The sky above Brooklyn did not fall into darkness.
It bled into a bruised, twilight violet, a color too deep for dusk, shot through with veins of emerald and silver. The celestial alignment had begun.
A low, resonant hum vibrated in the air, a chord struck on a cosmic string that Rowan felt deep in her bones. It was the sound of the veil between worlds thinning to the consistency of silk.
“They’re coming,” Kael said, his voice quiet but carrying the weight of a general’s command. He stood beside her in the heart of the garden, near the soft glow of the Heartseed.
His mortal disguise was gone, shed like a winter coat.
He wore the raiment of the Silverwood Court—a tunic of woven leaves and moonlight, with supple leather armor strapped over his chest.
In his hand, a blade shimmered into existence, a sliver of solidified starlight that cast long, dancing shadows. He looked every inch the Fae prince, beautiful and deadly.
Rowan’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the hum of the universe.
Her fear was a cold, slick thing in her gut, but woven through it was a fierce, grounding resolve. She was no princess, no warrior.
She was a botanist.
But this soil, this life, was hers to defend. She placed a hand on the gnarled trunk of the ancient apple tree that sheltered the Heartseed, drawing strength from its deep roots.
The garden answered, a thrum of power rising through the soles of her worn boots, up her legs, and into her spirit.
At the front gate, Liam adjusted the small camera clipped to his jacket, his face illuminated by the glow of a laptop screen.
He was their eyes and ears on the street. Around him stood a small, determined phalanx of their community.
Mrs. Garcia, her gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, held a cast-iron skillet like a shield. Marco from the bakery hefted a rolling pin, and a half-dozen others stood with shovels, rakes, and lengths of salvaged pipe.
They had reinforced the chain-link gate with old pallets and metal sheeting, a patchwork fortress against the coming tide.
“Three black SUVs,” Liam’s voice crackled through the small earpiece Kael had given Rowan. “No logos. They just pulled up. Guys in tactical gear are getting out. This is it.”
Rowan met Kael’s gaze. The quiet moment of love they’d shared the night before felt a lifetime away.
This was the cost of that peace, the battle they had to win to earn it. He gave her a single, sharp nod. I am with you.
Her reply was unspoken, a pulse of energy sent through the earth between them. Until the end.
The shouts from the street came first, sharp and aggressive. “Private property! Disperse immediately!”
Then came Mrs. Garcia’s furious, bilingual response, a torrent of Spanish and English that needed no translation.
The clang of metal striking metal echoed through the garden—Vex’s security trying to force the gate.
“They’re using a battering ram,” Liam reported, his voice tight with adrenaline. “Hold the line! Push back!”
Rowan could feel the vibrations of the impacts through the ground.
She wanted to rush to the gate, to stand with her friends, but she knew her place was here. Kael’s place was here.
The real threat wouldn’t bother with the gate.
As if summoned by the thought, the air near the back of the garden grew cold.
The resonant hum of the alignment warped, turning sour and dissonant. Shadows stretched and deepened, pooling into forms that were not cast by any physical object.
From those unnatural pools of darkness, they emerged. Three figures, coalescing from smoke and malice.
They were not human.
Their bodies were woven from black, thorny vines and animated by a sickly green light. Their faces were shifting masks of bark and shadow, with eyes like chips of obsidian. Unseelie enforcers.
Kael moved before they had fully formed, a blur of silver and green. His star-blade sliced through the air, leaving a trail of light as it met the thorny arm of the nearest creature.
The impact sent a shower of emerald sparks into the air, and the creature shrieked, a sound like tearing wood.
Rowan didn’t hesitate. She threw her hands out, palms facing the ground, and focused. She didn’t see the magic; she felt it, an extension of her own will. The earth beneath the Unseelie bucked.
Thick, gnarled roots, as hard as iron, erupted from the soil, wrapping around their legs, trying to drag them down. One of the creatures was ensnared, its struggles only tightening the woody bonds.
The third enforcer ignored Kael and lunged for her. It was unnervingly fast, its form dissolving into a stream of shadows and thorns.
Kael shouted her name, a sound of pure terror, but he was locked in combat with the first.
Rowan stood her ground.
Panic was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She reached for the life around her—the potent, aggressive energy of the nightshade, the stinging power of the nettles, the ancient, stubborn strength of the ivy clinging to the brick wall.
“Get back!” she screamed, and the garden obeyed.
