AI The ivy swallowed my hand. I pushed through anyway and the world tilted, bark slick under my palm and the air thick as syrup on my tongue.
Isolde stepped in after me without a sound. She never left prints, not even in this place where the floor looked like damp loam and felt like skin . Nyx flowed past my shoulder with a hiss like silk dragged over stone. The pendant at my throat woke against my sternum, a slow pulse of heat that made the small scar on my wrist prickle.
"Left," I said. "That knot's a trap."
"Left is hunger," Isolde said. "Right is thirst. The middle road does not exist."
Nyx's outline shivered, their violet gaze like foxfire. "Middle roads are for mortals. We are not here as mortals."
"Speak for yourself," I said. I angled the Fae blade to catch whatever light chose to exist here. Moonsilver held a quiet glow that had nothing to do with torches. The narrow passage kinked, angled, then opened like a mouth.
I had walked through Isolde's oak circle before, always into the same grove that smelled of crushed green and honey. This was not that. The walls here were old wood braided with pale stone, oaks that had grown together until they forgot they were separate. The grain rippled. Embossed curls formed patterns, then unfurled into faces if I looked too long. Someone had carved feast scenes along the inner bark, not Fae hands from their clean, sharp lines, not human either. Bowls heaped high, goblets that ran with glittering liquid. Teeth flashed in every smile. No eyes.
"Charming," I said.
Isolde trailed a finger along a wooden goblet's rim without touching it. "The way to wine is lined with cups."
"Helpful," I said.
She half smiled. "You did not come for help. You came for a door you cannot see."
Nyx's shadow stretched, long and thin, licking along the carvings without disturbing them. "Doors respond to want. This one tastes want and feeds it."
The air brightened, not with light, with a sense of colour pressed against my skin. Warm, spiced. The pendant pulsed faster. I cupped it under my shirt before it lit up like a bike light. The chain bit cold in contrast. My throat had gone dry. I swallowed and it felt like swallowing cinnamon.
We moved deeper. The corridor breathed. Every exhale stirred the tiny hairs along my forearms. The wood had a rhythm to it, a low thudding like a distant oven door closing, again and again. To my right, something gleamed between two bending boughs. A bowl cut from black glass sat in a cradle of roots. Inside lay berries the size of a child's fist, each one a perfect crimson heart, beading with a syrup that steamed into the chill .
"Do not eat," Isolde said softly .
"I did notice the skull motifs," I said. There were none. That made it worse.
Nyx leaned in close enough that the bowl reflected their shadow face, a suggestion of cheekbones and nothing else. "Desire is bait. The hook is appetite."
"Hungers make bargains," Isolde said. "You would not like the repayment schedule."
"I already owe London for my student loan," I said. "Pass."
At the edge of my hearing, cutlery chattered. It started as a tick-tock, neat as a metronome, then picked up into an excited clatter. Nyx went still, head cocked. I saw then that their outline sharpened as light diminished, edges crisping in the folds of shade. The corridor opened again, ribs of oak curving up and over into an arch. At the crown of it hung a sigil etched into the wood so deep it bled sap. Spirals wrapped a circle. At first I thought it was an eye. It wasn't. It was an open mouth.
"That a ward?" I said.
"Not yours to open," Isolde said.
"Good thing I brought a skeleton key."
Her eyes, pale as lavender smoke, slid to the blade in my hand. "Keys sing to locks. This one prefers to cut."
"If it sings, I am tone deaf."
I pressed my palm to the sigil. Heat kicked under my skin through the chain at my neck. The Heartstone beat like a second heart. My teeth ached in response. The wood felt slick, like touching a tongue. I flinched.
"Do not bleed on it," Isolde said.
"Not a fan of giving away DNA samples," I said, and lifted the blade.
The moonsilver hummed, a low keen that rattled the fillings I did not have. I traced the circle. The cold leached through my fingers into the wood. Sap hardened into frost before it ran. When I cut the smallest spiral, the sigil sighed. The ward gave like sinew. The arch shuddered and split.
Beyond, the colour changed. Amber breathed against my face and brought with it scents that made my stomach cramp, sweet and savoury, roast skin crackling, sugar warmed until it smoked, fat, apples, something so ripe it bordered on rotten and dragged memory up from the back of my tongue. Christmas dinners and cheap wine and the first place I had ever felt safe enough to be hungry.
