AI The air broke around them like a soap bubble.
Rory stumbled as stone vanished under her boots and something warm and thick wrapped round her ankles. For a heartbeat she thought of water, then the sensation thinned and her weight settled on spongy ground.
She blinked.
The sky glowed amber, not like sunset, more like light filtering through a barrel of ale. No sun, no clouds. Just an endless honey-coloured vault, slow and viscous, as if it might drip.
Her Heartstone burned against her collarbone.
“Tell me that’s normal,” she muttered.
Nyx unfolded beside her, shadow stretching and then knitting into a taller, vague outline of a person. The edges of their form shimmered , as if they borrowed their outline from nearby shade.
“For here?” Their voice moved through the air like wind through keyholes. “Normal enough.”
Rory pushed hair from her eyes and turned in a slow circle.
Rows of vines rose around them in terraces, climbing a slope that had not existed in the London basement a breath ago. The vines grew thick as arms, braided round black trellises that pulsed faint red, like iron in a forge. Clusters of fruit hung heavy from the branches. Grapes, almost. Each one glowed from within, tiny lanterns in shades of scarlet and gold. Their skins barely held together, ready to burst.
The smell hit next.
Sugar thickened in the air. Fermenting sweetness. Roasted nuts. Spices she knew from Yu-Fei’s kitchen, star anise and cardamom and something darker that brushed the back of her throat like smoke.
Her stomach clenched.
“I walked us through a doorway under Holborn,” Rory said. “Should’ve opened into tunnels. This looks like… Napa after a nuclear incident.”
Nyx’s head tilted toward the sky.
“Dymas welcomes you, Aurora Carter.”
The name settled into her like a stone through water.
“So we’re actually in Hel.”
“We stand where the hungry never sleep.” A smile traced their not-quite-face . “Step careful. Everything here expects to be tasted.”
Rory curled her fingers round the Heartstone pendant. The tiny crimson gem sat hot as a coal in her palm. Its inner glow beat in slow rhythm, almost like a pulse .
It had never shone this bright.
“Heartstone likes it,” she said.
“It remembers home.”
She snorted.
“Good for it.”
The ground beneath her boots gave under her tread, not mud, not sand. She crouched and scraped at it. Dark, loamy soil stained her fingertips. Grains glittered inside it, not mica, not quartz. When she pinched some between thumb and forefinger and lifted it to the light, tiny shapes caught her eye. Rounded bits of white, some with ridges, some with sockets.
Teeth. Fragments of them. Hundreds, crushed fine into the earth.
Rory straightened too fast. Her knees bumped a low plant that had escaped the neat rows. Its leaves curled at her touch, then uncurled again like something that had just woken.
“Lovely décor,” she muttered.
Nyx glided along the nearest trellis. Where their hand passed, the shadow on the vine thickened. The grapes under it swelled.
“They built this from what mortals bring.” Their fingers brushed a fruit . It quivered . “Contracts. Oaths. Indulgence. It composts well.”
A breeze walked through the vineyard. Leaves rustled, though there was no clear source for the wind. With it came distant sound. Metal striking metal in quick, precise rhythm. A murmur like a crowded room behind a wall. A wordless chorus of voices caught between pleasure and strain.
Rory’s skin goosepimpled.
“I thought you said this would be a quiet recon,” she said.
Nyx’s shoulders rose.
“Quiet compared to a festival.”
“Reassuring.”
She picked a gap between two rows and started up the slope. The soil sank under each step, then firmed again once her boot lifted. Vines brushed her sleeves. Some shifted away, like polite people in a crowd. Others reached. One tendril snagged her coat cuff. She yanked free. Drops of clear sap beaded on the broken bit of plant, then clumped together, thickening into a perfect sugar pearl.
Her mouth filled with saliva.
She dug out the silver Fae blade from the inside of her jacket instead.
The moonsilver metal drank the warm light and threw it back as a cold sheen. It chilled her palm, a clean, razor winter inside this suffocating harvest.
Nyx watched the weapon with interest.
“You honour Isolde,” they murmured.
“I honour not getting eaten,” Rory replied. “Or whatever the hospitality package looks like here.”
They moved higher.
The rows of vines broke apart at the crest of the hill. Beyond lay an orchard. Trees stretched in every direction, branches heavy with fruit that never existed on any market stall in London. Some hung like translucent pumpkins, veins glowing gently in their flesh. Others looked like clusters of pomegranates fused into a single swelling globe. Colours bled from deep wine into milk-white.
She walked under the nearest bough. A fruit hung at her eye level, no bigger than a child’s head, skin thin as membrane. Shapes shifted under it. Not seeds. Not pulp. For a second a face surfaced in it, nose pressed to the inside like a swimmer at glass. The features blurred. It became another face. Then another.
She stepped back till bark pressed between her shoulder blades.
“You see that?”
