The grimy Brooklyn alley had become Kael’s reluctant sanctuary.
From its mouth, he could watch the constant, chaotic ballet of human life flow past the wrought-iron fence of the garden. He had spent the night in the shell of a nearby abandoned building, a place of dust and decay that felt more familiar to him than the city’s vibrant thrum.
Sleep had offered no respite, only dreams of silver trees turning to ash.
His mission was a simple, brutal equation: retrieve the Heartseed, save his home.
But the variable he hadn’t accounted for was Rowan Finch.
She wasn’t just a guardian; she was an integral part of the garden’s magic.
He had felt it the moment he’d seen her, her life force a brilliant green-gold thread woven through every leaf and petal.
A direct assault was impossible. Taking the seed while she was so deeply attuned to it would be like tearing a vital organ from a living creature.
It could unravel her.
The thought sent a disquieting tremor through him, a feeling so alien he almost mistook it for a flaw in his glamour.
He was a prince of the Silverwood Court, a warrior trained to put duty before all else. This flicker of concern for a mortal was a liability.
He needed a new strategy. Not force, but infiltration. He would have to become a weed in her garden, wrapping his roots around hers until he was close enough to strike.
He adjusted his glamour, softening the sharp, otherworldly planes of his face into something more humanly handsome.
He muted the silver in his eyes to a cool grey and allowed a faint, calculated scruff to shadow his jawline.
He was no longer a Seelie prince, but Kael, a landscape consultant—a lie that tasted like iron on his tongue. He stepped out of the alley, the morning sun feeling thin and foreign on his skin, and walked toward the gate.
Rowan was on her knees, her back to him, wrestling with a stubborn patch of bindweed that was attempting to strangle a row of young tomato plants.
Her brow was furrowed in concentration, a smudge of dirt accentuating her cheekbone.
The raw, untamed power of the garden pulsed around her, a chaotic symphony to his Fae senses. In his dying world, magic was a faint, fading whisper.
Here, it was a roar—the frantic buzz of a hundred bees, the silent, relentless push of roots through soil, the collective sigh of leaves drinking in the light.
It was overwhelming, intoxicating, and a little bit terrifying.
He cleared his throat. “Good morning.”
She startled, dropping a clump of weeds and twisting around.
Her eyes, the color of moss after a rain, narrowed with immediate suspicion. “You again.”
“I believe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said, keeping his voice smooth and even.
He gestured vaguely at the garden. “This place… it’s remarkable. A testament to your work.”
Her suspicion didn’t waver. “What do you want, Kael? If you’re here with another offer from Vex, you can save your breath.”
“On the contrary,” he said, taking a careful step closer. “I’m here to offer my help in fighting them.”
That stopped her. She rose slowly to her feet, wiping her soiled hands on her jeans. “Help? Why would a ‘consultant’ they hired want to help me?”
Here was the delicate part.
The lie had to be woven from threads of truth. “Vex Development has a reputation. I’ve seen what they do. They gut places with history, with ecological value, and replace them with glass and steel. They hired me for an initial assessment, that’s all. When I saw what they intended to do here, I couldn’t be a part of it.” He let a note of manufactured righteousness enter his tone. “I quit.”
Rowan crossed her arms, her skepticism a palpable shield. “And now you’ve had a crisis of conscience? Forgive me if I don’t break out the welcome banner.”
“Don’t,” he said. “I’m not asking for your trust. I’m offering my expertise. I know how corporations like Vex operate. They use teams of lawyers and botanists to dismiss community gardens as temporary, non-essential green spaces. I can help you create a biodiversity report, a soil composition analysis, a documented history of this land that will stand up in court. I can give you the ammunition you need to fight them.”
He paused, letting the offer sink in. “All I ask in return is the chance to study this place. For my own research.”
Her internal conflict was plain on her face.
Her jaw was tight with distrust, but her eyes flickered with a desperate hope.
He had found her weakness: her fierce, boundless love for this patch of earth. She would do anything to save it, even if it meant letting the enemy through the gates.
“Why?” she finally asked, her voice quiet. “Why would you do all that for free?”
“Let’s just say I have a personal interest in seeing unique ecosystems preserved,” he said, the truth of his words a bitter ache in his chest.
She chewed on her lower lip, her gaze sweeping over his face, searching for the lie.
He held perfectly still, his glamour a flawless mask over the frantic purpose that drove him.
Finally, she let out a long, frustrated sigh.
“Fine,” she conceded, the word tasting like defeat. “You can help. But you work under my direction. You touch nothing without my permission. And I will be watching every move you make.”
“I would expect nothing less,” he said, allowing himself a small, disarming smile. It was a victory, but it felt hollow.
Their tense agreement was interrupted by a familiar voice. “Ro? Brought you a peace offering.”
