He looked up from the paper.
Georgia was crying quietly. This was something older. Tears tracking slowly down her face while she sat upright, hands folded in her lap, chin level. The posture of a woman who had learned to grieve without permission to speak about it. Sixty years of sitting with a truth she could not voice, a box she could not explain, a vote she could not defend.
He thought of every council meeting where Georgia had been present—her careful silence, the way she watched without commenting. He had always read it as reserve.
Not reserve. Restraint. Enforced, decades-long restraint.
“We’ll fix it.” Lunaria’s voice was quiet, certain. “Whatever it takes.”
Georgia reached out and touched Lunaria’s face. One brief gesture—the back of her knuckles against Lunaria’s cheek. Then she took her hand back and stood.
They let themselves out.
The night air was cool after the warmth of the small house. Lunaria walked beside him with the ring still in her closed fist,not yet on her finger. He didn’t push. She’d put it on when she was ready.
“Come on.” She turned toward the gardens. “There’s something I need to show you.”
TWELVE
HUX
The gardens at night were nothing like they were during the day. Moonflowers glowed silver along the pathways, the Warning Bell bower chiming softly as they passed—not alarm, but something almost welcoming—and the whole place breathed with a magic the daylight couldn’t quite contain.
Lunaria led him along paths that had been overgrown with debris two weeks ago and were now clear, well-maintained walkways. The gardens were responding to her magic in ways that shouldn’t have been possible—decades of neglect erased in days, dead plants springing back to life at her touch.
She stopped at a circular bed near the Celestial Pavilion. The flowers here were different from the others—lilies with pale, glowing petals that pulsed gently with inner light. They reacted to her presence, brightening as she knelt beside them.
“Fate Lilies.” She gestured for him to join her. “They respond to destiny-lines, to the paths supernaturals are meant to walk. When I touch them, they show me glimpses of fate.”
Hux knelt across from her, the soft earth cool beneath his knees. The lilies pulsed between them, their glow casting strange shadows across Lunaria’s face.
“I did a quick reading of your chart at Girls’ Night. Just the surface stuff.” She met his gaze. “This will be different. Deeper. I’m going to look at your entire fate line—everything you were meant to have, meant to be, meant to find.”
“And if it confirms what Deia wrote? That an entity has been consuming my potential since before I was born?”
“Then at least we’ll know what we’re fighting.”
He nodded. She closed her eyes.
What happened next was unlike anything Hux had ever witnessed. Lunaria’s hands moved through the air, tracing patterns that left faint trails of light behind them. Her fingers drew shapes—constellations, he realized. Star patterns appearing and dissolving as she worked, her brow furrowed in concentration.
The Fate Lilies responded, their glow intensifying, pulsing in rhythm with her movements. Light gathered around them both, and Hux felt a stirring beneath his ribs—the beast pressing against the inside of his skin, responding to magic it didn’t understand but recognized as important.
Her face changed as she worked. Concentration gave way to surprise. Surprise to something darker. Her hands slowed, the star patterns becoming more careful, more deliberate.
Finally, she opened her eyes. They were wet.
“There’s an eclipse.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Immense ancient power. It’s sitting directly on your fate line, blocking everything behind it.”
“Blocking what?”
“Everything.” She reached for him, took both his hands in hers. Her grip was tight. Almost desperate. “Hux, I can see the shape of what should be there. The potential that was meant to exist. You were supposed to have a fated mate. You were supposed to feel complete. But something is consuming it. Devouring every drop of potential before it can form. You’re notflawed. You’re not incapable. It isfeedingon what should fill you.”
The words crashed over him.
Not flawed. Not incapable. Not fundamentally defective in some way that everyone else could see but no one would name.
Stolen from.