Nyx’s gaze moved to the fruit.
“Memories,” they breathed. “Or moments. This soil eats lives and grows them back as courses.”
Of course it did.
The sound of metal on metal grew louder. Something else slid under it. Wet stirring. Boiling. Knives chopping so fast they blurred into a hum.
Rory followed the noise.
A path emerged between the trees. Not a real path. Just a place where nothing grew, as if feet had worn a passage long ago and the land never forgot. The soil there darkened to almost black, glossy and slick. The scent changed as they stepped onto it. Less sweetness. More fat. More char. A hint of burnt sugar, like caramel left too long on the heat.
She pushed deeper.
Orchard gave way to garden. The plants changed from fruiting to flowering. Blooms climbed over stone arches. Petals took the shapes of tongues, curled in mid-lap. Others spiralled into funnels, brimming with viscous nectar that slid down inside at a slow, stubborn pace. Bees worked the flowers, or things that at first looked like bees . Tiny bodies of glass, wings like thin knives. They cut through the heavy air with sharp, clear tones.
Rory angled her hand to keep the pendant covered. Its heat increased until it almost hurt.
“We’re close to something,” she muttered.
Nyx drifted closer to her shadow, their edges thinning where they overlapped her feet.
“You came here for close,” their voice whispered near her ear. “Your stone knows the way.”
“Next time I’m getting a map.”
The garden opened without warning.
One moment she walked between arches, the next her boot hit the rim of a wide terrace. She threw out a hand and caught a cold iron rail.
The world dropped away.
Tier upon tier of land fell below them like the inside of an amphitheatre, each ring lined with more gardens and orchards and little courtyards. At the centre, where the ground levelled, stood a complex of buildings low and sprawling, their roofs a patchwork of copper domes and chimneys. Steam poured from them, white and grey and tinted pink in places. Smoke stacks rose like organ pipes, some straight, some curved in strange, elegant arcs. The heart of a city built around a kitchen.
The noise rolled up from below. Sizzles. Roars of fire fed new fuel. The constant clash of tools. Under it all, a song of voices. Not singing, not quite, but rhythm and repetition, like prayers recited over stoves.
Rory gripped the railing till the metal dug into her palms.
“Fucking hell,” she breathed.
Nyx leaned over the drop, arms spread.
“Welcome to the kitchens of Belphegor.”
Shapes moved on the central plaza roof. Tiny from this height. Some walked on two legs. Others scuttled. Carts rattled along narrow paths between buildings, wheels squealing. Above the dome nearest them, a fountain jetted. Not water. A red stream arced into the amber air, broke into droplets, then fell back in steady rain. Whenever the light caught a drop, it flashed transparent and she saw something inside it—a table, a pair of hands, a loaf torn open—before it vanished in the pool.
“Wine?” she asked.
Nyx’s gaze tracked one fall of droplets.
“Blood of promise. Poured special for the prince’s table. You would not enjoy the aftertaste.”
She edged away from the rail.
“What now?”
“You wished to learn if your benefactor walks these halls.” Nyx gestured toward a flight of steps cut into the side of the terrace. “No one sends Heartstone to a mortal for kindness alone. If its warmth bites, then the hand that gave it lies close to its well.”
“Heartening.”
She took the stairs down.
They spiralled along the inner curve of the terraces, with no guardrail on the open side. The drop yawned. On some levels, other paths branched out, leading to side gardens and courtyards. She caught glimpses with each turn.
On one terrace, an entire row of tables lay set, stretching from one end to the other. Platters piled high with meats turned slowly over braziers without any visible flames, juices dripping into channels cut into the stone. The liquid flowed together and ran to a basin at the far end where creatures clustered, their bodies round and sleek, mouths fringed with feelers. They dipped, drank, swelled till their skins looked ready to split, then scuttled away on too many legs.
On another, a series of troughs held dough that rose and fell with a slow breathing rhythm. Hands reached out from the dough, fingers pushing against the surface, then subsided back into it. Faces pressed up and dissolved.
Her hand tightened round the Fae blade.
“We keep moving,” she muttered.
Nyx’s presence hovered at her back.
“You grow pale, Rory.”
“You don’t.”
“I do not bleed heat. Different design.”
“Helpful.”
They passed a terrace where the air felt cooler. A grove of silver-leaved trees filled the space, trunks slender, their bark gleaming like polished pewter. From each branch hung chains. At the end of each chain, a man or woman dangled. Some dressed in kitchen whites, some in gowns and suits from centuries of fashion. They slept, or looked like it . Chests rose and fell. Lips parted.
Under them, impish figures busied themselves with notebooks and ladles. Thick tubes ran from the dreamers’ mouths down into vats. The liquid that dripped from the tubes changed colour from vat to vat—cream, amber, green, inky blue.
A splash of emerald struck a surface and erupted into the smell of mint and lamb and charred thyme.
