AI Rory kept her boots on the path until the grass stopped looking like grass.
Outside Richmond Park, the morning had carried the usual London noise—dogs, cyclists, someone yelling at a pigeon. Between the oaks it turned damp and quiet, as if the air had swallowed its own echo . The ancient standing stones rose ahead, half-buried and lichen-scabbed, their tops shaved flat like blunt teeth.
Nyx drifted at her shoulder, a tall cut-out of night where the light refused to sit. Their violet eyes hung in the dark of their face like embers held under a hand.
“You brought iron on you,” their voice skated over Rory’s ear. “Coins. Keys.”
Rory dug her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out her keyring. The metal looked normal until she held it near the first stone. The keys took on a faint grey sheen, like they’d been dusted with ash.
“Brilliant,” Rory muttered. “I’d love to get home again.”
Nyx’s silhouette rippled, the suggestion of a shrug.
From the other side of the stones, Isolde waited with her silver hair loose down her back, a pale line against the green. She stood barefoot on mud that should have stained her feet. It didn’t. The ground around her held no prints, no scuffs, not even broken blades.
Rory’s hand slid to her left wrist out of habit, thumb brushing the crescent scar. A childhood fall off a garden wall. A normal thing, in a day that had stopped feeling normal.
Isolde’s lavender eyes fixed on Rory like she’d already watched the next ten minutes unfold.
“You came with a shadow and a stone,” Isolde’s mouth shaped the words like she tasted each one first. “So you wanted the door.”
Rory held up the Heartstone Pendant. The crimson gem, no bigger than her thumbnail, pulsed with a warmth that didn’t match the cold air. The silver chain lay across her palm and felt too bright.
“It started doing that on the Tube,” Rory replied. “People stared like I’d brought a hot water bottle for my jewellery.”
Nyx’s face turned a fraction, violet eyes narrowing.
“Hel’s breath,” they murmured. “Close.”
Isolde lifted a hand and traced the edge of the nearest stone without touching it.
“Your world pressed a lid on boiling water,” she went on . “Somewhere, the steam found a crack.”
Rory looked at the stones again. The gaps between them didn’t line up with the trees beyond. The space shimmered , not like heat haze, more like a thin sheet of oil, colours shifting when she moved her head.
“That’s the Veil?” Rory’s throat tightened around the word.
Isolde’s lips curled, not quite a smile .
“Boundary. Barrier. A thing with many names and one job.”
Nyx leaned closer to the shimmer. Their form thinned, edges unravelling into smoke, then re-knotted.
“It watched me once,” they whispered. “I watched it back. Neither blinked.”
Rory swallowed. Her breath fogged, then the fog slid sideways as if a breeze pushed it. She didn’t feel wind.
Isolde stepped between two stones, and the shimmer parted around her like fabric.
“No footprints,” Rory blurted before she could stop herself. “Not even now.”
Isolde looked down at the ground as if it amused her.
“The Grove didn’t like being marked.”
Rory took one step forward. The Heartstone warmed, a slow pulse against her skin. The shimmer licked her knuckles.
Nyx’s shadow-hand brushed Rory’s elbow, light as cobweb. “Eyes open. Mouth shut.”
Rory snorted. “Too late.”
She pushed through.
For a heartbeat, her ears filled with water-sound, a pressure that made her teeth ache. The park smell—wet soil and dog fur—peeled away. Something sweet replaced it, thick as syrup. Her boots hit ground that bounced, not springy like turf, but like skin over muscle .
She staggered a step and caught herself.
Behind her, the stones still stood, but the trees outside looked wrong, stretched long and thin, painted on a backdrop. The gap between stones had narrowed to a slit no wider than a door left on the latch.
Nyx slipped through after her, their form catching on the shimmer. Strands of shadow clung to the edge and tore free with a sound like paper ripping.
Nyx’s eyes flared. Their silhouette steadied.
Isolde stood ahead, patient, as if Rory and Nyx had arrived late to an appointment.
Rory stared around, and her mouth dried.
The clearing held wildflowers in a mess of colours that didn’t belong together—blue that leaned toward violet, red so deep it looked black until the light caught it, white petals edged with a faint green glow. They grew in rings and spirals, patterns carved into the land. Overhead, the sky wore a washed-out gold, like sunlight filtered through old glass. No sun hung anywhere. The light came from everywhere at once, soft but sharp enough to make shadows crisp.
A low hum threaded through it all. Not insects. Not wires. More like a choir held on a single note.
Rory took a slow breath. The air tasted like crushed mint and something metallic.
“Right,” she muttered. “This is… not Richmond Park.”
Nyx turned their head as if listening to the hum . “It breathed.”
Isolde walked forward, bare feet soundless, silver hair swaying. The grass under her didn’t bend.
Rory followed, boots pressing down and leaving deep prints that filled with a faint shimmer, as if the ground resented the mark and tried to heal it.
She looked at her phone. The screen lit, then flickered . The time display stuttered between numbers—10:14, 03:02, 10:14—before it went black.
Nyx’s attention snapped to the dead screen.
“Time liked to play here,” they whispered.
Rory shoved the phone away, pulse thumping in her throat. “Great. Love that for me.”
They moved deeper. The flowers grew taller, brushing Rory’s thighs, and each touch left a cold tingle on her skin through denim. Somewhere to their left, water ran. Rory angled that way without thinking, then stopped when the sound shifted—water that ran uphill.
Isolde’s voice floated back.
“Listen with more than the ears you borrowed.”
Rory picked her way between pale rocks that looked like bone smoothed by the sea . The hum rose and fell as she stepped, responding to her weight . She didn’t like that. She didn’t like anything responding.
