The last of the community board members had finally drifted away, their voices—a mix of relieved chatter and lingering anxiety—fading into the symphony of the Brooklyn night.
The victory felt fragile, a soap bubble shimmering under the sodium glow of the streetlights, beautiful but easily burst.
Rowan stood at the wrought-iron gate, listening until the last car door slammed shut, leaving her in the sudden, profound silence of her sanctuary.
She wasn’t alone.
Kael stood near the central rose bed, a tall, still silhouette against the deeper shadows.
He hadn’t said much since his quiet, decisive intervention at the meeting, the one that had tipped the scales.
He had simply watched, his calm presence a strange anchor in the turbulent afternoon.
Now, in the aftermath, that same stillness felt charged.
“I was saving this for a special occasion,” Rowan said, her voice softer than she intended, a sound absorbed by the thirsty leaves around them. “I think ‘temporarily thwarting a soulless corporate behemoth’ qualifies.”
She disappeared into the small tool shed and emerged a moment later with a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew, and two mismatched ceramic mugs.
One was a souvenir from the botanical garden, emblazoned with a fading orchid. The other was a chipped, earthy brown thing she’d made in a pottery class years ago.
She offered the pottery one to Kael.
He took it, his long fingers curling around the uneven surface. In the moonlight, his eyes seemed to hold more silver than gray. “I’m not sure my contribution warrants a celebration.”
“Are you kidding?” Rowan worked the corkscrew, pulling the cork free with a satisfying pop. “You were brilliant. That argument about soil contamination and potential EPA violations… Roger Hemlock looked like he was going to have a stroke. You bought us time, Kael. That’s more valuable than water right now.”
She poured a generous amount into each mug and led the way to her favorite bench, a weathered teak structure nestled under the sprawling branches of an old dogwood.
The air was thick with the honeyed perfume of night-blooming jasmine and the cool, clean scent of damp earth.
Fireflies blinked in lazy constellations, their fleeting lights mimicking the distant, sleepless windows of the city. For the first time all day, Rowan felt the tension in her shoulders begin to dissolve.
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, sipping the wine. It was rich and dark, a little bit bitter, a little bit sweet. Like the day itself.
“Morwen doesn’t strike me as someone who gives up easily,” Kael said, his gaze fixed on the dark skyline beyond the garden walls.
“No,” Rowan agreed. “She’s like Japanese knotweed. You think you’ve rooted it out, and the next thing you know, it’s coming up through your foundation. But for tonight… for tonight, we won.”
She looked at him, truly looked at him, away from the chaos of blight and board meetings.
The harsh lines of his face seemed to soften in the dappled moonlight. “I still don’t get it. Why are you so invested in this? Your consulting work must pay better than pulling weeds and talking down angry real estate developers.”
A flicker of something unreadable passed through his eyes.
He swirled the wine in his mug, the dark liquid a perfect mirror of the night. “My home is… in trouble,” he said, the words chosen with meticulous care. “An old family estate. It’s been in my line for generations.”
Rowan leaned forward, intrigued.
She had pegged him as a rootless urban professional, a man who lived in a minimalist condo with stainless steel appliances.
The idea of him connected to an ancestral home was jarring, yet it somehow fit the ancient quality in his eyes. “What kind of trouble?”
“A blight,” he said, and the word was imbued with a deep, personal sorrow. “It’s creeping in from the edges. The land is fading. The oldest trees, the ones that have stood for centuries, are… ill. The gardens wither, no matter what we do. It’s as if the soil itself has forgotten how to nurture things.”
He spoke of it as a living entity, a dying relative.
His voice was low, resonant with a grief so profound it seemed to vibrate in the air between them. He wasn’t just a consultant; he was a man trying to save his world.
Rowan felt a sudden, sharp pang of empathy. She understood that kind of love, that kind of fear.
“My family,” he continued, his gaze distant, as if seeing the decaying grandeur of his home, “they expect me to find a solution. A remedy. The weight of that expectation… it’s considerable.”
