The quiet of the garden had become a fragile thing.
It was no longer the peaceful, buzzing silence Rowan cherished, but a taut, listening one.
The memory of her kiss with Kael two nights ago was a phantom pressure on her lips, a warmth that flared in her chest at the most inconvenient times.
They worked around each other now in a state of careful choreography, the air thick with unspoken words. His exhaustion was a constant presence, a faint bruising of lavender beneath his startlingly green eyes that seemed to deepen with every passing day.
This morning, he was kneeling by the eastern fence, his back to her, meticulously re-tying a stray branch of clematis.
The sun caught the silver in his dark hair, and for a moment, the tension in Rowan’s shoulders eased. He looked… right here.
Like a natural extension of the garden itself. But then he shifted, and she saw him trace one of the strange, spiraling symbols he’d carved into the wooden post.
His brow was furrowed in concentration, his lips moving in a silent whisper.
The chill that had been clinging to the garden’s edges for days seemed to recede from that spot, and a cold knot of suspicion tightened in Rowan’s stomach, overriding the memory of their kiss.
“I’m telling you, Ro, something is wrong.”
Rowan jumped, spinning around to see Liam standing at the entrance to the tool shed, his face pale and grim under the fluorescent lights.
He had his laptop tucked under one arm and a stack of printed-out documents in his hand.
His usual easy-going energy was gone, replaced by the frantic, obsessive hum he got when he was deep down a journalistic rabbit hole.
“Liam, you scared me,” she breathed, placing a hand over her racing heart. She glanced back toward Kael, who seemed oblivious, still focused on his task.
“Good. You should be scared,” Liam said, his voice low and urgent.
He jerked his head toward the shed. “Inside. Now.”
The shed smelled of potting soil, rust, and Liam’s anxiety.
He cleared a space on the cluttered workbench, shoving aside terracotta pots and bags of fertilizer, and set up his laptop.
The screen flared to life, displaying a complex web of maps, articles, and highlighted corporate filings.
“Okay,” he began, pacing the small space like a caged animal. “So I kept digging into Vex Development. Their public portfolio is standard evil-developer stuff—luxury condos, gentrifying warehouses, the usual. But their shell corporations, the ones they try to hide? That’s where it gets weird.”
He pointed a trembling finger at the screen.
A map of the tri-state area was dotted with red pins. “Every one of these pins is a Vex acquisition over the last ten years. Look at them. An abandoned granite quarry in Connecticut. A plot of land in upstate New York that contains a natural spring locals call ‘the healing waters.’ A historical estate on Long Island that was supposedly built on an ancient burial ground.”
Rowan leaned closer, frowning. “So they like properties with history? Maybe it’s a branding thing.”
“No, it’s not branding,” Liam insisted, his voice cracking with intensity. “I cross-referenced the locations with geological surveys and historical archives. Every single site has something in common: unusual mineral deposits, unique water tables, or a documented history of strange phenomena. They’re not buying lots, Rowan. They’re buying locations of… significance.”
He clicked a few keys, and a satellite image of their own neighborhood filled the screen.
Their community garden was a vibrant green square in the center. Liam had overlaid it with faint, shimmering blue lines that crisscrossed at a point directly beneath the ancient oak tree—the heart of the garden.
“Geological survey maps,” he explained. “There’s a convergence of underground aquifers right here. A geological anomaly. Just like all their other sites.” He finally stopped pacing and met her eyes, his own wide with a mixture of fear and conviction. “They’re not after the land, Ro. They’re after something in the land.”
Rowan stared at the screen, a disbelieving laugh catching in her throat. “Liam, this sounds like an episode of a bad paranormal TV show. Vex Development is a soulless corporation, not a league of supervillains hunting for magic rocks.”
“Is it?” he shot back, his frustration boiling over. “Then explain him.”
He didn’t have to say the name.
Rowan’s gaze flickered involuntarily toward the shed door, in the direction of the garden where Kael was working. The blood drained from her face.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she whispered, but the words had no force behind them.
