AI The grove didn’t breathe like the rest of Richmond Park. Air held inside it, tight as if the trees kept a secret between them. Wildflowers clung to frostless soil. The ancient oaks leaned together in a rough ring, bark ridged into the shapes of old faces peering at us without eyes.
“You picked a nice time for a stroll,” I muttered, fingers working around the little crimson stone at my throat. The heart-shaped gem pressed heat into my sternum. It beat to a rhythm that belonged to something deeper than my pulse .
Nyx drifted in beside me, their outline present one moment and threaded through the shadows the next. “Midwinter draws the curtain thin. Even you can hear it rustle.”
“Understatement,” I breathed, and the leaves stirred without wind. My voice found no echo between the trees. My jacket rubbed quiet over the Fae blade at my hip; the dagger lay cold against my side, a sliver of winter where the grove refused to host any.
We stepped between the oaks. A shimmer passed right before us, a smear of oil over air. I felt it in my teeth first, a buzz like a tuning fork against the roots of my molars.
“Anything trying to eat us on the other side?” I adjusted the strap of the bag slung across my chest. Practical habits died hard.
“Everything,” Nyx breathed, if you could call that breath . Their eyes shed a faint violet, like bruised dusk. “Not you, not yet. You are not on their list. It upsets them.”
“You say the most comforting things.” The pendant warmed . In my palm it pulsed , a trapped heartbeat. I lifted it, and the air thinned like tissue that had held too long against a blade. The shimmer thickened into a veil. I could almost see threads fretting at the edge.
“Mortal hands don’t open such doors,” Nyx murmured.
“Lucky I’m not only mortal tonight.” The Fae blade’s warmth would have been a lie; it stayed a shard of ice against my skin as I pressed the pendant forward. Heat bled out of the stone and into the tear. A seam brightened, hardly there and then there the way pain arrives: all at once.
The grove dimmed. Amber light seeped through like tea through muslin. One heartbeat, then two, then I stepped into my own reflection pulled inside out.
My foot hit ground that had never known a Cardiff rain. The sky hung warm and shallow above us, an inverted bowl of old honey. Vines clambered up bones of ruined pergolas, swelled with fruit so fat the skins shone like gems. Grapes the size of my fist beaded with sugar that didn’t melt. Pears drooped from branches in glistening tiers. The smell hit with a friendly fist—smoke and stone-baked crust, nectar, char, fat rendered into air. It went for the gut with both hands.
“Welcome to a place that answers appetites,” Nyx whispered, and their voice seemed to make the vines stiffen and listen.
I lifted my hand away from my chest. The Heartstone blushed brighter under the amber, throbbing as if it recognised home. Sweat slicked my palm and slicked the chain, but the stone held to my skin as if grown there.
“Oh,” I managed. I pressed my tongue to my front teeth and tasted salt and wine that hadn’t touched my lips. “This is...”
I didn’t finish. The word on my tongue didn’t deserve this place. A canal stretched away between rows of glassy-stemmed trees. The water inside flowed the colour of spun gold, thick and slow. Little boats made of pastry leaves bobbed along, crisp and unsinkable. Far off, a bell chimed twice. Voices rose under the air—chants that begged flame to behave, knives to remember their work, dough to rise as if it loved the hand that laid it down.
Nyx’s outline sharpened. Their shadow gathered like a cloak around them. “Don’t drink, Carter.”
“You always bring a party.” My breath fogged only when I looked at the honey sky too long. Each exhale flashed white as meringue sugar then fell to the ground and vanished. “Where?” I shifted my weight . The ground gave a beat, like something old and content under a pile of quilts.
They lifted one hand, long fingers at the edge of there, and pointed into a grove where the trees had braided their trunks into archways. “Deep. The taste you carry knows the path.”
“So we’re following my necklace?” I eased forward. The soil muffled even more than London snow; it took my steps and pressed them flat so sound would not offend the appetite of the sky.
“The stone is a promise cut into crystal . Promises have gravity.”
“I wake up to breakfast and philosophy.” I forced a breath past a chest that tightened. The pendant heated in pulses that matched the bell. It tugged the chain. A gentle hand at the sternum. “Fine. Let’s go.”
We moved along a row where vines crept over trellis frames of old iron. The metal had been bent into shapes—forks, knives, spines of fish. Leaves snagged my sleeve but shed instantly, embarrassed to have reached. Fruit swung low like the heads of animals at a fence.
A grape brushed my cheek. The skin thinned like the inside of a lip and then snapped back when I ducked. Juice broke out in a clear bead. It smelled like childhood summers I never had .
“Don’t,” Nyx warned. The word crawled into my ear and cooled. Their gaze fixed on the bead; the violet in their eyes deepened like a bruise. “If you take, you must give. They always hunger for your return, not your bite.”
“I’m not here to make friends.” I touched the blade at my side. Numbness had crept into the pad of my thumb. It helped. Cold pushed clean order through the sticky hunger.
We crossed under the first of the arches. The trunks had folded into each other, bark wrinkled into mouths that didn’t open. Runes had been burned into the wood. Not letters I knew, but you didn’t need translation to feel what they meant —knife-edge promises, oaths that weighed like cast iron pans. The air thinned. I stepped and my balance tilted; for a breath the world angled like a tray on a waiter’s palm.
