And then she saw him.
Hux. Clear as glass in the heart of the flame. His face, his eyes, the particular way he looked at her like she was a treasure and impossible and his. The image was sharper than she’d expected, more detailed—every line, every angle, every shadow of the man she’d been sharing her bed with for three days.
But it wasn’t quite right.
There was something around him—a darkness. The same eclipse she’d seen when she read his star chart, the thing that had been eating his fate for forty years.
Except now... there were cracks in it.
Fissures of gold light bleeding through the darkness, spreading like fractures in ice. The eclipse was breaking apart, piece by piece, letting light shine through where before there had been only shadow.
“Oh.” Cassia’s voice was barely a whisper. She’d moved closer, looking over Lunaria’s shoulder at the flame. “Oh, Luna.”
“He’s supposed to be a void.” Lunaria couldn’t look away from the candle, from the face she’d memorized with her hands and mouth and body. “The curse—the candle should show nothing. That’s what happened when he lit one three months ago. Just absence, darkness.”
“The curse is breaking.” Avine’s voice was soft, reverent. “You’re breaking it.”
“That’s not—I haven’t—we haven’t claimed?—”
“You chose him.” Junie grabbed her hand, squeezing hard enough to bruise. “And he chose you. You’re doing it, Luna. You’re saving him just by loving him.”
Loving him.
The word landed somewhere deep in her chest. Because she’d been dancing around it for days—the feeling that consumed her every time he looked at her, the terror she felt when he almost died, the gut-level certainty that walking away from him would break everything in her soul.
She loved him.
She loved a man whose fate had been stolen before he was born, whose family had been hollowed out for over a century, whose only crime was being born into the wrong bloodline at the wrong time.
And somehow, impossibly, loving him was setting him free.
“The eclipse is cracking.” Narla had moved to the other side, studying the flame with the intensity of someone reading sacred text. “I can see it—the darkness is fracturing. Every time you choose him, every time he chooses you, you’re weakening the anchor that binds the Hollow King.”
Lunaria stared at the flame—at the face of the man she’d accidentally fallen for, at the cracks spreading through the darkness that had consumed his family for over a century.
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman who’s spent her whole life expecting loss.
But watching his face in the fire, watching the eclipse shatter piece by piece, she thought maybe—just maybe—this time would be different.
They talkedfor hours after that.
Plans. Strategies. The careful logistics of fighting an ancient void entity with nothing but a restored garden, a community of supernaturals, and more determination than common sense.Dahlia and Cal would arrive in two days. The shifter alphas would coordinate their packs. Aero would share everything he knew about void entities from his eight centuries of existence.
And Lunaria would finish what Deia started—would learn to wield the orrery as a weapon, to channel celestial power into something that could burn a Hollow King out of existence.
“You should tell him.” Junie caught her arm as the gathering broke up, the other women filing out into the night with hugs and promises and the bone-deep solidarity of people facing battle. “About what you saw in the candle. About the curse breaking.”
“I know.”
“And the other thing.” Junie’s hand tightened. “The thing you still haven’t said out loud.”
“Junie—”
“You love him, Luna. It’s written all over your face. It’s in the way you touched that candle like it was sacred. It’s in the way you say his name.” Her cousin caught her in a hug—fierce, tight, the kind of embrace that said everything words couldn’t. “Tell him. Before the Convergence. Before the fight. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”
Too late.
Lunaria had watchedtoo latearrive for everyone she cared about. Watched death approach in star charts and been powerless to stop it.
