The pressure was a physical thing, a crushing weight on Kaelen’s chest that made the humid Brooklyn air feel thin and sharp.
It had been days since he’d last allowed himself to truly connect with the Silverwood Court, to open the fragile channel back to his home.
Tonight, in the hollowed-out silence of his small apartment, he had made the mistake of reaching out.
The vision had been worse than he’d feared. Not a cataclysm, but a slow, quiet fading.
He saw the great silver trees, their leaves not falling but turning to a fine, shimmering dust on the branch. He saw the light of the Court, once as bright and clear as a winter star, now a guttering candle flame against an encroaching gloom.
He felt the weariness of his people, a collective sigh that echoed in the marrow of his bones.
They were waiting.
They were depending on him. And he was here, in this loud, chaotic human world, tending roses and sharing wine with the one person he was meant to betray.
The thought of Rowan was a shard of warmth in the icy panic.
Her laugh, the way she tucked a stray curl behind her ear when she was concentrating, the fierce, protective light in her eyes when she spoke of her garden.
These images were a dangerous balm, soothing the jagged edges of his duty while simultaneously making his mission feel like an act of profound cruelty.
He could wait no longer.
Morwen and her Unseelie minions were already testing the garden’s defenses. His own Court was fraying at the edges. Every day he spent here, drawn deeper into Rowan’s orbit, was a day his world slipped further into twilight.
He had to act. Tonight.
He found her in the potting shed, the scent of damp earth and fertilizer thick around her.
She was cleaning her tools with a focused intensity, her brow furrowed.
“Tough day?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.
She looked up, and the tension in her shoulders eased fractionally. “Just… politics. There’s a last-minute city council meeting tonight about rezoning a few blocks over. The board wants a representative from the garden to speak against it, to make sure Vex can’t use it as a precedent.”
She sighed, setting down a trowel with a metallic scrape. “It’s like playing whack-a-mole with bulldozers.”
The words hit Kael like a physical blow.
A city council meeting. She would be gone for hours.
The garden would be empty, vulnerable.
The universe was offering him the perfect, terrible opportunity. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped thing.
“You’ll be brilliant,” he said, the lie tasting like ash in his mouth. “You speak for this place better than anyone.”
She offered him a small, tired smile. It was a smile of trust. A smile that said, we’re in this together. It was the cruelest cut of all. “Thanks, Kael. Keep an eye on things for me?”
“Always,” he promised. The word was a vow and a curse.
He watched her leave, her determined stride carrying her out the gate and down the street until she was just another silhouette swallowed by the city’s evening glow.
For a long moment, Kael didn’t move.
The garden hummed around him, a symphony of life he was about to silence.
Crickets began their nightly chorus, and the scent of night-blooming jasmine unfurled on the air. He was a prince of a dying realm, an executioner sent to steal a heart, and he had never felt more like a coward.
For Silverwood, he thought, the words a hollow mantra. For my people.
He moved toward the center of the garden, to the oldest, most gnarled part of the original lot where the wild magic had first taken root.
This was the epicenter, the place where the energy was so thick he could feel it thrumming against his skin.
Here, beneath a small, unassuming patch of chamomile and wild violets, was the Heartseed.
Kael took a deep, steadying breath and let his glamour fall away.
The world sharpened.
The colors of the flowers deepened into hues the human eye couldn’t perceive.
The gentle hum of the garden swelled into a roar of interconnected life force, a vast and complex network of roots and energy that mirrored the ley lines of his own world.
He saw the faint, shimmering lines of his own wards carved into the fence posts, a pale blue light holding back a darker, encroaching chill at the edges of the property.
He knelt, placing his hands on the soil. It was warm, pulsing with a slow, steady beat, like a living creature.
Closing his eyes, he reached out with his own magic, sinking it into the earth. His power was of the Seelie court—light, growth, and order.
It met the garden’s magic, which was something else entirely.
It was wilder, deeper, more primal. It was the untamed magic of a world that had not been shaped and manicured for millennia.
He followed the streams of power to their source, a blindingly bright nexus of energy a few feet beneath the surface.
The Heartseed.
He pushed his magic further, commanding the soil to part.
The earth softened and shifted, peeling back without a sound, revealing not a seed, but a knot of pure, white light tangled with luminous, root-like tendrils.
It pulsed with the raw, untamed power of creation. This was it. The key to saving his home.
His fingers trembled as he reached for it.
He could already feel the power it held, enough to re-ignite the fading light of the Silverwood Court for a generation.
All he had to do was take it.
But as his fingertips brushed the outer edge of its aura, something slammed into him. It wasn’t a defense.
It was a connection.
A torrent of images, feelings, and sensations flooded his mind, none of them his own. He saw a little girl with scraped knees planting a fistful of weeds in this very spot, whispering to them to grow.
