Rosalie Bloom knelt in her ring of roses and counted the sick petals before breakfast. Seven, this morning. Yesterday it had been three. The blight was walking out of the heartwood grove, and her garden stood in its path. She had spent her whole life growing this place into a shelter for every wilting flower in Alaria, and she meant to be the queen who kept that promise. She could not keep it if her own beds turned black by nightfall. She stood and looked east. The grove's edge showed a gray seam through the trees, closer than yesterday. A pink dragon-winged creature no larger than her hand landed on her shoulder and pressed its head against her ear. It had lived in her willow-and-petal house since it hatched, and it always knew when she was afraid. "I need a wall," she told it. "A living one. Before noon." She went to the apothecary basket at the center of the garden and pulled what she needed: lavender for calm roots, sage for boundary, chamomile for knitting sick tissue, and the six red roses that ringed the herbs. She carried the bundle to the fairy pond and knelt on the stones. She crushed the herbs into the water and dipped each rose stem until the water turned rust-brown. The koi scattered. Good. The pond had taken the bitterness into itself. She worked fast. She planted the treated roses in a curved line between her beds and the grove, one every ten paces, and pressed a pinch of pond silt against each root. Then she walked the line and sang the low, steady note her grandmother taught her, the one that told a plant to grow toward a threat instead of away from it. The stems thickened while she watched. Thorns lengthened. By the time the sun cleared the butterfly-leafed tree at the garden's edge, a hedge of armed roses stood between her flowers and the gray seam. The blight reached the hedge at midmorning. Rosalie watched from the step of her pink butterfly-cage cottage, the small dragon-winged creature tight on her wrist. The gray crept up to the first rose, touched a thorn, and stopped. It curled back on itself. It tried the second rose and stopped again. Along the whole line, the blight pulled away from her beds and sank into the soil at the hedge's foot. Her flowers were safe. She let out the breath she had been holding since dawn. Then she saw the hedge. The six roses she had planted were already darkening at the tips. They had drunk the blight to save the others, and they were dying for it. Rosalie stepped down from the cottage and walked toward them. If she was going to be the queen of a garden that sheltered every wilting flower in Alaria, she would have to learn, today, how to save the ones that had saved her.

Rosalie knelt at the hedge and pressed a hand to the nearest rose. The stem was cold. Black had crept from the tips down to the second joint. She had six dying roses and no cure, and if they fell, the blight would come through by nightfall. She needed help she did not have in her own basket. She went back to her pink cottage and pulled the small dragon-winged creature from its perch by the door. "Find the warlock at the tree stump," she said. "Tell him I'm coming. Tell him it's the grove." The creature launched from her wrist, wings quick, and vanished over the butterfly-leafed tree. Rosalie cut a length of thorn from the hedge, wrapped it in wet cloth, and started walking. The warlock's home sat under a cap of red-and-white mushrooms, its door carved with runes and hung with two lanterns. He opened before she knocked. He was old and did not waste words. She showed him the black-tipped thorn. He turned it under a lantern, sniffed it, and shook his head. "I can't pull blight from a living thing," he said. "Not without killing it faster. You need a keeper who works with stones. Try the rose keep at the edge of the willows. Ask for the one who studies chakras." Rosalie ran. The keep stood wrapped in rose vines and set with colored crystals along every beam. A woman met her at the herb beds with sleeves rolled to the elbow. Rosalie showed her the thorn and told her about the six roses and the hedge. The woman listened. Then she led Rosalie inside to a tall wooden cabinet with stained glass doors. She opened it and pulled out three books and a cloth roll of stones. "Plants have centers like we do," she said. "If the root center holds, the plant can shed poison. But you have to sing the stone open. And singing draws things that hunt singers." Rosalie thought of the pink dragon-winged creature and of the small musical fae that lived among her lotus pond, the one with antlers and monarch wings that trailed notes when it flew. "I have a singer," she said. "One that isn't me." The woman met her eyes. "Then the hunter won't find you. It will find your singer. Choose." Rosalie chose. She walked home with a red stone tied at her wrist and the woman beside her. At the hedge, she set the stone against the root of the first dying rose. The small antlered fae landed on her shoulder and sang the note the woman named. The stone warmed. Black drained from the stem into the soil and burned off in a thin curl of smoke. One rose stood green again. Then a second. By dusk, all six had cleared. The fae kept singing after the work was done. Rosalie watched the eastern trees and knew something out there had heard.