Rory nearly missed a step.
“Are those—”
“Recipes,” Nyx answered before she finished. “Inspiration. Memory. Taste pulled from the sleeping to feed the prince’s new menus. Sacrifice comes in many garnishes.”
Her gorge rose.
She fixed on the steps and kept going.
The sound of the kitchens swelled with each circle. Heat climbed the shaft, carrying spice and salt and the metallic tang of blood. Sweat broke out at the nape of her neck. Her Heartstone throbbed hot as if it absorbed the whole furnace and radiated it through her bones.
At last the stair spat them out onto the lowest level, mere yards from the complex of copper roofs.
Up close, the buildings were stranger. No straight lines, no neat right-angled corners. Walls bulged like rising bread. Windows drooped into graceful ovals. Doors yawned wide, mouths rimmed with carved reliefs of feasts and famines. One lintel showed hands reaching up from empty plates. Another showed a king crowned in cutlery.
Rory wiped her palms on her jeans. The fabric stuck to her skin.
“Any advice?” she asked.
Nyx glided till their shadow wrapped half over the doorway, half over her boots.
“Do not eat,” their voice brushed. “Do not accept. Do not confess hunger.”
Rory’s stomach chose that moment to growl.
Perfect.
She blew out a breath, rolled her shoulders back, and stepped under the carved knives and spoons.
Sound hit first. A roar. Pans, cleavers, laughter edged with strain. The clang of a hundred ovens flung open and slammed shut. Voices barked orders in languages she half recognised and ones that rolled like the crackle of fire.
Heat rolled over her next, thick as a physical thing.
The corridor they entered curved, its ceiling low enough that she could touch it if she lifted a hand. Copper pipes ran along both walls, sweating. Some carried steam, some thick liquids that crawled along the metal like molten sugar, slow and sticky. Valves hissed. Occasionally one spat a drop. Where it hit the floor, tiny sprouts shot up—herbs, mostly, basil and rosemary and something she couldn't name, leaves edged in gold.
Her Heartstone blazed.
Light leaked from ahead, not the amber of the sky but a harsher glow, broken by flickers .
“Main line,” Nyx murmured behind her. “Hearth hall.”
She counted her breaths and followed the curve.
At the end of the corridor, the space opened into a wide chamber. Ovens lined the far wall, stacked three, four high, mouths gaping. Flames burned in them, white at the base, coloured at the tips—blue, green, violet—turning the bricks around them iridescent. Hanging racks crowded the ceiling, hooks bearing everything from carcasses to delicate glass globes that steamed within.
In the centre, islands of worktops spread in neat rows. Knives moved over them. Chopping, slicing, mincing. Some rested in human hands, quick and precise. Others floated, their blades a blur in the air, guided by nothing she could see.
The workers moved with the calm of those trapped in one task long enough that their bodies knew every inch of it. Some looked human. Some did not. Horns, extra arms, translucent skin traced through with glowing veins. All wore aprons, splattered and stained in beautiful patterns.
No one glanced up at their arrival.
Rory swallowed and stepped onto the flagstones. Heat hit her through the soles of her boots, rising, seeping.
A narrow gap opened between two prep stations. She slid through. A tray shot past her shoulder, borne by an invisible hand, plates rattling. On each lay a slice of something that looked like cake, except the layers shifted as if alive, colours pulsing in the sponge.
A tall figure loomed at her left, sleeves rolled to the elbow, knife chopping so fast his hand blurred.
“You’re in the way,” he snapped without looking.
She leapt aside.
“Sorry.”
He grunted and kept on, sweat dripping from his fringe into the mound of herbs under his blade. Each drop hissed on contact, turning into a tiny puff of bright green smoke.
Nyx slipped through unseen, their form flattening, then re-forming in each patch of shadow cast by swaying pots and swinging hooks.
Rory caught their whisper at her ear again.
“Feel it?”
She did.
Under the ovens’ roar, under the workers’ rhythm, the pulse of the Heartstone matched something in the room. A beat. Slow, deep. Not a heart. Bigger. Somewhere below their feet, down under the hearths and foundations, something answered her pendant with each throb of heat.
Her jaw clenched .
“Down?” she asked.
“Deeper,” Nyx breathed.
She looked past the hustle of the main floor.
At the far side of the hall, behind the last row of ovens, an archway framed a set of stairs that led down into glowing dark. Gold light pulsed up the stairwell in lazy breaths. Each inhale lit the underside of the arch with patterns of curling vines and feasting mouths. Each exhale dimmed them again.
Her Heartstone beat a fraction faster, as if it had found the rhythm it wanted and strained toward it.
Rory shifted her grip on the Fae blade, cold slicing clean through the heat in her palm.
“Right,” she muttered. “Let’s see what Home wants from me.”
She stepped into the flow of kitchen workers, angling toward that arch and the breathing gold below.