“Time doesn’t pass here the way it does back home,” I murmured, and heard how my voice caught on the wrong syllable.
“Don’t carry time into this. It breaks here.” Nyx slid ahead of me, and their shadow hit the arch and went up it like water racing a dry wall. On the far side, colours shifted. The amber sky stayed the same, but green went deeper while blue withdrew. The smell doubled. Beneath roast and sugar, a dark tang threaded through. Copper, old coins whirled in a fountain.
We emerged into a clearing where tables had grown from the ground. Wood ran smooth, slabs of cedar and olive polished by hands that never got tired. Traces of feasts covered them—salt flakes scattered like stars, bones picked clean and laid in spirals, sauces scumbled into maps of forgotten coasts. At the tables, no one sat, but chairs pulled themselves back as if in beckoning. Flicker of movement at the edge of sight—knives turning their flat sides to look. Spoons nesting with other spoons for whisper .
“I don’t like eating with things that have opinions.” My boots stuck briefly. I looked down and saw that a film had formed over the earth, thin as a glaze on a doughnut, and it softened under my weight .
“Opinions feed appetite,” Nyx murmured. They stooped over a platter carved with scenes of harvest. “This has been used. Again and again, and never washed.”
A little laugh shook loose in my chest and startled me. “House-proud, this isn’t.”
“Waste is outside. Nothing leaves until the taste leaves your tongue.” They straightened, and their arm blurred as if someone had dragged a paintbrush through smoke. “Don’t put anything in your mouth. Don’t speak the name of the ruler. Names fix you. Walking keeps you moving.”
“I didn’t plan to drop any princely titles,” I shot back, though my gaze had already been caught by a seal pressed into the wood . A sigil had been burned there—three stomachs linked by a loop through a crown. A hint of a smile in the curve of the line. It looked like a cat’s contentment right before the butcher’s block. “Neat logo.”
We moved on. The path knuckled under our boots into cobbles made of pits and seeds lacquered into stone. The trees changed. Their bark turned glossy and white, like bones after a boil. Fruit here grew stranger. Skins freckled like fish eggs in smears of scarlet. Pears bore teeth around their stems. A hulking squash lay at the path’s edge and cracked as we passed, and steam unfurled. Voices spilled out with it—soft, wounded moans that shaped numbers. A recipe counted itself and failed to finish.
Gooseflesh prickled over my arms. “I preferred the grapes.”
“You preferred the first course.”
A bird tripped out of the undergrowth and pecked at my boot. It wore a collar made of braided sugar, hard sparkling threads that bit into its throat where it had fattened beyond the maker’s expectation. It tilted its head. No eyes. It turned its whole skull to watch me. A spurt of red jelly shook at the corner of its beak.
“Hey,” I whispered, my tongue damp . “No.”
It took a hop, opened its mouth as if to sing, and poured a liquid onto my boot that smoked as it hit. Sugar acid. Then it hurried toward the table where a plate waited, white and smug in its emptiness. The plate vibrated as the bird neared, a hum that made the hairs in my ear want to flatten.
“We’re leaving this bit.” I shuffled sideways, avoided a slither of sauce that hadn’t been there a second before. The pendant yanked me right. The chain caught on my jacket zip. “Honestly.”
Nyx flowed with me. Here the world hated their shadow. It tried to peel their presence off the ground; their edges fought to hold. Their voice thinned. “Your stone begs for the kitchens.”
“Of course it does.” I kept walking. The path narrowed into a trench of hedges, but the leaves had been blanched like almonds. They cracked when I brushed them and released a smell like burnt sugar caught in a pan. On the other side, sound swelled—the bell again, quick strokes now, and the rattle of lids coming to a boil.
We broke into a field of ovens. Great domes of black stone rose from the soil, mouths gaping red. Flames inside behaved. They came in curls and ribbons, not haphazard. They broke and reformed in patterns that looked like old alphabets and then like women’s hair loosened from pins. Between them walked figures with skin matte as flour. Their eyes reflected nothing. They moved with a briskness that came from muscle long trained in doing the same work forever. Each wore an apron that bore the same sigil as the table. No chains. No whips. No laughter. The sound of knives landing on board, the thudding percussion of it, set a drumbeat over the bell.
One turned when we came near an open mouth of an oven. The heat should have blistered us. Instead it licked. A welcoming dog.
“You’re not on the service,” the figure noted, voice scraped thin from sucking the bone clean too often . Their mouth smiled. The skin around their eyes didn’t move. “Customers don’t walk.”
“We’re not ordering,” I replied, and my tongue fought to shape the words. It wanted to ask for roast heart, for peaches boiled in spice wine, for clockwork birds filled with foie mousse. I locked my jaw. The blade at my hip burned with cold, a needle back into mind. I tilted my body so they could see the moonsilver hilt peeking over my belt. “We’re finding something that belongs to me.”
“Everything here belongs to him.” Their attention dragged to the Heartstone; they shut their mouth hard enough that the edges of their smile cut lines into their cheeks. “Some gifts buy appetite that can’t be paid.”
