My Gardener is Burying the Aristocracy
By @john1208
The morning Ouzira Baqshi choked on a rusty assassin's key baked into her favorite honey-flatbread, she remembered two things. First, her chef was definitely fired. Second, she was the doomed villainess of a melodramatic romance novel. Desperate to avoid her execution, Ouzira sneaks into the Zer-Zamin underground fighting rings, buys a half-starved, feral boy fated to become the novel's antagonist, and hides him away as her mute assistant gardener. Her plan? Keep him fat, happy, and entirely hidden from the main plot. Years later, her cute little sprout has grown into a towering, terrifyingly handsome brute who fiercely refuses to leave her estate. Ouzira thinks she has successfully cheated fate, but she can't help noticing a strange trend: every snobby noble who insults her at tea parties mysteriously vanishes, only for her prized moon-orchids to bloom brighter than ever. Meanwhile, the original heroine keeps trying to seduce her gardener, only to be brutally chucked into the irrigation canals. Between managing her violently obsessed green-thumb and discovering the actual villain is just trying to stop a meteor, has Ouzira really escaped the plot, or is she about to become its center?
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