AI The air in Richmond Park after midnight carried a chill that seeped straight through Rory’s jacket. She clutched the silver chain of the pendant at her throat, the smooth, thumbnail-sized stone warm against her skin despite the cold. It hadn’t stopped its low, gentle thrum since she’d passed through the park gates, a silent, insistent heartbeat guiding her steps. *Dymas *, the note had said. *The Grove at the witching hour. Come alone.* No signature, just the pendant left in her delivery bag with the scrawled message. Stupid. This was monumentally stupid. Eva would have locked her in the flat if she’d known.
But after Evan, after running, Rory had promised herself she wouldn’t be governed by fear anymore. Only by logic. The logic here was flimsy: an artifact with unknown properties, a mysterious summons to a place that, according to the tales Silas muttered over his whiskey, didn’t obey normal rules. But the pendant’s warmth was a fact. Its pull was a fact. And her own gnawing curiosity, the part of her that had always bucked against the pre-law textbooks and her father’s expectations, was the most undeniable fact of all.
She found the standing stones exactly where the old maps had hinted. They weren’t grand, like Stonehenge, but ancient, gnarled oaks that had grown in a perfect circle, their trunks so thick and twisted they seemed to have petrified into stone. They marked a boundary. The air shimmered faintly between two of them, like heat haze on a summer road. Taking a deep breath, Rory stepped through.
The change was immediate. The city's distant hum, the faint scent of exhaust, the chill of the English night—all vanished. The air in the Fae Grove was thick and still, carrying a perfume of loam and night-blooming flowers. It was warmer, unnaturally so. Above, the sky was a deep, velvety purple, dotted with unfamiliar constellations that gleamed with a cold, sharp light. Wildflowers, vivid blues and blood-reds, bloomed in chaotic profusion around her ankles, though it was late autumn. The silence was the first wrong thing. It wasn’t a peaceful quiet; it was a listening silence , heavy and expectant.
She stood in the center of the clearing, turning slowly . "Hello?" Her voice was swallowed by the oppressive stillness, leaving no echo . The pendant pulsed against her collarbone, a little warmer now. She was here. Now what?
A twig snapped to her left.
Rory froze, her heart kicking against her ribs. She stared into the darkness between the trees that ringed the clearing. Nothing moved. It was probably just an animal. A fox. A badger. Richmond Park was full of them. She forced herself to breathe, to summon that cool-headed logic she prided herself on. *Assess the situation. You are in an unknown location with unknown properties. You were summoned by an unknown party. Maintain position, observe .*
She observed. The flowers seemed to sway, though there was no breeze. A soft rustling sound started, like silk brushing against silk . It came from everywhere and nowhere. Rory’s eyes darted around the edge of the grove, trying to pin down the source. Shadows pooled deeper between the ancient oaks, shifting in ways that felt deliberate. She caught a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision—a tall, slender shape slipping behind a tree. She snapped her head around. Nothing. Just the twisted bark and the clinging darkness.
"Hello?" she called again, her voice tighter this time. "Dymas ? Is that you?"
The rustling stopped. The silence that rushed back in was even heavier, charged now with a sharp, predatory attention. She was being watched. The certainty of it crawled up her spine. This wasn't curiosity anymore. This was a trap. Evan’s face flashed in her mind—not the charming smiles of the beginning, but the cold, possessive glare of the end . The feeling was the same: the gut-deep knowledge of being prey.
*Think, Rory. Out of the box. Always out of the box.*
She focused on the pendant. Its warmth was a constant, a point of reference. It pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm. *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.* Was it her heartbeat? No. It was slower. More deliberate. She held the crimson stone in her palm, its faint inner glow casting a tiny red light on her fingers.
The rustling started again, closer now. It was accompanied by a low, rhythmic clicking, like long nails tapping on stone. It seemed to circle her, just beyond the ring of flowers. Rory turned with it, keeping whatever was making the sound in front of her. Her breath fogged in the warm air, a paradox that made her head spin. Time moved differently here. How long had she been standing here? Five minutes? An hour? A sense of vertigo washed over her. She could be stuck here for days while only minutes passed in London. No one would even know where to look.
Another flicker of movement, this time to her right. She saw it clearly for a fraction of a second: a pale, elongated limb, too thin and too many-jointed to be human, withdrawing into the shadows. It wasn't an animal. The click-clack sound was right behind her now.
She spun around.
Empty space.
Her composure cracked. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She was breathing too fast, on the verge of hyperventilating. *They’re playing with you.* The thought was clear and terrifying. This was a game, and she was the mouse in the maze. The clicking stopped, replaced by a soft, wet sound, like something dragging through damp earth. It was coming from the center of the clearing she had just vacated.
She didn't want to look. But she had to.
Slowly, she turned back.
There, in the trampled flowers where she had been standing, the earth was dark and wet. Something had seeped up from below, a patch of black, viscous mud. As she watched, a single, long-fingered hand, pale as a grub and slick with the same black fluid, emerged from the muck. It flexed, fingers curling and uncurling, feeling the air. Then it slapped down onto the solid ground, digging its claw-like nails into the soil for purchase. It was pulling something else up.
Rory stumbled backward, a choked sound escaping her throat. The pendant burned against her skin, its pulse frantic now, a warning drumbeat. This was wrong. This was all wrong. She hadn’t been summoned for a meeting. She had been summoned as a lure. Or a sacrifice.
The dragging sound intensified. A second hand joined the first, heaving a form up from the impossible patch of earth. A head emerged, hairless, its features indistinct and blurred, like a face seen through warped glass. It had no eyes, just dark, empty sockets that turned toward her.
Run. The command screamed through every nerve in her body. But her feet felt rooted to the spot, trapped by the very flowers that had seemed so beautiful moments before .
The thing pulled its torso free. It was unnaturally tall and thin, its limbs moving with a stuttering, insectile grace. It began to rise, its head cocking at an angle that would have broken a human neck. The clicking sound started again, emanating from its throat. It was a language, she realized with a fresh wave of dread. It was talking .
It took a step toward her, the black mud dripping from its form and sizzling as it hit the flowers, which withered instantly.
Rory’s hand flew to the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit from childhood. The feel of the raised flesh grounded her, a tactile memory of a simple, human injury. This was not human. This was something from the stories Silas told, the ones she’d only half-believed. The Hel-portal. The pendant warmed near a Hel-portal.
She wasn't here to meet Dymas . The pendant had been a key. And she had just unlocked a door.
The creature took another step, its empty sockets fixed on her. It raised one of its long, pale hands, fingers stretching out as if to touch her from across the clearing. The clicking sound formed a single, guttural word that she felt more than heard, a vibration that rattled her teeth.
"Malphora."
Her name. But not her name. A name from a story she didn't know.
With a final surge of will, Rory tore her feet from the clinging ground, spun on her heel, and ran. She didn't look back. She crashed through the ring of flowers, heading for the shimmering boundary between the oak trees. The clicking rose behind her, not in pursuit, but in what sounded like laughter . The wrong, warm air whipped past her face. She could feel the thing’s gaze on her back, a physical pressure, a promise.
She hit the shimmering barrier and fell through, back into the biting cold and the familiar , mundane darkness of Richmond Park. She collapsed onto the frosty grass, gasping, the city lights a distant, beautiful comfort. The pendant at her throat was cool and inert.
But as she pushed herself up, trembling, she saw it. On the cuff of her jacket, a single, crumbling petal from a flower that shouldn't exist, already turning to black dust. And on the wind, faint but unmistakable, the sound of rhythmic , clicking laughter.