AI The air tasted of honey and overripe plums, thick enough to chew. Aurora Carter blinked, her eyes struggling to adjust. One moment, she’d been stepping through the shimmering distortion behind a dumpster in a Soho alley, the Heartstone at her throat pulsing like a second heartbeat. The next, this.
The sky was a warm, impossible amber, cloudless, lit by no visible sun. It cast everything in a perpetual, golden hour glow. Beneath her feet, the ground wasn’t earth but a springy, moss-like carpet in shades of burgundy and bronze, and it released a sweet, herbal scent with every step.
“Well,” Nyx’s voice was a rustle of dry leaves at her shoulder, a whisper that seemed to come from the long shadows stretching behind them. Their solid form, a humanoid silhouette of living darkness, seemed denser here, the faint violet glow of their eyes more pronounced against the amber wash . “This is not Richmond Park.”
“I think we established that when the oak trees started singing,” Rory muttered, her own voice sounding too sharp, too human in the soft air.
Ahead, Isolde Varga moved without a sound. Her silver hair was a waterfall of mercury down her back, and her pale lavender eyes scanned the horizon. She left no footprints in the crimson moss. “Dymas,” she said, the single word hanging like a bell’s chime. “The realm of Gluttony. The stories do not do the… saturation… justice.”
They stood at the edge of a decline, looking out over a valley that stretched into a hazy, golden distance. It was a landscape of cultivated madness. Vines heavy with grapes the size of apples coiled around trees that seemed to grow both peaches and glossy, purple peppers from the same gnarled branches . In the distance, rows of plants shimmered with leaves of silver and gold. The air buzzed, not with insects, but with a low, harmonious hum, as if the very plants were vibrating in contentment.
“It’s beautiful,” Rory admitted, the cool-headed part of her warring with a sudden, primal urge to run down the slope and bury her face in the nearest fruit-laden bush.
“It is hungry,” Isolde corrected, her tone flat . “Beauty is its lure. Do not eat anything. Do not drink. Not a single berry, not a drop of dew. The contract is binding.”
Rory’s hand went to the Fae-forged blade at her hip, its moonsilver hilt cold and reassuring against her palm. The cold was a shock in the enveloping warmth . “You said the rift would be near the center. Where the indulgence is most concentrated.”
“The heart of the feast is where the Prince holds court. We will find our door there, or we will not find it at all.”
They began their descent. The path was not a path, but a natural channel between towering, fragrant shrubs . The smells changed every few paces—one moment the sharp zest of citrus, the next the deep, earthy scent of baking bread, then the cloying sweetness of caramelized sugar. It was overwhelming. Rory’s stomach growled, a traitorous sound.
“The air itself is a temptation,” Nyx observed, their form flickering at the edges . “It whispers to the mortal form. To memory. Can you hear it?”
Rory strained. Beneath the hum, there were now faint echoes —the sizzle of garlic in a wok from Yu-Fei’s kitchen, the buttery scent of her mother’s shortbread, the yeasty promise of the pub below her flat. Her mouth watered.
“Ignore it,” Isolde said, but even her ethereal voice held a note of tension .
They passed a stream where the water ran the color of rich claret, chuckling over smooth, chocolate-brown stones. Figures moved in the terraced fields beyond. At first, Rory thought they were humans, but their movements were too precise, too rhythmic . As one turned, she saw its eyes were empty wells of darkness, its face a mask of serene, blank dedication as it pruned a vine with bone-white shears. A helbound soul.
“Don’t stare,” Nyx whispered, a tendril of shadow briefly obscuring Rory’s view . “Their torment is their focus. You are an interruption.”
The valley floor opened into a vast, circular plaza paved with iridescent tiles that shifted from pearl to opal with each step. At its center stood a structure that defied logic—a grand pavilion woven entirely from living, fruiting vegetation. Archways of braided grapevines led into a shadowy interior, and colossal, heart-shaped leaves formed a roof dripping with bunches of dark berries.
