LUNARIA
Marguerite crumbled.
Not dramatically—no sobbing or falling to her knees. But something fundamental shifted in her posture, some wall that had been holding her upright giving way at last. She looked every one of her seventy-eight years.
“I fought hiring you,” she said quietly. “When the council discussed restoring the gardens. I knew what a celestial witch might uncover. I tried to convince them to wait another decade, to let someone else deal with the problem.”
“I noticed.” Lunaria remembered the subtle resistance, the bureaucratic delays, the way Marguerite had watched her with barely concealed suspicion from her first day in Haven Shores.
“I was terrified. Not of you—of what would happen when the truth came out. When the Holts learned what Cornelius had done to them. When the community learned how long I’d kept silent.” Marguerite’s laugh was bitter, broken. “I told myself I was protecting everyone. But really, I was just protecting myself.”
“And now?”
The elder met her gaze. Something had changed in those cold eyes—not warmth, exactly, but the resignation of someone who’d stopped running at last.
“Now, I’ll help you,” she said. “Whatever you need. Whatever I know. Years of watching and calculating and trying to predict what the Hollow King would do—I’ll give you all of it.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. Lunaria couldn’t offer that—didn’t have the right to offer it, not on behalf of the Holts who’d suffered for generations. But it was useful.
And when the Convergence came, they’d need every advantage they could get.
“Tell me about the binding,” she said. “The exact terms. How it was cast, what anchors it, where it’s weakest.”
Marguerite nodded and began to talk.
The sun was settingby the time the elder finished.
Lunaria’s head was spinning with information—details about the original binding that hadn’t been in any of Deia’s journals. Cornelius had been thorough in his treachery, leaving no written records that could incriminate him. But Marguerite had spent a lifetime assembling what he’d done, driven by guilt and fear and the desperate need to understand exactly how badly her family had betrayed Haven Shores.
The binding was anchored to blood. Holt blood, specifically—the curse attached itself to the bloodline through Cornelius’s wife, spreading down through generations like a hereditary disease. Every Holt born since the original casting had been born already claimed by the Hollow King.
But blood anchors worked both ways.
Isandro’s words. The key to breaking the curse that Hux’s father had tried so hard to communicate through magical restraints.
That silencing hadn’t been Cornelius’s work alone, Marguerite explained. The binding gave the Hollow King a conduit—a channel through the bloodline anchor that let it impose compulsions on anyone who threatened its arrangement. Not just Holts. Anyone who got too close to the truth. Georgia Gentry had felt that compulsion for sixty years. Isandro’s restraints had carried it too, woven into the magic that sealed his voice. The Hollow King had been protecting itself, working through the anchor long after Cornelius died.
“That explains the silencing,” Lunaria said.
“It explains a great deal,” Marguerite agreed quietly.
“The binding is already weakening,” Marguerite continued. “I’ve felt it—small fractures appearing over the past few weeks. Someone must be choosing love despite the curse.”
Lunaria thought of candle flames and cracking eclipses. Of a man who’d been told his whole life that he was broken, finding something worth staying for anyway.
“Someone is,” she said quietly.
Marguerite didn’t ask who. Perhaps she’d already guessed.
“When the Convergence hits,” the elder said, “the Hollow King will try to cross fully into our realm. That’s when it will be most vulnerable—caught between dimensions, unable to retreat but not yet fully manifested. If you can fire the orrery at that exact moment...”
“We burn it out of existence.”
“Theoretically.” Marguerite’s expression was grim. “Deia never got the chance to test her weapon. You’ll be firing blind.”
“Not entirely.” Lunaria held up her hand, letting the ring catch the dying light. “I have her focus. I have her journals. AndI have something she didn’t—the mated pairs anchoring Haven Shores with enough bond-energy to power a small sun.”
“The mating surge.” Understanding dawned in Marguerite’s eyes. “You’re going to channel their bonds through the orrery.”
