“The void is consuming him.” His voice was grim, clinical, the assessment of someone who had seen this before. “The fragment’s attack carried a piece of the Hollow King’s essence. It’s eating his potential—what little the curse left him.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I can try. But—” Aero hesitated. “Void consumption is notoriously resistant to healing. The only thing that truly burns it out is pure celestial energy. Starlight, channeled directly into the site of infection.”
“Then do it.”
“I’m not a celestial witch, Lunaria.” His ancient eyes met hers. “You are.”
The world stopped.
“You want me to?—”
“Channel starlight into him. Burn the void out before it reaches his heart.” Aero’s hand gripped her shoulder. “But understand what you’re risking. Too little power, and the void survives. Too much, and you burn him out with it.”
Lunaria looked at Hux. At the shadow-veins creeping toward his sternum, the darkness eating him alive, the man she’d spent one month falling for and years running from.
She didn’t hesitate.
She placedher hands over his heart.
The shadow-veins were cold beneath her palms—cold like the void between stars, cold like the absence of everything that should exist. His heartbeat was a whisper, barely there, fading with every passing second.
“I need more power.” She looked at Aero.
He was staring at the orrery. “It’s starting to wake. If you can channel through it?—”
“I don’t know—” She stopped when she realized it didn’t matter if she could or couldn’t. She had to try.
She reached for the stars.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. She literally reached up through the cracked glass dome of the Celestial Pavilion and pulled, drawing starlight down through the atmosphere, through the clouds, through every barrier between Haven Shores and the eternal night beyond.
Light poured into her.
More than she’d ever channeled. More than she’d thought possible. The power felt like fire and ice and electricity all at once, racing through her veins, burning away everything that wasn’t pure celestial energy. Deia’s ring blazed on her finger, amplifying her power, focusing it into a weapon that could burn void-touched darkness out of existence.
And the orrery?—
The orrery came alive.
After sixty years of silence, the mechanism at the heart of the Celestial Botanical Gardens began to move. Flower-planets orbited their central sun, petals tracking positions that hadn’t been tracked since Deia’s murder. The whole complex hummed with power, ancient instruments waking to their purpose.
Lunaria became a conduit.
Starlight flowed through her and into Hux—burning, brilliant, devastating. She felt the void recoil from the assault, felt the shadow-veins hiss and shrink beneath her palms. The darkness was fighting back, digging deeper, trying to reach his heart before she could burn it out.
She fought harder.
His smile when he forgets to be the mayor. His laugh when I catch him off guard. The way he held me two nights ago, like I was something precious, like I was worth staying for.
I’ve been running. Holding everyone at a distance. Never letting anyone close enough to hurt.
That all changes now.
She poured everything she had into him. Every scrap of power, every ounce of will, every bit of whatever this feeling was that had taken root inside her. The starlight blazed brighter, brighter, until she couldn’t tell where her magic ended and his body began.
The void screamed.