“I get that,” Rowan said softly. “This place…” She gestured around them, at the sleeping marigolds and the proud, saved roses. “This was my grandmother’s dream. She saw this derelict lot and pictured… this. She taught me how to listen to the soil, how to feel what a plant needs just by touching a leaf. When she died, it felt like my roots had been cut. Tending to this garden was the only way I could feel them growing back. It’s not just land, Kael. It’s memory. It’s connection.”
She hadn’t meant to say so much, to lay the soft, vulnerable core of her motivations bare.
But the wine, the victory, the shared intimacy of the moonlit garden—it all conspired to pull the truth from her.
She was looking at him, and he was looking back, and for the first time, she felt he was seeing all of it.
Not just the stubborn gardener, but the woman who was terrified of losing the last tangible piece of the person she’d loved most.
Kael’s expression was one of raw, unguarded intensity.
The careful mask of the detached consultant had vanished, replaced by a man drowning in a conflict she couldn’t begin to understand. He was a prince from a dying land, sent to steal the very thing that anchored this fierce, beautiful mortal to her world. Her confession, so pure and heartfelt, was another gilded nail in the coffin of his mission.
He had seen the garden’s magic, but now he felt its soul, and it was inextricably woven with hers.
“You’ve built something extraordinary, Rowan,” he murmured, his voice rough with an emotion he couldn’t name. It was admiration twisted with guilt, desire warring with duty.
The space between them on the bench, once a polite distance, now felt electric, a vacuum humming with unspoken things.
He could smell the wine on her breath, see the pulse beating in the delicate hollow of her throat.
The silver light caught in her dark hair, and every instinct in his Fae being screamed at him to close the distance, to feel the life that radiated from her, so vibrant and strong, a stark contrast to the encroaching decay of his own realm.
His mission was a ghost at his shoulder, whispering of his starving people, of the fading light of Silverwood.
But here, now, all he could feel was Rowan. Her warmth, her resilience, the fierce and gentle magic that was as much a part of her as the blood in her veins.
He didn’t know who moved first. Perhaps they both did, drawn together by the gravitational pull of the moment.
One second he was watching the moonlight on her face, and the next his hand was cupping her jaw, his thumb stroking the soft skin just beneath her ear. Her eyes widened, a flicker of surprise and something else—something like recognition—in their depths.
Then his mouth was on hers.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was desperate, a collision of two worlds.
It was the taste of dark wine and darker soil, of longing and regret.
For Rowan, it was a shockwave, a sudden, searing heat that bypassed thought and went straight to her core.
All the simmering tension, the arguments and alliances, the spark that had ignited when their hands first touched over the blighted roses—it all erupted in this single, breathtaking point of contact.
For Kael, it was a betrayal and a sacrament.
He kissed her with the desperation of a dying man seeking a last drink of water, pouring all his fear, his frustration, and his forbidden, burgeoning hope into the act.
He was supposed to be her enemy, the thief in her garden, but in this moment, all he wanted was to protect her, to anchor himself to the ferocious life she embodied.
He deepened the kiss, his other arm sliding around her waist, pulling her flush against him.
Rowan’s hands came up to tangle in his hair, her chipped mug forgotten on the bench beside them.
The world narrowed to the rustle of leaves, the scent of jasmine, and the overwhelming, undeniable truth of their connection.
It was wild and elemental, a force as raw and potent as the Heartseed buried just a few feet beneath them.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathless, their chests heaving.
The silence that rushed back in was heavier, more profound than before. The fireflies still danced, the moon still shone, but the bubble of innocent celebration had burst, leaving behind something raw, powerful, and terrifying.
Kael looked at her, his silver eyes wide with the shock of his own actions.
Rowan stared back, her lips still tingling, her mind reeling.
They had crossed a line, not just between them, but between worlds, and neither of them knew what lay on the other side.