Garnet ❲2025-2027❳

“What do I do?” she asked.

“It mirrors,” the Collector corrected. “Garnet is the stone of blood and fire. It doesn’t create—it amplifies what already burns inside you. Your grief for your mother. Your rage at the mine’s death. Your love for your father. It will take those and turn them into… consequences.”

Lina should have been terrified. Instead, she touched the stone again. garnet

It was called the Heartfire—a rough, fist-sized crystal the color of dried blood steeped in honey, pulled from the scree of an abandoned mine in the Carpathians. A geologist would call it almandine, a common species of garnet. A poet would call it a frozen ember. But Lina, the girl who found it, simply called it a lucky break.

Lina shook her head.

The world did not remember the name of the girl who found the garnet. They remembered only the stone.

“You’ve woken it,” the Collector said, not unkindly. “The Heartfire hasn’t spoken in three hundred years. The last person who held it became a queen. The one before that, a monster. It doesn’t care which.” “What do I do

She placed the garnet on the rock between them and did not pick it up again.