The plants turned toward her as she stepped onto the brick-lined patio. Gladiolas tilted their blooms. Vines shook off the night. The air was thick with gloom. She stepped off the path, bare skin meeting earth still damp with morning dew, and made her way to the enclosure the garden had created the night before.

But the closer she got, the stranger the plants looked. Rather than arcing around the circle they’d formed, lithe and pliable, they bowed as if their blooms were too heavy to hold. The once turgid stems bent over on themselves, close to breaking.

Overnight the new blossoms had wilted. Rot had set in among the petals and crawled along their stalks. All around, fireflies hung in the air, far too early in the day. As the insects made contact with the curling leaves, the plants crumbled to dust.

Addison’s eyes widened in horror.

The garden had been starving. Even when she went searching for River’s pain, she’d felt its need, yet she’d asked it to give back what she’d poured into its soil, the very heartache it relied on to survive. Without it, the plants had flowered quickly, set seed, and died.

“No…” she whispered, turning in a circle. All around her, the garden that had once stood so tall drooped like it would during a heavy rain. The rot hadn’t spread from the sunflowers, but Addison feared it was only a matter of time.

“There has to be something I can do,” she said. “Show me. Please, show me.”

A nearby row of cherry tomatoes tilted toward her, their highest stalks leaning under the weight of a single purple fruit. It dropped off the branch and fell at her feet. Addison crouched to retrieve it. She looked down at the fruit in her hand, and back up at the garden to find that the tomato plant, too, had begun to wither, as if the energy it put into creating just that one fruit had been all it had left to give.

“Another vision?”

The garden leaned closer, waiting.

With a deep breath, she rooted herself in the soil. She buried one hand beneath the earth. The roots met her immediately, eager and hungry, like the night before, but the only pain Addison had to offer them was her own, and that was something a Haywood couldn’t give. Unless…

She popped the tomato between her teeth. The juice sprayed into her mouth with just a hint of dill and garlic. Addison became unmoored. Tears streamed down her face, every dark thought about her family, about herself, multiplied until she thought she might burst.

Addison focused on her own heartache. “Take it,” she said. “I took from you; it’s only fair.”

Black ivy and honeysuckle crawled along the ground and up her ankles. Roots sprouted from the vines and pressed into her like thorns.

One prick.

Another.

Blood dotted her forearms.

Red trailed down her wrists.