The world, for the first time, felt truly and completely hers.
Rowan sat on the worn wooden bench beside Kael, the cool night air a silken balm against her skin.
A quiet hum resonated just beneath the surface of everything—a thrum of life she’d always felt instinctively but could now perceive with crystalline clarity.
It was the song of the garden, a current flowing from the earth, through the roots and stems, and into her own veins.
The line between where the garden ended and she began had blurred into a warm, luminous horizon.
After their night together, a new intimacy had settled between them, deeper than skin and bone.
It was in the way Kael’s gaze lingered on her, a mixture of awe and a sorrow she was finally beginning to understand.
It was in the way her magic answered his, a silent conversation that flowed as easily as their breath. He had unlocked a part of her she never knew existed, and in doing so, had irrevocably tethered himself to her soul.
“It’s louder now,” she murmured, her head resting on his shoulder. Her fingers traced the strange, swirling pattern—a sigil, he’d called it—that he had idly drawn in the dirt with a stick. “The garden’s energy. It’s like I was listening to it through a thick wall before, and you just… opened a door.”
Kael’s arm tightened around her. “The door was always there, Rowan. You simply needed to be shown where to find the key.”
His voice was a low rumble, but beneath it, she sensed a familiar tension, a coiled spring of anxiety that never fully unwound.
She’d assumed it was about Vex, about his dying “estate.” Now, she believed they could face it together.
Whatever secrets he held, whatever burdens he carried, they were no longer his alone.
A sharp, metallic clang shattered the peace. The latch on the garden’s iron gate slammed shut, and heavy footsteps crunched on the gravel path, too fast, too frantic.
Rowan sat up, pulling away from Kael’s embrace. “Liam? What’s wrong?”
Her best friend stood silhouetted against the amber glow of the streetlights, his chest heaving. His usual easy-going demeanor was gone, replaced by a grim, almost feverish intensity. In his hands, he clutched a large, ancient-looking book, its leather cover cracked and bound with faded brass.
“I know,” Liam said, his voice ragged. He didn’t look at Rowan. His eyes were fixed on Kael, burning with a mix of fury and vindication. “I finally know what’s going on.”
Kael went perfectly still beside her, his body suddenly rigid as stone.
The warmth that had been flowing between them vanished, replaced by an arctic chill. Rowan felt the shift instantly, a magical and emotional severance that made her heart clench.
“Liam, you’re scaring me,” she said, rising to her feet. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not talking to you, Ro.” He took another step forward, placing the heavy book on the small potting table with a heavy thud. Dust motes danced in the air. “I’m talking to him.”
Liam’s finger jabbed towards Kael. “I knew Vex wasn’t the whole story. I started digging into folklore, into old land deeds, local myths about this part of Brooklyn. It led me to a collector, a professor emeritus who specialized in obscure European texts.”
He flipped open the book. The pages were yellowed parchment, covered in an elegant, spidery script and illustrated with intricate drawings of flora, constellations, and crests.
“It’s mostly in a language I can’t read,” Liam continued, his voice gaining strength, “but the illustrations… they tell a story. A story about a place. The Silverwood Court.”
At the name, Kael flinched.
It was a small, almost imperceptible movement, but Rowan saw it. The blood drained from her face.
Liam pointed to a detailed drawing of a family crest.
It was a complex sigil of interwoven silver branches cradling a single, blooming flower. It was the exact same design Kael had been tracing in the dirt just moments before.
“A royal court of a place called Alfheimr,” Liam pressed on, his voice ringing with the finality of a judge’s gavel. “A place whose magic is failing. Its lands are turning to dust, its light fading, because its connection to the source is severed.”
He looked from the book to Kael, his eyes filled with a terrible, dawning comprehension. “An estate that’s dying. Sound familiar?”
Rowan’s breath caught in her throat.
The world tilted, the gentle hum of the garden becoming a discordant shriek in her ears. She turned to Kael, her mind a frantic storm of denial. “Kael? What is he talking about? This is crazy. Tell him he’s crazy.”
But Kael didn’t speak. He couldn’t even look at her.
His gaze was fixed on the open book, his face a mask of pale, cornered anguish. The glamour he wore, the subtle illusion that softened his features and made him look merely handsome instead of ethereally beautiful, began to flicker.
For a split second, the tips of his ears elongated into elegant points, and a faint, silver light shimmered in his eyes before he wrestled the magic back under control.
It was enough. It was more than enough.