A young man with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and a cardboard tray of coffees in his hand entered the garden.
He had a wiry energy and intelligent, restless eyes that immediately landed on Kael and sharpened with alarm.
“Liam, this is Kael,” Rowan said, her tone strained. “He’s… a new volunteer.”
Liam’s smile was tight and entirely unwelcoming as he handed a coffee to Rowan. “Volunteer? Funny, he looks more like the corporate shark you were complaining about yesterday.”
“Liam, please,” Rowan muttered, shooting him a warning look.
Kael extended a hand. “Kaelen. Most people just call me Kael.” He offered his cover story with practiced ease. “It’s a pleasure.”
Liam ignored the hand. “Liam Porter. I’m Rowan’s friend. And I do background checks for a living.” The words were not an introduction; they were a threat. Kael’s smile didn’t falter, but a cold knot formed in his stomach.
This human was sharp. Another unforeseen variable.
“Fascinating,” Kael replied smoothly. “Then you’ll understand the importance of thorough research, which is exactly what I’m here to do.”
The air crackled with unspoken hostility until Rowan stepped between them. “Okay, that’s enough. Kael, you can start by helping me document the heirloom varietals over by the east wall. Liam, walk with me.”
She led her friend away, their voices dropping to urgent whispers. Kael didn’t need Fae hearing to know what they were talking about.
He turned his attention to the task, kneeling by a trellis of climbing beans. His fingers brushed against a leaf, and the sheer life force of the plant jolted through him.
He closed his eyes, overwhelmed. The scent of damp soil filled his lungs—not the sterile loam of the royal greenhouses, but a rich, complex perfume of decay and rebirth, teeming with a billion microscopic lives.
The hum of the city faded, replaced by the thrumming pulse of the garden, a current that flowed from the earth, through the plants, and—he could feel it now, a magnetic pull—emanated from a central point near the ancient-looking oak tree at the garden’s heart.
The Heartseed.
He was closer than ever. But as he knelt there, surrounded by this riotous, defiant life, he felt the first true tendrils of fear.
Not for his mission, but for himself. The ordered, silent world of the Silverwood Court had prepared him for battle and diplomacy, for the cold calculus of sacrifice.
It had not prepared him for this overwhelming sensory onslaught. It had not prepared him for the way Rowan’s own essence was tangled up in it, a bright, warm light that drew him in even as it burned.
Later that afternoon, Rowan’s phone buzzed. It was Liam.
“I’m sending you something,” he said, his voice clipped and serious. “Open it.”
She wiped sweat from her brow and tapped open the message. It was a screenshot of a database search, the name ‘Kaelen’ typed in the search bar.
Below it, in stark red letters, were the words: NO RESULTS FOUND.
“I ran him through every public and private database I have access to,” Liam’s voice crackled over the phone. “Credit history, property records, social media, DMV, you name it. Ro, this guy doesn’t exist. He’s a ghost. There is no record of anyone by that name matching his description anywhere.”
A cold dread trickled down Rowan’s spine, chilling her despite the afternoon heat. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’s a professional. He’s a corporate spy, Rowan, probably from Vex’s black ops division or whatever. His name is an alias, his story is a lie. He’s here to get inside, find a weakness, and help them tear this place down.”
She looked across the garden, where Kael was meticulously sketching the vein patterns on a squash leaf, his focus absolute.
He looked like a scholar, a naturalist. Not a corporate saboteur. And yet… the feeling that he was too perfect, too polished, had been there from the start.
“But the things he knows, Liam,” she argued, more to convince herself than him. “He identified a species of heritage corn I’ve been trying to classify for months just by looking at the tassel. His advice on amending the soil for the acid-loving plants was brilliant. If he’s a spy, he’s the most overqualified one in history.”
“That’s what makes him dangerous,” Liam insisted. “He’s playing you. Don’t trust him, Ro. Get him out of there.”
The call ended, leaving Rowan in a turmoil of suspicion and reluctant need. Every instinct screamed that Liam was right. But every hope she had for saving the garden whispered that Kael might be her only chance.
As the sun began to set, casting long shadows across the plots, Kael packed up his sketchbook.
He had spent the day immersed in the garden, his Fae senses on fire.
He was a being of fading light adrift in an ocean of life, and the proximity to Rowan was a constant, low-grade fever.
Her scent—of soil, and sunshine, and something uniquely, fiercely her—clung to the air. Every time she brushed past him, his glamour flickered, a dangerous ripple on a calm surface.
He was sowing the seeds of deception, as planned. But as he watched Rowan lock the gate for the night, her shoulders slumped with the weight of her fight, he felt an unexpected, unwelcome pang.
He was not a weed in her garden. He was a blight.
And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to his ancient soul, that when he finally tore the Heartseed from this soil, the devastation he would leave in his wake would be far greater than he had ever imagined.