Nyx drifted beside her, their shadow spilling across the flowers. Wherever Nyx’s darkness passed, petals curled inward, not dying, just closing like hands.
“The Grove knew you,” Rory muttered at Nyx. “Or it hated you.”
Nyx’s violet eyes turned toward her. “Both things tasted alike.”
Isolde halted near an oak that had no business standing in a clearing like this. Its trunk twisted into a braid, bark pale as old parchment, veins of silver running along it like lightning frozen in wood. Leaves hung in clusters shaped like small moons, each one reflecting the gold sky.
At the base of the oak sat a shallow pool. The water looked black at first glance, then Rory saw stars in it. Not reflections—pinpricks of light that moved like fish.
Rory crouched and stuck two fingers in. Cold bit her skin, sharp enough to sting. The stars scattered from her touch and regrouped around her hand.
Nyx leaned over the pool, their face a darker blot against the dark water.
“Not sky,” they breathed. “Not water.”
Isolde crouched opposite Rory, her knees bending without creak or strain, body light as a thought.
“Wells don’t have to be deep to reach far,” Isolde murmured.
Rory lifted her hand. Droplets clung to her fingers, but they didn’t fall. They hovered, trembling, then drifted back into the pool like they knew the way home.
Rory’s skin prickled. The pendant under her shirt warmed again, a pulse that matched her heartbeat. She tugged it out, letting the gem dangle over the pool.
The Heartstone’s glow brightened from within. The crimson deepened, alive like a coal. Heat rolled off it in small waves that kissed Rory’s palm.
Nyx’s shadow hand snapped out, not touching Rory, hovering close.
“Put it away.”
Rory held it steadier, jaw clenched . “It’s reacting. That’s why we’re here.”
Isolde’s gaze stayed on the pendant, pupils narrowing until her lavender eyes looked like pale glass .
“A hungry place smelled a plate,” Isolde murmured. “And you carried the garnish.”
Rory shot her a look. “That’s helpful. Thanks.”
Isolde’s lips parted, and her next words came slow, as if she sorted them from a pile of sharp objects.
“Hel touched your trinket,” she offered. “Not by accident. Someone wanted you to feel where the Veil thinned.”
Nyx’s violet eyes flashed. “Someone pulled a thread.”
Rory tucked the pendant back under her shirt. The warmth faded to a simmer, but it didn’t disappear. It sat against her skin like a warning label.
She straightened and scanned the clearing. The rings of flowers formed paths, spiralling toward the oak and away again. The bone rocks dotted the ground in clusters that looked placed, not scattered. On one of them, faint markings ran in a band—lines and curves like writing she couldn’t read.
Rory stepped toward that rock and knelt. The markings shifted as she watched, like ink still wet.
Nyx hovered over her shoulder. “Wards.”
Rory reached out, then stopped short. “Like… keep out wards? Or keep in wards?”
Nyx’s shadow rippled. “Both.”
Isolde moved closer, her bare toes hovering an inch above the ground for a moment before they settled again without leaving marks. She traced the air over the band of symbols.
“This stone remembered a promise,” Isolde murmured. “A promise made to stop mouths from opening.”
Rory’s laugh came out dry. “So we’re standing on a magical gag order.”
Isolde’s eyes flicked up. “You lived under law. You knew how words bent.”
Rory felt her stomach clench at that, at Cardiff, at pre-law lectures and her father’s careful voice. She shoved it down and forced her focus back on the rock.
A sound crept in from the edge of the clearing—a soft clicking, like nails tapped against glass.
Nyx turned toward it at once, body thickening, becoming more solid. Their outline sharpened, taller, darker.
Rory rose, hand sliding under her jacket to where the Fae-Forged Blade rested against her ribs. Moonsilver pressed cold through fabric, steady and familiar in a way nothing else here felt.
Isolde watched the tree line without moving. No tension showed in her posture. Her stillness set Rory’s teeth on edge more than panic would have.
The clicking came again, closer. Flowers trembled in a line as something moved through them. The hum shifted key, a subtle bend that made Rory’s ears ring.
Rory kept her voice low.
“Tell me that’s a deer.”
Nyx’s head angled. “No hooves.”
The flowers parted near a cluster of bone rocks, and a creature stepped out on long, jointed legs. It stood as tall as Rory’s chest, its body thin and plated like carved ivory. Its head looked like a mask, smooth and blank until it turned, and a slit opened across its face, revealing a line of pale light within.
It clicked again. The sound came from its legs, not its mouth.
Rory’s grip tightened on the dagger’s hilt under her jacket.
Isolde’s gaze stayed on the creature. Her voice came out calm, almost gentle.
“Don’t run,” she warned. “It counted footsteps .”
Rory froze, boots sunk into the soft ground. She felt the weight of her own prints behind her, each one a mark the Grove had noticed.
Nyx’s shadow spread across the grass, swallowing Rory’s boot prints in darkness, as if they tried to erase her trail. The ground shimmered under that darkness, fighting back.
The creature’s slit of light shifted toward Nyx. The pale line widened, brightening.
Nyx leaned forward, and their voice came out like a knife drawn from cloth.
“Back.”
The creature clicked in a faster rhythm. The flowers around its legs folded shut, petals curling like fists.
Rory pulled the Fae-Forged Blade free. The moonsilver caught the gold light and held it, faintly luminescent, cold enough to numb her palm.
Isolde’s eyes flicked to the blade, then back to the creature.
“A gift carried into a place that hated gifts,” Isolde murmured. “Mind your hands, Rory.”
Rory kept the dagger low, point angled toward the ground, muscles locked.
“Then tell me where to put my bloody hands,” she snapped, eyes fixed on the clicking thing as it took another step into the clearing.