“No,” Rowan whispered. The word was a puff of air, devoid of conviction.
The magic she felt, the energy thrumming in her blood, screamed the truth at her. He was not human. This was not a lie.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice trembling.
He finally raised his head, and the pain in his eyes was so profound it was like a physical blow. When he spoke, his voice was hollowed out, stripped of all its careful warmth. “My name is Kaelen. I am… I was a prince of the Silverwood Court.”
The confession hung in the air, monstrous and unbelievable. A Fae prince.
Not a consultant, not a researcher, but a creature from a fairy tale standing in her Brooklyn garden.
The absurdity of it warred with the cold, hard certainty taking root in her soul.
Liam wasn’t finished. “And what is the source of your court’s magic, Prince Kaelen? This book talks about a network of power, of ley lines, all connected to things called Heartseeds. It says a seed was lost long ago, transported to another realm during a great upheaval.”
Every word was a nail being hammered into the coffin of Rowan’s reality. She felt dizzy, sick. She looked at Kaelen, her mind connecting the dots with horrifying speed. His expertise, his strange remedies, the wards, the fight with Morwen… his obsession with the garden.
“The Heartseed,” Rowan said, her voice flat. “That’s what you called the core of the garden’s energy. That’s what Vex is after.” She took a step back, a chasm opening between them. “It’s what you’re after.”
It wasn’t a question.
Guilt and despair warred on his face. “Rowan, I…”
“Was that your mission?” she interrupted, her voice rising, sharp and brittle. “Did you come here to take it?”
He flinched as if she had struck him. “Yes,” he admitted, the word torn from his throat. “That was the mission. To retrieve the Heartseed and take it home to save my people.”
The ground fell away beneath her.
The man who had held her, taught her, made love to her… he had come here to destroy her.
To rip the heart out of her garden, the very soul of her life’s work, and leave it to wither and die. Vex Development was just a competitor; Kaelen had been the true threat all along.
“And me?” she asked, a cold fury beginning to eclipse the shock. “What was I in all this? The gullible human obstacle? The collateral damage?”
“No!” he said, taking a step towards her, his hands outstretched. “It wasn’t like that. Not after I met you.”
She recoiled. “Don’t touch me.”
The memories of the past weeks cascaded through her mind, each one twisting into something ugly and perverse.
Their first meeting, his “volunteer” work, his hands on hers healing the roses, the kiss under the moonlight, the intimate magic they had shared just last night—all of it was tainted. It wasn’t a blossoming romance; it was a strategy.
A calculated deception. He hadn’t been falling for her; he had been infiltrating.
“You used me,” she breathed, the realization a shard of ice in her chest. “Every kind word, every touch… it was all to get closer to the Heartseed.”
“At first, maybe,” he confessed, his voice breaking. “But Rowan, everything changed. What I feel for you, what we shared… that is real. I swear it.”
“Real?” she laughed, a harsh, broken sound that scraped her throat. “You think any of this feels real to me now? You taught me how to feel magic, Kaelen. My magic. Was that a lie, too? Just another tool to manipulate me?”
The magical connection they shared, the one that had felt like a sacred bond, now felt like a parasite’s leash.
She could feel his desperation, his frantic plea for her to believe him, and it made her skin crawl.
Liam stepped forward, placing a protective hand on Rowan’s arm. “You need to leave,” he said to Kaelen, his voice low and dangerous.
Kaelen’s gaze never left Rowan’s. His eyes, the color of a forest after rain, were swimming with unshed tears. “Rowan, please. Morwen is Unseelie. She wants to corrupt the Heartseed, not just take it. We have to fight her together.”
But his words were just noise.
The foundation of trust had been obliterated, and the entire structure of their relationship had come crashing down. He was a liar.
A beautiful, tragic, captivating liar who had come to ruin her. The magic she had discovered wasn’t a gift; it was a symptom of the thing he had come to steal.
The man she was falling in love with didn’t exist. He was a mask, a role played by a desperate prince.
Rowan finally looked away from him, her gaze falling on the vibrant, sleeping life around her. The rose bushes, the sturdy tomato vines, the fragrant lavender. Her sanctuary. Her life. He had walked into this sacred space with poison in his heart, intending to turn it all to dust.
She felt nothing.
Not the hum of life, not the warmth of the earth.
Just a vast, cold emptiness where her heart used to be. The magic was built on a lie.
And the man she loved was the one who had laid the foundation.