Prologue
The growl of the bulldozer was a promise of death.
Rowan Finch stood with her arms locked, her body forming a flimsy, human barricade in front of the garden’s wrought-iron gate.
The sun, a hazy gold coin, was just clearing the Brooklyn rooftops, but the air already felt charged, thick with the scent of diesel fumes and crushed petunias.
Behind her lay her life’s work: a riot of sunflowers, kale, and wildflowers—a defiant shout of life in a world of concrete. Before her stood the end of it all.
“This is private property!” Rowan yelled, her voice trembling but fierce. “You have no right!”
A woman in a flawlessly tailored navy suit stepped forward, a tablet held in her hand like a stone commandment.
Her smile was a blood-red slash of lipstick that didn’t reach her cold, calculating eyes. “Ms. Finch, I am Morwen, Executive VP of Vex Development. This property was legally acquired as of 6 a.m. this morning. We have every right. Please step aside.”
“The community board never approved this sale!” Rowan countered, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“A technicality. Now, you can move, or my security can move you. The choice is yours.”
Morwen gestured dismissively, and two burly men in black polos stepped forward.
It was then that Rowan noticed him.
Standing slightly behind Morwen, half-shrouded in the morning shadow, was a man who did not belong.
He was tall and lean, with a face of sharp, aristocratic angles and hair the color of spun silver.
He wore a simple grey Henley that did nothing to hide the coiled tension in his frame.
But it was his eyes—the grey of a coming storm—that held her captive.
They weren’t cold and corporate like Morwen’s; they were ancient, burdened, and filled with a regret so profound it felt like a physical blow.
He looked at her garden not with a developer’s greed, but with the desperate longing of a man dying of thirst.
The security guards grabbed her arms.
Rowan struggled, digging her heels into the dirt. “You can’t do this! This is a home! It’s the heart of this neighborhood!”
The silver-haired man—Kael—winced, a flicker of pain crossing his features.
This was the cost.
He could feel the raw, wild magic of the Heartseed thrumming just beyond the fence, a siren song of salvation for his dying realm.
And this fierce, stubborn human was its guardian. Morwen, his Unseelie rival, had forced his hand, accelerating the timeline.
Now, he had to stand by and watch her be crushed to secure his prize. It was a necessary sacrifice. He repeated the words in his mind, but they tasted like ash.
“I won’t let you!” Rowan screamed, planting her feet.
“Kael, handle this,” Morwen purred, her patience gone. “Gently.”
Kael stepped forward, his movements fluid and predatory.
He looked directly into Rowan’s eyes, a silent apology warring with his cold resolve. “Please,” he said, his voice a low, resonant baritone that vibrated through her. “Don’t fight them.”
He reached out and closed his hand gently over her forearm to pull her away.
The second his skin touched hers, the world ignited.
A violent, silent explosion of emerald light erupted from the ground beneath them. The air cracked with the scent of ozone and blooming night phlox.
Thorny, iridescent vines, thick as a man’s arm, burst from the soil, shattering the pavement.
They coiled around the bulldozer’s treads, crushing the steel like paper.
They wrapped around the security guards’ ankles, flinging them back with contemptuous ease.
The wrought-iron fence glowed with a furious green energy, warping and twisting into a barrier of living thorns.
Rowan gasped, stumbling back, a strange, exhilarating power coursing through her veins.
She felt the garden respond to her panic, her rage, her will—an ancient, untamed part of her she never knew existed, roaring to life.
The knowing her grandmother had spoken of was no longer a whisper; it was a symphony.
Morwen stared, her corporate mask shattered, replaced by a look of pure, venomous fury.
The glamour flickered in her eyes, revealing the cold, dark magic of the Unseelie Court.
The game was up.
This was no longer a real estate transaction.
Kael stood frozen, his face a mask of utter shock. He wasn’t just looking at a human botanist anymore.
The raw, Seelie power pouring from her, mingling with the garden’s Heartseed, was a force he hadn’t felt in centuries.
The Seers had told him of the prize.
They had never told him the guardian was the prize.
He saw Morwen’s hand begin to twist, black thorns of shadow coiling around her fingers.
His mission had just gone from a simple, soul-crushing theft to an impossible rescue.
He could no longer take the Heartseed from her; she was the Heartseed.
And Morwen would kill her to possess it.
Duty, love, and a desperate, unforeseen hope warred within him. He made a choice.
“Rowan!” he yelled, his voice cutting through the hum of raw magic. He lunged forward, placing himself between her and Morwen’s gathering spell.
The air crackled around them.
“My name is Kaelen of the Silverwood Court,” he said, his storm-grey eyes locked on hers, blazing with a new, urgent purpose.
“Everything you know is a lie. That woman is here to kill you and drain the life from this world, and I was sent to steal this garden’s heart. But you… you changed everything.”
He extended a hand, his palm glowing with a soft, silver light.
“I can’t let her have you. And I won’t let them destroy this place, but there’s so much you don’t know…”
Two Weeks Earlier
Miles and worlds away, the air in a Brooklyn alleyway ripped open.
It wasn’t a sound so much as a feeling—a sudden, violent pressure change, the taste of ozone and distant rain on the tongue.
