16. Lunaria
SIXTEEN
LUNARIA
Georgia was in her garden when Lunaria found her again. Not the wolf pack’s community plots—her own small patch behind her cottage, hands deep in soil the way people got when they needed something to hold onto.
She looked up. Saw Lunaria’s face. Understood immediately.
“You went to the grotto.”
“It confirmed it. Cornelius. The gardens recorded it.” Lunaria stopped at the garden’s edge, the dawn light raw and pale around them. “I need to know one more thing. Does anyone else know the truth? Was anyone else silenced the way you are?”
Georgia went still.
“I need to tell Hux tonight. He deserves the full picture.”
The older woman stood. She looked at Lunaria for a long moment—the kind of look that measured, weighed, and decided. Then she pressed her lips together, clearly reaching for something, pushing against the familiar wall.
What came out was barely a breath. Three syllables, voiceless, the shape of a name her throat would not carry.
Isandro.
Lunaria’s chest tightened.
“His father.”
Georgia nodded once. Then she picked up her trowel and turned back to her garden, the conversation over—everything that could be said was said.
The walk back to her cottage took longer.
Lunaria’s thoughts churned, the implications heavy in her mind. Isandro. Hux’s father. Silenced by the same magic that had bound Georgia, carrying the same truth he couldn’t speak.
He knows, she realized. He’s known for years—maybe decades—that his family was sacrificed. That his son was born into a curse. And he couldn’t say a single word.
The ache of it was staggering. To watch your child grow up feeling incomplete, feeling wrong, feeling like a failure—and to know exactly why, and be magically prevented from explaining.
No wonder Isandro had warned Hux to stay away from the gardens. Not because he wanted to hide the truth. Because he was terrified of what would happen when it finally came out.
When Lunaria reached her cottage, the sun was cresting the horizon. Golden light spilled across the garden paths, illuminating the moonflowers as they closed their petals against the day. The Warning Bells had gone quiet.
She should sleep. Should rest before the evening’s archive session with Hux. Should give her body time to recover from the magical exertion of the Memory Moss and the celestial seal.
Instead, she sat at her desk and opened the locket again.
The death chart gleamed in the morning light. Deia’s final message, encoded in starlight and mathematics. Proof that she’d known what was coming. Proof that she’d prepared for it.
But not enough, Lunaria thought. She wasn’t fast enough, strong enough. Cornelius got to her first.
The ring sat on her desk, humming with contained power. She slid it onto her finger—it fit perfectly, as if Deia had made it specifically for her. The surge of magic was immediate, a rush of celestial energy that made her gasp.
A focusing instrument. She could feel the difference already, her magic sharper and more precise than it had ever been. With this ring and the restored orrery, she could channel enough power to—
To what? Break the binding? Destroy the Hollow King? Free five generations of Holts from a curse that had been eating them since before they were born?
She didn’t know. But she was going to find out.
The void rose sat in its velvet nest, petals still black as midnight. Lunaria touched it gently, feeling the wrongness that radiated from its preserved form. Sixty years old and still blooming dark. Still warning about an entity that wanted to cross between realms.
The Convergence. It’s coming. Whatever Cornelius bound is getting ready to break free.
And Hux—beautiful, guarded, aching Hux—was standing directly in its path.
She thought about that night. The diner.
The booth. The way he’d looked at her across the table, all that careful control cracking just enough to let her see the hunger underneath.
The kiss she’d pressed to his cheek. The way he’d stood frozen on her porch, his face soft with hope she’d been afraid to name.
He was going to hate what she had to tell him. His family’s estate, marked on a murder chart. His father, silenced for knowing too much. Everything he’d believed about his bloodline, his history, his place in Haven Shores—all of it built on lies and sacrifice and a century of buried truth.
But he deserved to know. He’d been searching for answers his whole life, wondering why he felt incomplete, why the candle showed nothing, why love seemed to exist for everyone except him.
Now she had those answers. And tonight, she was going to give them to him.
Even if it breaks him. Even if it breaks us.
And now, here she was, falling for a man whose entire life had been shaped by a curse she might not be able to break. A man whose death she still couldn’t see in the stars, whose future was as blank as her own.
Dangerous. But the word had lost its power.
She was already in too deep. Had been since the moment he’d walked into her cottage’s light and then later asked if she’d eaten, like her well-being mattered more than the ancient evil stalking his bloodline.
All she could do was see it through.