Nyx did not breathe, not like I did, but they leaned, mouthless, towards that amber. "Dymas," they said in a voice that was less whisper , more prayer.
I kept my feet planted and let my eyes adjust. The hall beyond the arch spread wide, wider than it had any right to be under London clay and oak. The floor had been paved in slabs of bone pale stone veined with faint red. Benches grew from the ground, roots turned to seats, their surfaces polished by hands that never left oil. Tables lined up in ranks, each set for a feast that had never started or had never ended. Plates of hammered metal sat empty, forks laid neatly at attention. Goblets beaded with condensation that formed, ran, then disappeared before it could fall. Above, the ceiling was a net of roots strung with small bells fashioned from spoons.
They rang as we walked in. Not together. A ripple that ran from one end to the other, like wind through chimes if the wind ate.
"This is wrong," I said.
"Correct is a human word," Isolde said. "Useful, not universal."
"Don't you lot find this creepy?"
"Creeping things have homes too," she said.
Nyx drifted ahead. A hand that was not a hand touched a plate and the silver clouded then cleared. Their eyes brightened. "Prince Belphegor loves his tables unending. He hates to see plates go bare."
"Good to know if we need to set a place for him," I said. "How close are we to the Veil?"
Isolde did not answer that. She tilted her head as though she listened to a music none of us could hear. I glanced down at my phone by reflex, even though the Grove always ate signal. The clock read 13:12, then blinked to 00:00, then scrolled through digits so fast it looked like static . I shoved it back in my pocket.
At the far end of the hall, a staircase curved down, ribbed with carved vines. The handrail had been designed for hands that had too many joints. I did not dwell on that. Between one blink and the next, the air thickened. The pendant burned, not a surface heat, a core warmth like a hand pressed inside my chest. My mouth flooded. Saliva tasted of iron.
"Stop," Isolde said.
Nyx froze, which made everything else move more. The walls pulsed . The bells hushed. A low gurgle rose up the stairwell, obscene and intimate. I hated that it reminded me of a baby drinking from a bottle.
"Someone home?" I said, too loud.
"Not someone," Isolde said. "Something that invites itself when curious mouths open."
I swallowed again and it hurt. Curiosity, hunger, same sin in different clothes. I moved forward anyway. The Fae blade felt colder. Its edges glowed where it met the air. Each step down took a thin slice off my resolve . At the second turn, the space shuddered. The banisters sprouted shoots that unfurled like fingers and tasted the air.
"Do not cut them," Isolde said.
"They feel us," I said.
"They always do."
We reached the bottom and the hall became a kitchen.
I had worked the back of enough restaurants to know the bones of one without looking. Fire places where ovens should be. Hooks. Racks. The benches here were black stone, polished to a shine like old teeth. Troughs lined one wall. Not for washing dishes. For catching what ran off them. Damp clung to everything, a cloying humidity that had nothing to do with water. Shapes hung from the ceiling, wrapped in translucent membranes. Some held herbs. Some did not. Something with too many ribs ticked against its wrapper like a watch dying.
Nyx reached towards a cutting block. Their fingers stopped short of a groove worn deep by blades. "There are knives here for cutting souls away from their appetites," they murmured. "Sharp as laws. Sharp as hunger."
"Sounds like your sort of poetry night," I said, but my voice had gone tight . The pendant turned my skin sore. Its crimson heartlight thrummed in time with that sound from below, deeper, more eager.
Isolde stood very still. "We should go back."
"Door we cannot see," I said. "Which way?"
Her eyes flicked to the far wall where the stone had been mortared with something too red to be right. "Ask the only one who answers when called."
"Hel," I said.
Nyx's shadow mouth curved. "Names bring attention. Attention eats."
"You dragged me under a park to stand in a devil's pantry," I said. "No point whispering now."
The far wall quivered . A fine fracture raced across the mortar and the smell that came out was not rot, not exactly. It was the heady breath that lifts off a banquet when lids rise, the first wave that hits and opens your throat wide without consent. The bells above us quivered and fell silent as if in respect.
