The first garden outside Meridian City was planted in the Northern Freeholds on a morning that smelled of pine and thawing earth, and the delegation that arrived to destroy it came before the first seedlings had broken ground.
Marcus stood at the edge of the planting site with soil still crusted under his fingernails and the ancient seed warm in his palm. The Northern Freeholds had chosen a clearing in the great forest for their garden—a place where sunlight filtered through the canopy in shafts of gold, where a natural spring bubbled up from the bedrock, where the ground was dark and rich and ready. Delegate Vara had sent word three weeks ago, requesting seeds from the First Temple repository. Aella had carried them north herself, along with Sera's preserved consciousness, which had chos
