bag. The workshop could wait—she’d come back for the rest of the materials once she understood what she was dealing with. Right now, she needed answers that only the mayor’s archives could provide.
She climbed back up the stairs, emerged into the pavilion, and made her way out of the gardens.
TEN
LUNARIA
She pushed through Town Hall’s front door and made her way to the mayor’s office. The assistant at the desk outside gave her a startled look.
“Ms. Reed. Do you have an appointment?”
“No.” Lunaria kept walking. “But I promise, he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
She pushed open the office door without knocking.
Hux looked up from a desk covered in paperwork. For a fraction of a second, emotion flickered across his face—surprise, pleasure, heat—before the politician’s mask slammed back into place.
“Ms. Reed.” His voice was perfectly controlled. “I don’t believe you have an appointment.”
“I don’t believe I need one.” She shut the door behind her. “Not for this.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying her.
But his gaze didn’t hold judgment. It held something different entirely. Awareness that made her skin prickle.
“You got my note,” she said.
“I did.” A beat. “The part about the shoulders was particularly businesslike.”
He gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Sit. Tell me what you found.”
Lunaria dropped into the chair, pulling the journal from her bag. She set it on his desk, open to the first page she’d decoded.
“Deia Tullio. The witch who maintained the gardens before me. Everyone says the official story.” She tapped the journal. “This says otherwise.”
Hux’s jaw tightened. He reached for the journal, then paused. “May I?”
“Go ahead. It’s in celestial cipher, though. I can translate if you need?—”
“Yes, I need you to tell me what it says.”
She did. Everything she’d decoded—the Convergence warnings, the mentions of Cornelius, the void roses, the references to stolen potential and cursed families. She watched his face as she spoke, watched the way his features shifted from polite attention to darkness. Personal stakes.
“The Holt family,” he said when she finished. “The journal specifically mentions my family.”
“Multiple times. Details about a sacrifice. A binding that required an anchor.” She leaned forward. “Hux, I saw something in your star chart. A concealment on your fate line—darkness sitting directly on your potential, blocking it. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