Something pushed from the other side. Not a hand. A pressure. The stone at the seam turned to sugar and sagged. Amber light bled through, warm and thick. In it, I saw a sky that should not exist, a warmth that spoke of late harvests and afternoons under trees and all the things adverts sell to make you forget rent. Rows of vines rolled off into a distance that did not follow physics. Trees hung heavy with fruit the colour of bruises and sunsets. The ground, red as a tongue, steamed sweet. Far away, people moved like ants towards a long table.
"Do not look too long," Isolde said, voice low . "They look back."
Nyx's gaze traced the horizon I could not possibly see from this angle. "Amber above. Prince Belphegor's gaze below. Gluttony sits in a warm chair and counts us as crumbs."
"Cheerful," I said. I shook my hand out. Pins and needles ran up my fingers. "How do I close that?"
"You asked how to open doors," Isolde said. "You did not ask how to shut them."
"Lesson learned," I said. "Close it."
She watched the widening seam, face calm as winter glass. "The knife wants this cut," she said. "It frees the mouth."
"Isolde," I said. "Close it."
"I cannot lie to you, Rory," she said. "I can say this truth. Once that mouth opens, it does not like to close on empty air."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning you must feed it something or it takes the nearest hand."
The nearest was mine. I stepped back. The seam split with a wet sound. The amber poured through like liquid light, turning the damp on the floor to gold. The first thing that came out wore a chef's apron made of stitched skins. Its body did not look like a body, more a stack of need balanced on legs too thin to support it. Arms like knives, long, bright. It did not have a head so much as a mouth ringed with spoons.
It tasted the air with a shiver that made the bells ping.
I lifted the blade. The cold rolled up my arm to my shoulder. My breath fogged, even in the humid press. Nyx thickened beside me until their shadow felt like a wall . Their voice slid over my ear like cool fingers.
"Do not let it name you," they whispered. "Names are seasoning here."
"Got it," I said. "No introductions."
Isolde did not step forward. Her hands hung at her sides, open, empty. "You asked a door for mercy," she said. "It will not give it."
"Not asking," I said. "Telling."
The thing moved fast. It had no right to move at all with those angles, but hunger made it efficient . It surged across the stone and hit the first bench, skidding it aside with a squeal. Spooned hands clapped. The sound scraped my molars.
I cut at the arm nearest me. The blade sang high and clear. Moonsilver bit, slid, then caught at something beneath the bright. The creature flinched. A hiss rolled out of its mouth, a high keening that turned to words I did not understand and did not want to. My chest clenched. A part of me stepped forward that was not my feet.
Nyx whipped a tendril of shadow round my waist and yanked me back. "Do not feed it your forward step," they said.
"It is hungry for assent," Isolde said. "It is hungry for the little nods you give to make things easy."
"I am not easy," I said, and lunged.
The knife met a ward I could not see and carved it like thin ice. The creature stumbled. A splash of amber hit my boots and burned. The heat raced through the leather. I jerked my foot free. The sole smoked.
"Rory," Isolde said, call sharp enough to cut. "Heart."
"What?"
She tipped her chin at my collar. The pendant had slipped free. It glowed deeper than ruby, a living coal. The creature turned all its not-eyes to it. The clatter of spoons shifted. Praise and petition. Worship.
"That," Nyx breathed. "It wants that more than it wants you."
"Brilliant," I said. "So do half the people I date."
The seam bulged. More amber pressed through. A second shape loomed on the other side. Taller. Slow. Sated, not slow. Tables in the distance moved. The sound of knives on plates rose like rain hardening on tin.
"Cut the light," Isolde said. "Or cut your throat. One denies it. The other satisfies it. Choose quick, child of lawyers."
"Those are not equal options," I said.
"They are both true," she said. "True is not fair."
I looked at the blade in my hand. It did not care. It liked to solve puzzles by turning them into halves. The heat on my chest pushed pain through my ribs. The thing in the apron took another step, spoons ringing, hands opening to accept an offering. Behind it, something enormous breathed out and the amber bent around that exhale.
The bells above us all rang at once. The sound fell like a curtain.
"Rory," Nyx whispered, right at my ear now. "Choose your cut."
I hooked the chain in my left hand and lifted the pendant off my skin. The stone burned so hard my hair crackled. The strings of amber that had started to run across the floor reached for it like vines. The creature leaned. It did not have eyes, but I felt watched, counted, wanted.
"Fine," I said. "Dinner's cancelled."
I slashed the chain.