A thicket of raspberry canes, their thorns suddenly elongated and wickedly sharp, burst from the ground, creating a living, barbed-wire wall between her and the attacker.
The shadow-form slammed into it, and its shriek was one of frustration as thorns tore at its magical essence.
Meanwhile, at the gate, the battle was just as desperate.
Liam watched as Vex’s security team, clad in black and wearing emotionless masks, slammed the ram against their barricade again. The metal groaned in protest.
“Now!” Liam yelled.
At his signal, two community members on the roof of the adjacent brownstone upended buckets of a foul-smelling concoction Rowan had prepared—a potent mix of fish emulsion and liquid capsaicin fertilizer.
The guards below roared in disgust and pain as the viscous liquid rained down, burning their eyes and filling the air with an unbearable stench.
It wasn’t magic, but it was brutally effective. It bought them time.
Back in the garden’s heart, Kael fought with a grace that was terrifying to behold. He was a whirlwind of motion, his blade a constant arc of light.
He parried a blow from a claw made of obsidian-hard briar, spun, and drove his sword through the chest of the second enforcer.
The creature dissolved with a final, agonized hiss, leaving behind nothing but a pile of withered vines and the smell of ozone.
But the victory was momentary.
The root-bound creature tore itself free with a surge of dark power, its severed leg instantly regrowing. It joined the first, and they pressed their attack on Kael, flanking him.
He was a prince of a dying court, his power finite, and Rowan could see him starting to tire, the light of his blade flickering slightly.
Her focus had been on her own defense, on the shield of thorns.
Now she split it, turning her will towards the fight. She couldn’t create a blade of light, but she could wield the garden itself.
With a guttural cry, she thrust her hands forward. A thick, ancient vine of wisteria, as thick as her arm, detached from the wall and whipped through the air like a colossal snake. It struck one of the enforcers across the back, the impact cracking its thorny carapace.
The creature staggered, giving Kael the opening he needed. He drove his blade home.
The hum of the alignment intensified, the violet light in the sky pulsing. In the center of the chaos, a figure stepped through a shimmering tear in the air.
Morwen.
She wore a severe black dress that seemed to drink the light around her, her red hair a slash of blood against the unnatural twilight.
She surveyed the scene—the ongoing struggle at the gate, the dissolving remains of her enforcers, the defiant botanist and the beleaguered prince—and she smiled.
It was a slow, cruel curve of her lips that made Rowan’s blood run cold.
“Such a spirited defense,” Morwen said, her voice dripping with condescending amusement. “All this passion, all this effort… to protect a patch of dirt.”
She flicked her wrist, and a wave of black energy shot towards the front of the garden.
“Liam!” Rowan screamed into her comm.
The barricade at the gate exploded inward, a concussive blast of pure force sending wood, metal, and people flying. Rowan heard Liam’s cry of pain and the terrified shouts of her friends.
Fury, white-hot and absolute, burned away Rowan’s fear. Morwen had hurt her people. She had crossed a line.
“This is not dirt,” Rowan snarled, channeling all her rage, all her connection to this place, into a single point.
The ground around Morwen swelled. The prize-winning roses—the ones Kael had helped her save—responded to her call.
Their thorns grew to the size of daggers, their vines twisting into thick, blood-red ropes that shot from the earth, aiming to ensnare the Unseelie queen.
Morwen merely laughed, a sound like shattering glass. She raised a hand, and the attacking vines withered to ash inches from her skin. “Child’s play.”
Kael, breathing heavily, placed himself between her and Rowan. His blade was steady now, burning with a renewed, desperate intensity. “You will not touch her. You will not touch the Heartseed.”
“Brave, foolish prince,” Morwen purred, taking a step forward. The remaining Unseelie enforcer dissolved back into the shadows, its task complete.
This was her battle now. “You’ve tied your fate to a doomed world and a mortal woman. You should have taken my offer.”
She extended her hand, and from it grew a blade of her own—a shard of pure darkness that seemed to pull the light from the air, its edges wavering like a heat haze.
The chaos of the siege focused, narrowing to this single, terrifying point. The diversion at the gate had fallen silent, the magical enforcers were gone. It was only them now.
The Prince, the Botanist, and the Queen of the Unseelie, standing in the ruins of a battlefield that was once a garden.
“Now,” Morwen said, her eyes glowing with malevolent power, “the real fight begins.”