The tear in reality shimmered like heat haze over asphalt, a wound in the fabric of the world. From it stepped a man who did not belong.
He was tall and lean, with a face of sharp, aristocratic angles that seemed carved from alabaster.
His hair was the colour of spun silver, catching the dim alley light in a way that was unnatural.
He wore clothes that tried desperately to be mundane—dark jeans, a fitted grey Henley, scuffed leather boots—but the glamour woven into them flickered like a dying lightbulb.
For a split second, the Henley was a silver-embroidered tunic of iridescent silk, the boots were soft doeskin, and a circlet of woven moonlight rested on his brow.
Then, the illusion settled, and he was just another handsome, brooding man in a filthy alley.
Kaelen of the Silverwood Court staggered, one hand bracing against the grimy brick wall.
The transit had drained him.
His world was fading, its magic growing thin and brittle like old parchment, and each tear between realms cost more than the last.
He took a deep breath, and the stench of rotting garbage, urine, and despair filled his lungs.
This mortal realm was a cacophony of decay, a constant, grinding assault on his Fae senses. The air was thick with pollutants, the noise of sirens and roaring engines a physical pain.
He was here for one reason. A final, desperate gambit to save his home.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the oppressive grime of the alley, and reached out with his senses.
He pushed past the static of human misery, the frantic buzz of their technology, the reek of their consumption.
He was searching for a different frequency, a different kind of power. He was hunting for a song.
For weeks, the Seers of his court had scried for it, a faint and distant pulse of life magic so potent it was an anomaly.
A wellspring of pure, untamed Seelie energy blooming in a world that should have been barren of such things.
A Heartseed.
An echo of the Old Magic, the very thing his dying world desperately needed.
At first, there was nothing.
Only the city’s harsh, discordant symphony. Despair, a cold and familiar companion, began to coil in his gut.
Had they been wrong? Had he torn the last dregs of his court’s power to chase a ghost?
And then he felt it.
It was faint, almost lost beneath the urban roar, but it was undeniably there.
A slow, deep, resonant thrum. It wasn’t the manicured and mannered magic of a Seelie court; this was wilder, greener, more ferocious.
It was the song of roots shattering stone, of ivy reclaiming brick, of a thousand blossoms opening defiantly to a polluted sky.
It was a symphony of chlorophyll and sunlight and water, a defiant shout of life in a world of steel and glass.
The power of it was intoxicating.
It was a drink of cool, clear water to a man dying of thirst. It washed over him, momentarily soothing the chronic ache of his own realm’s decay.
Hope, a feeling so foreign it was almost painful, surged through him.
Kaelen opened his eyes.
They were the grey of a coming storm, and in their depths, a pinpoint of silver light now glowed with purpose.
The song was a beacon, and he was a ship lost at sea. He could feel its direction. East.
Not far.
He pushed off the wall, his movements economical and predatory.
The glamour settled around him more securely, a cloak of anonymity. He was Kael now.
Just Kael.
A man with a purpose in a city of millions. No one would see the Prince of a dying court, the desperate thief in the dark.
They would only see what he wanted them to.
He stepped out of the alley and onto the cracked sidewalk, the relentless river of humanity parting around him.
The pulse of the garden grew stronger with every step he took, pulling him forward like a magnetic current.
It called to the Seelie magic in his blood, a siren song of salvation.
He rounded a corner, and the feeling intensified exponentially. The air here smelled different.
Beneath the exhaust fumes, there was the rich, living scent of damp soil and blooming night phlox.
The raw, untamed power was a physical presence, a warm wave washing over the sidewalk. It originated from behind a high, wrought-iron fence overrun with climbing roses and morning glories.
He stopped.
Through the bars, he saw it.
An impossible oasis of green life blazing under the sodium streetlights. It was more vibrant, more potent, than he could have ever imagined.
The very air inside hummed with a power that made the hair on his arms stand on end. This was the place.
This was the Heartseed’s cradle.
And in the center of it all, a lone figure moved in the deepening twilight, a watering can in her hand.
A woman. Her back was to him, but he could see the wild cascade of her dark curls and the determined set of her shoulders.
As she tilted the can to water a bed of thirsty-looking herbs, a pulse of energy, warm and bright and fiercely protective, emanated not just from the garden, but from her.
Kaelen’s breath caught in his chest. The Seers had told him of the Heartseed.
They had not told him it had a guardian. A tender. One whose own life force was so deeply, inextricably woven into the magic he had come to claim.
A new, cold realization dawned. This would not be a simple retrieval.
To take the Heartseed, he would have to go through her.
He watched her trace the line of a leaf with her finger, a gesture of such intimate communion it made his heart ache with a strange, unwelcome pang.
She was a part of this place.
And this place was the only thing that could save his home.
His jaw tightened.
The grim determination returned, colder and harder than before. He would do what he must.
For his people. For his world.
He would learn her weaknesses, dismantle her defenses, and if necessary, he would break her heart to get what he came for.
The Prince of the Silverwood Court gripped the cold iron of the fence, his knuckles white. The mission was clear.
He had found it.
And now, he would take it.