TWENTY-THREE LUNARIA
TWENTY-THREE
LUNARIA
The community responded.
Theo’s wolves arrived first—a blur of gray fur and howling alarm, the pack alpha already shifting as he ran. “What happened? Lunaria, what—”
“Void-touch.” She was crying, she realized. When had she started crying? “Something attacked us—Cornelius’s fragment—it hit him, and now he’s—”
More arrivals. Junie, running with her bag of potions, chaos magic crackling around her fingertips. Avine close behind, her face pale with fear. Narla and Wyatt, the panther already shifted, the witch’s candles blazing with truth-light.
And then—
A dragon descended from the sky.
Aero landed in the garden’s clearing with a crash that shook the earth, his storm-dragon form crackling with lightning. He shifted mid-stride, ancient power still rippling around him as he knelt beside Hux’s failing body.
“The void is consuming him.” His voice was grim, clinical, the assessment of someone who had seen this before. “The fragment’s attack carried a piece of the Hollow King’s essence. It’s eating his potential—what little the curse left him.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I can try. But—” Aero hesitated. “Void consumption is notoriously resistant to healing. The only thing that truly burns it out is pure celestial energy. Starlight, channeled directly into the site of infection.”
“Then do it.”
“I’m not a celestial witch, Lunaria.” His ancient eyes met hers. “You are.”
The world stopped.
“You want me to—”
“Channel starlight into him. Burn the void out before it reaches his heart.” Aero’s hand gripped her shoulder. “But understand what you’re risking. Too little power, and the void survives. Too much, and you burn him out with it.”
Lunaria looked at Hux. At the shadow-veins creeping toward his sternum, the darkness eating him alive, the man she’d spent one month falling for and years running from.
She didn’t hesitate.
She placed her hands over his heart.
The shadow-veins were cold beneath her palms—cold like the void between stars, cold like the absence of everything that should exist. His heartbeat was a whisper, barely there, fading with every passing second.
“I need more power.” She looked at Aero.
He was staring at the orrery. “It’s starting to wake. If you can channel through it—”
“I don’t know—” She stopped when she realized it didn’t matter if she could or couldn’t. She had to try.
She reached for the stars.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. She literally reached up through the cracked glass dome of the Celestial Pavilion and pulled, drawing starlight down through the atmosphere, through the clouds, through every barrier between Haven Shores and the eternal night beyond.
Light poured into her.
More than she’d ever channeled. More than she’d thought possible.
The power felt like fire and ice and electricity all at once, racing through her veins, burning away everything that wasn’t pure celestial energy.
Deia’s ring blazed on her finger, amplifying her power, focusing it into a weapon that could burn void-touched darkness out of existence.
And the orrery—
The orrery came alive.
After sixty years of silence, the mechanism at the heart of the Celestial Botanical Gardens began to move.
Flower-planets orbited their central sun, petals tracking positions that hadn’t been tracked since Deia’s murder.
The whole complex hummed with power, ancient instruments waking to their purpose.
Lunaria became a conduit.
Starlight flowed through her and into Hux—burning, brilliant, devastating. She felt the void recoil from the assault, felt the shadow-veins hiss and shrink beneath her palms. The darkness was fighting back, digging deeper, trying to reach his heart before she could burn it out.
She fought harder.
His smile when he forgets to be the mayor. His laugh when I catch him off guard. The way he held me two nights ago, like I was something precious, like I was worth staying for.
I’ve been running. Holding everyone at a distance. Never letting anyone close enough to hurt.
That all changes now.
She poured everything she had into him. Every scrap of power, every ounce of will, every bit of whatever this feeling was that had taken root inside her. The starlight blazed brighter, brighter, until she couldn’t tell where her magic ended and his body began.
The void screamed.
A sound that existed below hearing, a frequency that shook reality itself. The shadow-veins writhed, contracted, fought the annihilating light—
And shattered.
Lunaria collapsed.
Her magic was gone—drained, depleted, scraped clean by the effort of channeling enough starlight to burn the void out of a dying man. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could barely breathe.
But she could feel his heartbeat.
Strong. Steady. Present.
“Luna...”
His voice. Weak, but his. She forced her eyes open and found him looking at her, his gaze clear, the shadow-veins faded to nothing more than faint traces on his skin.
“You idiot.” She crawled to him, hands framing his face, needing to touch him—to feel that he was real, that he was alive, that she hadn’t lost him. “You absolute idiot. Jumping in front of void creatures. What were you thinking?”
“That I wasn’t going to watch it hurt you.” His hand came up to cover hers, pressing her palm flat against his cheek. His skin was warm again. Alive. “Worth it.”
“Nothing is worth losing you.” She hadn’t meant to say it—hadn’t meant to strip herself bare in front of everyone. “Nothing, Hux. Do you understand me? Nothing.”
Around them, the community stood witness. Theo and the wolves, Junie and the witches, Aero with his ancient, knowing eyes. They watched the celestial witch sob over the mayor’s body, watched her admit in front of everyone what she’d been too afraid to say in private.
Hux’s fingers threaded through hers, tugging her closer until her forehead rested against his.
“I’m here.” His breath was warm on her lips, his free hand finding the curve of her waist. “I’m staying right here.”
She laughed—a wet, broken sound. “You’d better not. I just drained my entire magical reserve saving your life. I’m going to need at least a week to recover.”
“I can work with a week.”
“And then you’re going to explain to me how you knew I was in danger. No bond, remember? So how—”
“I felt it.” He pulled her down. “I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But I was in a meeting about zoning regulations, and I knew—knew—something was wrong. That you needed me. That I had to get here or—”
His voice broke.
“Or I was going to lose you before I ever really had you.”
Lunaria kissed him. Right there, in the middle of the glowing gardens, surrounded by pack alphas and dragon elders and every witness who would spread this story across Haven Shores by morning.
She didn’t care.
As the first light of dawn crept over the garden walls, Lunaria watched as the healers and witches from town fussed over Hux. He protested about the special attention. A little.
Junie sat beside her on the bench. Her cousin looked exhausted, streaked with potion stains, her chaos magic still crackling faintly around her fingertips. But her eyes were warm as she stared over the scene.
“So.” Junie bumped her shoulder. “You saved his life. In front of everyone. While crying and confessing your feelings.”
“I did not confess anything.”
“‘Nothing is worth losing you.’ Direct quote. Multiple witnesses. Avine cried. Narla is already planning the bonding ceremony. Theo actually smiled.” Junie grinned. “Face it, cousin. You’ve got it bad for Mayor Clipboard.”
“I don’t—” Lunaria started to deflect. To joke. To do all the things she’d spent years perfecting.
But when she looked at Hux, the denial died in her throat.
“I don’t know what I feel,” she admitted. “It’s... complicated.”
“Sounds like you’re scared.”
“Terrified.”
“Good.” Junie squeezed her. “That means it matters.”
“He might still die. The Convergence, the Hollow King—we don’t know if we can stop it.”
“Twelve days.” Junie’s voice was quieter now. “Aero gave me the numbers last night. The stellar alignment lands in twelve days. Whatever we’re going to do, we have twelve days to do it.”
Lunaria watched Hux laugh at something Narla said, watched the morning light catch the fading traces of shadow on his chest, watched him look up and find her eyes across the ruined garden.
He smiled. Just for her.
Worth it. He’s worth it.
For the first time in ten years, she didn’t want to run.
She wanted to stay.