“It knows you,” Mingxi murmured.
Poppy swallowed. “Mingxi… how do we guarantee Lysandra will come? What if the entity doesn’t allow her? What if—”
“That,” he said softly, “is the question the elders feared.”
She turned to him, dread curling cold in her belly. “So we can’t guarantee it?”
“No,” he said honestly. “Not yet.”
The moonwell shimmered, its surface reflecting the two of them standing at its edge, except in the reflection, Poppy glowed faintly, soft lunar light trailing from her shoulders like a veil.
A tear burned behind her eyes.
She whispered, “I need her to come.”
“You need her tethered,” Mingxi corrected gently. “The entity must be drawn to you—not to replace you, but to be pulled into the Grimoire.”
She pressed a fist against her sternum. “Then how do I strengthen my resonance without strengthening its pull on me?”
Mingxi hesitated, and that scared her.
“What?” she asked. “Tell me.”
He gestured toward the water. “There is one way,” he said quietly. “The moonwell amplifies moonlight. All of it. Bloodline. Mark. Magic. If you were to… bathe in its waters under actual moonlight…”
Her breath caught. “Would it make me stronger?”
“It would make you radiant,” he said. “A conduit of lunar power. Your resonance would call to the entity across realms. It would feel you.” His voice lowered. “But it would also struggle to seize you.”
“Because the moonwell weakens it.”
“Yes.”
Poppy stared at the pool. “And it strengthens me.”
“Yes.”
She forced herself to ask the real question: “Would bathing in it give me more control?”
He inhaled. “Yes. More than you have ever had.”
“And would it make the reversal safer?”
He looked at her then—truly looked—and for a heartbeat his expression cracked with reverence and fear and pride all at once.
“It would make you the one thing the entity fears most,” Mingxi whispered. “Untouchable.”
Poppy’s pulse thundered.
“But,” he added, “moonlight purification is intense. It will draw the entity’s gaze. It will feel you like a beacon.”
Poppy squared her shoulders and then said, “That’s what we want, right? We want it to notice. We want it to come. And if I can control my magic better after… then I stand a better chance of keeping it out.”
Mingxi exhaled, slow and ragged. “You shine so fiercely when you choose courage,” he murmured. “It frightens me.”
She reached for his hand. “It frightens me too,” she said. “But fear isn’t a reason to stop. Not now.”
They stood side by side, looking down at the glowing water of the moonwell. The next day would be the ritual reversal, but until then, she would bathe under moonlight. From the moment she stepped into the water, her power would not be the same. Neither would the entity’s tether.
