But Hux’s death wasn’t written in the stars. Neither was hers.
After years of predetermined endings, the future was open, uncertain, terrifying—and completely up to them.
“I’ll tell him,” she promised. “When the time is right.”
“The time is never right. You just have to say it.” Junie stepped back, her expression fierce. “That’s not just how you break curses, Luna. That’s how you live.”
The walkback to the cottage felt different than the walk to the Siren’s Rest.
The void beside her was still there—that awareness of Hux’s absence, the phantom warmth of his hand in hers. But now it didn’t feel quite so vacant. Now it felt like potential. Like a promise waiting to be fulfilled.
The cottage lights were on when she turned the corner—warm and golden, spilling through the windows like a welcome. She climbed the porch steps, pushed open the door, and found him exactly where she’d left him—in her bed, propped against the pillows, reading one of Deia’s journals with the focused intensity he brought to everything.
He looked up when she entered. The smile that crossed his face was slow, intimate, the kind of smile that belonged to shared secrets and tangled sheets.
“How was Girls’ Night?”
“Productive.” She crossed to the bed, shrugging off her bag. “They’re all in. Junie’s been brewing chaos potions. Cassia’s planning to weaponize the weather. Avine’s coordinating the defense. Dahlia and Cal are flying back from Paris.”
“That’s...” He set down the journal, reaching for her. “That’s a lot of firepower.”
“We’re going to need it.” She let him pull her onto the mattress, let herself settle against his warmth. His arm came around her automatically, his chin resting on top of her head. “There’s more.”
“Hmm?”
“Narla brought one of her candles. The mate-revealing ones.” She felt him go still beneath her. “She asked what I saw when I lit it.”
Silence. Then, carefully: “What did you see?”
“You.” She tilted her head back to look at him—at the amber eyes that had learned every expression on her face, at the mouth that had mapped her body with devastating precision. “Clear as day. Your face in the flame.”
Emotion flickered across his expression—surprise, hope, terror, all tangled up in the same heartbeat.
“But I’m—the curse?—”
“Is breaking.” She reached up, cupped his jaw in her palm. “I saw it, Hux. The eclipse on your fate—it’s cracking. Light bleeding through the darkness. Every time we choose each other, it fractures a little more.”
His breath caught. His hand came up to cover hers, pressing her palm flat against his cheek.
“Luna—”
“Your father was right.” She let herself smile—not the deflecting grin she used as armor, but softness. Realer. “That’s how we break it. That’s how we save you.”
He kissed her then—not desperate, not hungry, but entirely different. Reverent. Tender. The kind of kiss that said things neither of them was quite ready to speak.
When they broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers, his breath warm on her lips, she felt something settle into place. Not the mate bond—not yet, maybe not ever, depending on what the curse’s breaking actually meant. But something. A certainty. A choice made and unmade and made again with every heartbeat.
“We’re going to get through this,” she whispered. “All of it. The Convergence. The Hollow King. Whatever comes next.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can’t see the ending.” She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “And for the first time in my life, that feels like hope instead of terror.”
His arms tightened around her. Outside, the stars wheeled through the night sky—the same stars she’d spent years reading, the same stars that had shown her every death she’d ever dreaded.
Tonight, they showed her nothing.
And that, somehow, was the greatest gift of all.
