You’d been keeping to yourself for longer than you could properly measure—not out of fear, but necessity.

Downworlders tolerated your kind. Sometimes they even found you amusing. The Clave, however, did not share their enthusiasm. According to the Accords, Garden Gnomes were classified as “Lesser Fae-adjacent Creatures,” which sounded far more official—and far more dangerous—than you felt.

Shadowhunters didn’t hate you, exactly. But if a seraph blade went missing or an Institute greenhouse was mysteriously “improved” overnight, suspicion tended to fall in your direction.

And, admittedly, not without reason.

You didn’t steal. Not truly. You repurposed.

A cracked stele left unattended? Reinforced with silver binding wire. A bent practice blade? Straightened and polished. A shattered flowerpot in the Institute courtyard? Reassembled better than before. If an item occasionally migrated from one shelf to another in the process, well—that was simply the price of craftsmanship.

So you stayed beyond the wards of the New York Institute, in the tangled green stretches of Central Park where glamour ran thin and the Veil between worlds shimmered faintly at dusk.

You made your home in shifting places—beneath tree roots near the Bethesda Fountain one week, tucked inside the hollow of a lightning-split oak the next. You moved when patrol routes changed, when warlocks lingered too long, or when Shadowhunters began asking questions.

Tonight, you’d ventured closer to the Institute than usual.

Your patched satchel bumped against your hip as you navigated the rain-darkened underbrush. Inside it clinked your collection: a bent iron nail, half a snapped arrow shaft, a cracked gardening trowel you’d rescued from the Institute’s neglected greenhouse. Useful things. Forgotten things. Things that needed fixing.

The sky growled.

Rain fell without warning—cold and sudden—soaking through your moss-lined cap and turning the forest floor slick as oil. You darted between roots and stone, but one misstep sent you tumbling down a muddy incline in a thoroughly undignified roll.

You landed hard at the base of a shallow ravine, dazed and dripping.

Above, faintly through the rain, you heard voices.

"You felt that too, right?” Isabelle’s tone was sharp, alert.

“It’s not demonic...” Alec replied, bow already drawn. “But something’s moving.”

A tall figure stepped lightly through the trees, boots barely disturbing the wet leaves. Jace Herondale tilted his head, golden eyes narrowing toward the slope you’d just tumbled down.

“I saw it...” He said. “Small. Bright. Definitely not a mundane squirrel.”

Clary Fray brushed rain from her face, squinting through the gloom. “Could it be fae?”

Magnus Bane, who had absolutely not intended to get caught in a downpour tonight, flicked water off the cuff of his coat with visible irritation. His cat eyes gleamed faintly in the dark. “If it is, darling, it’s either lost… or terribly unlucky.”

Your stomach dropped.

Boots crunched closer. The faint hum of a seraph blade activating lit the trees with pale gold light.

You scrambled into the shallow mouth of a narrow stone hollow, pressing yourself against cool rock and clutching your satchel tight. If they’d misplaced anything recently—an arrowhead, perhaps, or that slightly chipped stele—

Well.

You were quite certain Shadowhunters did not appreciate creative repairs performed without permission.

Jace’s voice drifted closer. “It rolled down this way. Not exactly graceful.”

You bristled silently.

A shadow fell across the entrance of your hiding place. Rainwater dripped from the edge of a Shadowhunter boot, inches from your hat.

Your heart hammered in your chest.

You could try to run.

You could try to glamour yourself invisible—though your magic was better suited to coaxing vines than bending light.

Or you could attempt, for once in your life, to explain that you weren’t stealing their belongings.

You were improving them.

And that had never gone particularly well before.