When Gardens Speak, Hearts Awaken : The Girl Who Could Hear Flowers
"For the past three years, you have been showering me with tears. Did you really think I wouldn't notice?
Elara Moss led the most unremarkable existence for eighteen years: she was invisible at school, ignored by her affluent adoptive family, and found comfort only in the plants she grows on the ledge of her little apartment and the stray cat she feeds. She didn't think she was unique. She thought she was by herself.
Then, in one cruel night, her entire world collapses.
At their engagement party, her fiancé—the golden boy she has adored since childhood—publicly humiliates her by disclosing that he has been having an affair with her adopted sister for the past two years. Her adoptive parents, who "saved" her from the orphanage, declare that she was merely retained as a backup organ donor for their biological daughter. The sister she had faith in? She planned everything, even giving Elara drugs so she could take compromising pictures that would ruin her reputation.
Elara collapses outside her locked apartment in the rain after losing everything, including her house, savings, and dignity. Something unthinkable occurs when she eventually drags herself inside.
The unkempt alley cat she has been feeding for years changes into a stunningly attractive man with silver eyes and an air of ancient might. The potted plants on her windowsill start to speak like wind chimes, whispering secrets. She is treated like queen by the cherry blossom tree outside her window, which bows its branches to her.
"Finally," the cat-man replies, grinning fiercely and tenderly. "You're awake."
His name is Kieran, and he is a Guardian, an eternal guardian tasked with keeping an eye on the final descendant of the Garden-Speakers—humans born with the capacity to converse with all living things. He had been waiting for eighteen years, living as a cat to be near her, watching her mature, and falling madly in love with the girl who was kind to a "stray" despite her lack of anything.
However, something risky has been set off by Elara's awakening. Her power will be harvested at all costs by the same people that destroyed the Garden-Speakers centuries ago. Her adoption was a trap, not an accident. Her treachery was a ritual intended to crush her spirit and facilitate her arrest; it was not personal.
Elara learns that she is neither weak, unworthy, or ordinary as Kieran shows her how to use her talents. Being able to control nature itself, she is the first Garden-Speaker to be born in three hundred years. The plants she believed she was caring for? In reality, they were shielding her from those who pursue her kind by concealing her power signature.
Elara now has to decide whether to accept her power, stand with Kieran and the secret supernatural community, and retaliate against those who deceived her, or go away and hide and become invisible again.
The timid girl who expressed regret for being alive has vanished. Something strong and lovely emerges in her place—a lady who will make her adversaries regret ever bringing her to tears.
You should never undervalue a female who has the ability to turn roses into thorns, after all.