Around the plaza, silent, focused activity reigned. More helbound souls, their features blurred as if seen through a heat haze, worked with frantic care. One polished already-gleaming copper pots with a cloth that sparked with tiny lights. Another knelt by a fire pit, turning a spit where a creature Rory couldn’t identify—something with iridescent scales and too many wings—roasted, its skin crackling with a sound like parchment and rain. The smells coalesced into a single, potent wave of desire . Rory’s knees felt weak.
“The feast hall,” Isolde breathed. “The rift will be inside. A permanent gateway, maintained for the import of… delicacies.”
A figure emerged from a vine-arch. He was tall, dressed in robes of deep saffron and cream, his face round and genial. But his eyes were like two chips of black flint, and when he smiled, his teeth were small, sharp, and perfectly even. He moved with a disturbing, fluid grace, his gaze sweeping over them and lingering on Isolde.
“Wayward guests,” he said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone that somehow carried over the plaza’s hum. “The feast is not for some hours yet. The Prince does enjoy punctuality.”
Isolde stepped forward, her chin high. “We seek no feast, steward. We are merely travelers, passing through.”
The steward’s smile didn’t waver. “All who come to Dymas seek the feast, whether they know it or not. The aroma guides them. The promise sustains them.” His black eyes flicked to Rory. “And you, little mortal. You smell of city smoke and human fear. And… something else. A borrowed trinket.” His gaze dipped to the pulsing Heartstone.
Rory forced her hand away from it. “We’re leaving. We just took a wrong turn.”
“There are no wrong turns here,” the steward chuckled, a sound like fat bubbling in a pan . “Only choices. You may wait, and partake when the horn sounds. Or you may leave the way you came.” He gestured vaguely back toward the valley. “The wild groves are… less hospitable to uninvited flesh.”
He didn’t move to stop them, but his presence was a blockade. The helbound souls had paused in their tasks, their blank faces now turned toward the group. The silence was sudden and absolute, broken only by the pop of grease in the fire pit.
Nyx’s form seemed to drain the warm light from the air around them, coalescing into a more solid, protective darkness beside Rory. “We require a moment to confer,” they hissed, the wind-whisper voice slicing the thick air.
The steward gave an elaborate, mocking bow. “By all means. The first course is still in the ovens.” He turned and glided back into the pavilion, the living vines parting for him without a sound.
The moment he was gone , the frantic activity resumed, louder now, more intense.
“He knows,” Rory said, her voice low .
“He suspects,” Isolde corrected. “He is bound by the laws of hospitality, even here. He cannot directly harm uninvited guests until they break a rule. But he will watch. He will herd.”
“The rift is in there,” Nyx stated, their violet gaze fixed on the dark archway. “I can feel the draft from between realms. It is a tear in the Veil, stitched open by gluttonous intent.”
Rory looked from the ominous pavilion to the sprawling, deceptive beauty of the valley. “So our choices are: walk into the lion’s den, or get lost in a sentient forest that probably wants to eat us.”
“The groves are not sentient,” Isolde said. “They are merely… persuasive. The den, however, contains the lion. And his teeth are very real.”
Rory’s fingers brushed the cold moonsilver of her dagger. The Heartstone throbbed against her chest, a steady, warm pulse pointing insistently toward the pavilion. A compass. A beacon .
“We don’t eat, we don’t drink, we don’t accept any gifts,” she said, more to herself than the others . “We get in, find the rift, and get out. Before the horn sounds for dinner.”
Isolde nodded, a faint, grim smile touching her lips. “A sound plan. Simplicity is often the best spice.”
They moved toward the vine-arch, the sweet, heavy air parting before them like a curtain. The humming of the realm seemed to focus here, deepening into a chorus of whispers—promises of satiation, of forgetfulness, of pleasure so deep it felt like pain . The shadows within the pavilion entrance were deep and velvety, smelling of damp earth, aged wine, and something metallic beneath it all.
Rory took a final breath of the honeyed air and crossed the threshold, the cold of the Fae blade at her side her only anchor in the overwhelming warmth of Gluttony.