Nyx stepped nearer to the oven mouth. Heat flowed over their outline, made it tremble. “We won’t be long.”
“Every long here shortens you.” The cook turned back to their work. Their knife flashed. Fruit fell into even coins that could have slipped into a cash drawer.
We threaded through domes that exhaled spice and meat. Copper pots hung from racks grown out of the soil like antlers. Broth burbled inside. It turned thick in the middle into a gel that held the reflection of a face. Not my face. A boy’s, hair stuck to his head with sweat, mouth open to shout a name he had forgotten.
“Keep going,” I muttered, because stopping let the smells find leverage. It let memories step in and put their hands on my shoulders and urge me to sit and try and taste and sleep.
The Heartstone thudded like a little drum. It dragged me past a bank of counters where bakers rolled dough that kissed their palms and asked to be folded again. One of them blew flour into the air in a puff that froze and hung as a cloud. They reached up and plucked it down in strands that they braided into rope. Those ropes already shaped railings along steps that led down.
The steps gave way into a hall carved under the ovens. The stone went glossy and black as if tongues had polished it. Sconces burned beef tallow and released a smell solid enough to lean on. My feet stuck. When I tore them up, strings stretched from sole to stone and snapped with a little tchk that felt like biting into toffee .
“If we fall, don’t catch me with your shadow,” I grated. My own voice made my gums itch.
“I can’t catch you here. Only hunger can.” Nyx kept a hand a fraction behind my elbow, not touching. Their eyes gathered all the poor light and made it slither down their irises.
The hall opened into a room so wide the far wall hid under its own heat haze. The ceiling ran with carvings of wheat and mouths. Cauldrons the size of lorry tyres lined the centre. They didn’t sit on stands. They grew like mushrooms right from the floor. A wind moved through the room but came from inside the cauldrons, not outside; it brought the smell of marrow and pear brandy. Chains hung overhead like chandeliers. Their links were made of baked bread, dunked hard enough they’d never crumble.
At the end of the room, an altar—or maybe a countertop—that had been worn smooth by offerings. On it, a knife had been stuck upright into a butcher’s block. The blade pulsed with a dull ember. My pendant answered; it flared a deep red and pulled so hard the chain cut under my collarbone.
“That,” I breathed, and my throat tightened on the simple word. “It’s calling.”
“Put your stone away,” Nyx murmured, but even their whisper sounded fed. They had to force each sibilant.
“It’s telling me where to go.” I walked toward the block. Heat rose from the floor. It wanted to encourage the blood to surface. I could feel my scar on my left wrist—an old crescent from a childhood bike accident—begin to throb , pale ridge warming.
I reached the block and stopped. The knife’s hilt had been carved from something that had once been bone and turned to ivory under long handling. The pommel looked like a pomegranate seed in amber . Words had been nicked into the surface, not in our alphabet. I knew, the way you know a street by smell, that if I prised it free and turned it, the room would answer.
“Don’t touch,” Nyx urged, softer . The distance between us had thickened. It felt like sticky caramel strung between people at a fair, web fine and clinging.
“If I don’t, we came for a look.” My hand lifted. The Fae blade at my hip cooled the rest of my body so my fingers didn’t shake. The pendant hammered. Under the heartstone’s pressure, my ribs felt like old wood .
I didn’t reach for the knife. I set my palm flat on the counter to feel its life. The wood gave under my hand the way your own stomach gives under someone’s palm—moving, aware. A tremor passed through the room, little shivers up the legs of the cauldrons, a quiver of ladles in their crooks.
“Carter.”
“Listen.” I bent. Didn’t press my ear to it because the idea of the wood touching my face made bile push. I crouched and tilted. The counter held a voice. Not one voice. Many. The throb translated into syllables I couldn’t parse. But the tone was the same as a child calling a dog to the table with something good behind their back.
I looked up. Across the room, dark tracked along the floor like spilled molasses. It ran against the light instead of with it. The stuff crept toward us, not fast, not slow, with a patience that meant no hurry was required.
Nyx’s voice tight-rope walked between panic and training. “Rory.”
“I see it.” I rose. The blade at my hip felt like a piece of night broken off and pressed into metal. I drew it. Cold climbed from the hilt into my knuckles, into my bones. The moonsilver caught the amber light and turned it into a colour I didn’t have a name for. The air around the blade hissed and bruised darker.
“That won’t cut appetite.” Nyx drifted sideways, putting their almost-hand between me and the oncoming dark. “It cuts what wants to hold you.”
“Everything here wants to.” I lifted the dagger. The shape felt right in my hand—not comfortable, but honest . My breath steadied without effort. “We’re not staying for dinner.”
Laughter rolled under the ceiling carvings. Not from a throat. From steel on steel, from lids clanging on pots, from ladles banging each other in spite. I had the strangest feeling that the room cheered for whoever fed it best.
The dark lapped at my boot. It smelled like blown-out candles and stomach acid. I moved my foot before it could taste my laces. The Heartstone beat and beat and beat against my chest, every pulse in time with something I could not see and didn’t want to.
“We go now,” Nyx whispered, and the ovens above us breathed in and waited.