He felt the fierce pride of a teenager watching the first true tomato ripen on the vine.
He felt the gut-wrenching despair of seeing the first eviction notice, the cold dread that this place, her only true home, would be destroyed.
He felt Rowan.
Her joy, her sorrow, her stubbornness, her unwavering love for this small patch of dirt and life.
Her essence, her very life force, was woven through the Heartseed like golden thread. It wasn’t just fueling the garden; the garden was fueling her.
They were symbiotic, one and the same. The raw power he’d sensed in her wasn’t a reflection of the garden’s magic—it was the garden’s magic.
The realization struck him with the force of a physical blow.
To take the Heartseed wouldn’t just kill the garden. It would rip a fundamental part of her away.
It might not kill her, but it would leave a wound in her soul, a permanent, ragged void where this vibrant life used to be.
He would be extinguishing the very light he’d found so captivating.
He snatched his hand back as if burned, stumbling backward and landing hard on the grass. The soil silently closed over the Heartseed, hiding its light once more.
He stared at the patch of innocent-looking flowers, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He couldn’t do it.
Duty, honor, the fate of his people—it all turned to dust in the face of this horrific truth.
He could not save his home by destroying hers, not when her home was so intrinsically part of her.
The command of his king warred with a fierce, terrifying protectiveness that had taken root in his own heart.
He dropped his head into his hands, the conflict threatening to tear him apart.
The sharp creak of the front gate cut through his turmoil.
Kael’s head shot up. His blood ran cold. Rowan. She was back.
The meeting must have been cut short. Panic seized him.
His glamour was down, the earth before him was subtly disturbed, and the raw magic of his failed attempt still hung in the air like ozone after a lightning strike.
He scrambled to his feet, pulling the veil of his human form around himself just as she rounded the corner of the shed.
Her steps faltered when she saw him.
“Kael?” Her voice was wary. “What are you doing? I thought you’d have gone home by now.”
He struggled to find his voice. “Just… enjoying the quiet.” The excuse was laughably thin.
He knew he looked wild, his eyes wide, his posture rigid with shock.
Rowan’s gaze narrowed.
It swept over him, then to the patch of chamomile at his feet.
She was preternaturally attuned to this place; she could feel the disturbance in the air, even if she couldn’t name it.
Liam’s warnings, he realized with a sickening lurch, would be screaming in her mind right now.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, her arms crossing over her chest. It was a defensive posture, a barrier going up between them. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“No. Nothing,” he said, too quickly. He took a step toward her, then stopped, knowing his proximity would only feel like a threat.
“Don’t lie to me, Kael,” she snapped, her voice low and tight with a new, sharp anger. “The air feels… weird. Charged. I find you kneeling in the dark, in the very heart of the garden. What were you doing?”
Every instinct screamed at him to tell her, to confess everything and pray she would understand.
But how could he?
My name is Kaelen, I’m a Fae prince, and I was just about to perform a magical lobotomy on you to save my dying kingdom. She would think he was insane.
Or worse, she would believe him, and the trust she’d given him, that fragile, precious thing, would be annihilated.
“I was just looking at the soil composition,” he improvised, the lie clumsy and insulting. “I was worried about the blight returning.”
“In the dark? On your knees?” she shot back, taking a step closer.
The hurt in her eyes was now mixed with cold suspicion. “Liam was right about you, wasn’t he? He said you were a ghost, that you appeared out of nowhere right when Vex started their push. Are you a corporate spy? Is that it? Were you taking soil samples for them? Looking for a weakness?”
“No! Rowan, that’s not it,” he said, his voice raw with a desperation she couldn’t possibly understand. “I am not working for Vex.”
It was the one truth he could offer her.
“Then what are you doing?” she demanded, her voice rising. “You have to give me something, Kael. You show up with no past, you know things you shouldn’t, you deflect every personal question I ask. And now this. I can’t… I want to trust you. God, I really do. But you are making it impossible.”
He could see the battle in her face—the desire to believe in him warring with a mountain of evidence that screamed he was a liar.
And he was. He was lying to her right now, with every word he didn’t say.
“I can’t explain it,” he whispered, the admission costing him everything. “Not yet. But you have to believe me. I would never do anything to harm this garden. Or you.”
The last two words hung in the air between them, imbued with the terrifying weight of his recent discovery. He would never harm her. He knew that now with an agonizing certainty.
Rowan stared at him for a long, silent moment. The anger in her face slowly crumbled, replaced by a profound, aching disappointment.
“I think you should go home, Kael,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of its usual warmth.
He opened his mouth to argue, to plead, but the look in her eyes stopped him. It was a look of betrayal.
And he knew, with chilling finality, that he had put it there.
Without another word, he turned and walked away, the weight of his secrets and the life of his kingdom pressing down on him, heavier than ever before.