“Ridiculous? Rowan, open your eyes!” Liam grabbed the printed documents, shoving them into her hands. They were blank. Utterly, completely blank. “That’s the comprehensive background check I ran on ‘Kael.’ Birth certificate, social security number, credit history, driver’s license, social media. Nothing. The man does not exist. He’s a ghost.”
“He could be using an alias…” she started, her mind scrambling for a rational explanation.
“And what’s his real name? John Smith?” Liam scoffed. “He shows up out of nowhere, a complete ghost with a flimsy story about being a ‘landscape consultant,’ right when Vex intensifies its campaign to get this specific, geologically significant piece of land. He gets close to you, the one person with the power to stop the sale. He works his way into the garden, into your trust. For God’s sake, Ro, he’s a corporate spy!”
The accusation hung in the dusty air, sharp and ugly.
Every defensive instinct in Rowan’s body screamed to reject it, to protect the fragile, confusing connection she felt with Kael.
She remembered the startling jolt of energy when their hands first touched over the blighted roses, the desperate vulnerability in his kiss under the moonlight, the profound sadness in his eyes when he spoke of his dying “estate.”
That couldn’t be a lie. It couldn’t.
And yet.
A montage of unsettling moments flashed through her mind.
Kael’s uncanny knowledge of plants, far beyond that of any botanist she’d ever met.
The strange, almost hypnotic way he’d calmed the furious community board member. The whispers she couldn’t quite hear, the symbols she didn’t understand.
His constant, bone-deep exhaustion, which she’d attributed to hard work, but which now looked like the strain of maintaining a lie, a cover, a… glamour.
The word appeared in her head, unbidden, from a half-remembered fairy tale.
“He helped us,” she said, her voice shaking. “He saved the roses. He helped sway the board.”
“Or he neutralized a minor attack to make himself look like an ally,” Liam countered, his voice softening slightly as he saw the genuine pain on her face.
“Think of it like a classic espionage move. You stop a small fire so you can gain access to the whole building before you burn it down. He’s playing you, Ro. He’s working for them. He’s here to figure out what’s so special about this place and help them take it.”
The seed of doubt, painful and sharp, pierced through the soil of her affection for Kael.
It was a noxious weed, and she could feel its roots instantly, poisonously, taking hold.
Every shared glance, every quiet moment, every touch was now suspect, recast in a sinister light. Was his curiosity about the garden a scout’s reconnaissance?
Was his kindness a tactic? Was their kiss just another tool of manipulation, a way to lower her defenses?
A wave of nausea washed over her. She felt like a fool.
A naive, trusting fool who had let a beautiful man with sad eyes walk right through her carefully constructed walls.
“I… I have to go,” she stammered, shoving the blank papers back at Liam. She stumbled out of the shed, blinking in the bright morning sun, her lungs desperate for air that didn’t taste of conspiracy and betrayal.
Kael was right where she’d left him, but he was standing now, watching her.
His head was tilted with an expression of gentle concern. “Is everything alright, Rowan? You look pale.”
His voice, the same voice that had murmured truths about his home in the dark, now sounded like a carefully crafted lie.
His concern felt like a performance.
She looked at his hands—strong, graceful hands that had healed her roses and held her face—and imagined them reporting back to Morwen, detailing the garden’s weaknesses.
“I’m fine,” she said, the words clipped and cold. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she focused on the fence post beside him, on the swirling symbol carved into the wood.
It seemed to mock her, a secret language she was not privy to. “Just a headache.”
She turned and walked away, grabbing a trowel and kneeling by a bed of wilting lavender, needing to feel the solid, honest earth beneath her fingers.
She began to weed with a frantic, punishing energy, yanking out dandelions and crabgrass with a vengeance.
But she could feel his gaze on her back, a heavy weight of confusion and hurt. And for the first time, she wondered if the strange, unnatural chill clinging to the garden’s edges wasn’t from some outside force at all.
Perhaps it was radiating from the very man she had started to let into her heart.
The beautiful, impossible man who, her best friend was convinced, had come here to destroy everything she loved.