On the third night, Hux was strong enough to walk without trembling.
“Come with me,” Lunaria said after dinner, tugging him up from the couch by both hands. “There’s something I need to show you.”
She didn’t let go when he stood. Instead, she laced her fingers through his—a habit she’d started in the past few days, casually claiming his hand whenever they were within reach of each other.
The path from her cottage to the gardens was short—barely three minutes through a gate that the plants had started to grow around, as if they were trying to claim her property for their own. The night air was cool and salt-tinged, the sound of the ocean a distant murmur beneath the rustle of leaves. They walked close, shoulder to shoulder, hip brushing hip.
The gardens had changed since the attack. Hux could see it even in the darkness—more flowers blooming, more pathways cleared, the whole complex humming with a vitality that hadn’t been there before.
“The energy we channeled kickstarted everything,” Lunaria explained as they walked, her thumb brushing slow circles onthe back of his hand. “All that celestial power flooding through the gardens—it was like giving them a massive dose of magical fertilizer. I’ve been working on restoring them for weeks, but after the attack...” She gestured at a bed of flowers that seemed to glow faintly in the moonlight. “They woke up on their own.”
The Celestial Pavilion loomed ahead, its cracked glass dome catching starlight. Inside, Hux could see movement—slow, deliberate, beautiful.
“The orrery,” he breathed.
It was alive.
Hux had heard Lunaria describe the mechanism. Seeing it—flower-planets tracing real orbital paths, the sun-bloom at its heart radiating warmth he could feel from across the room—was something else entirely. He understood, suddenly, why she spoke about Deia with reverence.
“Deia designed it,” Lunaria said, her voice hushed with what seemed like reverence. “Sixty years ago, she built this as an early warning system. Each flower corresponds to a celestial body. Their positions track actual stellar movements.” She pointed to a cluster of blooms on the far side of the mechanism. “See those? The way they’re drawing closer?”
Hux studied the flowers. They were moving—almost imperceptibly, but definitely moving—toward a central point where several orbital vines intersected.
“The Convergence,” he said.
“The Convergence.” Lunaria’s jaw tightened. “Nine days now. When those flowers align completely, the barrier between realms will thin enough for the Hollow King to cross over fully.”
Just over a week. Not nearly enough time to figure out how to stop an entity that had been feeding on his family for generations.
“What happens if it crosses?”
“Then it stops being satisfied with scraps.” She turned to face him, her expression grim. “Your family has been an appetizer, Hux. A steady trickle of stolen potential to keep it sustained while it waited for the next Convergence. But Haven Shores now?” She shook her head. “Six mated pairs. Unprecedented bond density. More potential in one community than most places see in a century. When that thing fully crosses over...”
“It feeds.”
“Itfeasts. Every fated bond. Every possible future. Every child who might have been born, every partnership that might have formed.” Her hands clenched at her sides. “It will consume everything. And then it will move on to the next community, and the next, and it will never stop because that’s what it is. That’s all it knows how to do.”
The orrery hummed around them, flowers following their inevitable paths toward alignment. Hux watched the Convergence point growing clearer with each passing moment and felt cold dread settle in his gut.
“How do we stop it?”
“I don’t know.” Lunaria moved to a workbench along the pavilion’s wall, where Deia’s journals were spread in organized chaos. “But she knew. Deia figured it out—or she was close to figuring it out—sixty years ago. That’s why they killed her. That’s why Cornelius used void poison instead of something simpler. He couldn’t risk her telling anyone what she’d discovered.”
“The orrery is a weapon.”
“It’s a focus.” She picked up one of the journals, flipping to a page covered in celestial cipher. “A way to channel and direct celestial energy on a massive scale. The gardens were designedto detect threats, yes, but they were also designed to fight them. Deia was building something—a way to burn the Hollow King out of existence before it could cross over.”
“Can you finish what she started?”
Lunaria looked up at him. Her eyes were tired, her shoulders tight with tension, but beneath the exhaustion, something burned. Determination. Hope. The stubborn refusal to accept the inevitable that had defined her since the moment she walked into his life.
“I will try,” she said. “There’s not much time, but it’s not nothing, either.”
TWENTY-SIX
HUX
They worked until midnight.
