She didn’t know. But she was going to find out.
The void rose sat in its velvet nest, petals still black as midnight. Lunaria touched it gently, feeling the wrongness that radiated from its preserved form. Sixty years old and still blooming dark. Still warning about an entity that wanted to cross between realms.
The Convergence. It’s coming. Whatever Cornelius bound is getting ready to break free.
And Hux—beautiful, guarded,achingHux—was standing directly in its path.
She thought about that night. The diner. The booth. The way he’d looked at her across the table, all that careful control cracking just enough to let her see the hunger underneath. The kiss she’d pressed to his cheek. The way he’d stood frozen on her porch, his face soft with hope she’d been afraid to name.
He was going to hate what she had to tell him. His family’s estate, marked on a murder chart. His father, silenced for knowing too much. Everything he’d believed about his bloodline, his history, his place in Haven Shores—all of it built on lies and sacrifice and a century of buried truth.
But he deserved to know. He’d been searching for answers his whole life, wondering why he felt incomplete, why the candleshowed nothing, why love seemed to exist for everyone except him.
Now she had those answers. And tonight, she was going to give them to him.
Even if it breaks him. Even if it breaks us.
And now, here she was, falling for a man whose entire life had been shaped by a curse she might not be able to break. A man whose death she still couldn’t see in the stars, whose future was as blank as her own.
Dangerous.But the word had lost its power.
She was already in too deep. Had been since the moment he’d walked into her cottage’s light and then later asked if she’d eaten, like her well-being mattered more than the ancient evil stalking his bloodline.
All she could do was see it through.
SEVENTEEN
LUNARIA
The evening came too quickly.
Lunaria spent the day in the gardens, channeling magic through Deia’s ring, feeling the difference it made. The orrery’s dead mechanisms twitched more strongly now, responding to her amplified power. A few of the flower-planets had actually bloomed—pale petals unfurling to track the sun’s position.
It’s waking up. The whole system is coming back online.
By the time she cleaned up and headed for Town Hall, the sun was setting in streaks of orange and pink. She found Hux in the archives as usual, surrounded by boxes of historical records, his sleeves rolled up, and his tie loosened.
He looked up when she descended the stairs. That flicker of warmth—the one he probably thought he was hiding—crossed his face before he schooled his features into neutrality.
“You’re early.”
“I have news.” She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, the box from Georgia tucked under her arm. “Bad news. The kind that’s going to change everything.”
His gaze dropped to the box. Sharpened.
“What is that?”
“Evidence.” She crossed to the table and set the box down between them. “I need you to see this. And I need you to hear me out before you react.”
His jaw tightened. She watched the beast surface at the edges of his eyes—amber bleeding into the warm brown, responding to the tension in her voice.
“Show me.”
She opened the box. Lifted out the locket. Explained what the death chart showed, what the constellation alignment meant, where the killer had come from at the moment of Deia’s murder.
Hux’s face went pale. Then gray. Then ash—a blankness that scared her more than rage would have.
“The Holt estate.” His voice was flat, toneless. “You’re saying Deia’s murderer came from my family’s home.”
