AI Gravity lurched sideways, slamming the air out of my lungs.
I hit the ground hard, the taste of ozone and bile stinging the back of my throat. The cold, damp stone of the London underground was gone , replaced by a spongy, moss-like surface that gave way under my weight with a wet squelch .
"Move."
Nyx’s voice, a hiss of static and wind, scraped against my ears.
I scrambled up, boots sinking inches deep into the turf. My stomach rolled. The air here was thick, heavy enough to chew, cloying with the scent of roasted meat, fermentation, and flowers so sweet they bordered on rot.
"Rory. The blade."
I drew the Fae-forged dagger from my belt before my eyes had fully adjusted. The metal hummed, a cold vibration against the crescent scar on my left wrist. It sensed something I couldn't.
"Check the perimeter," I choked out, wiping sweat from my forehead. It was sweltering . Not the dry heat of a desert, but the humid, suffocating warmth of a greenhouse .
"Rest easy, child of iron." Isolde swept past me . Her silver hair, usually a cascade of moonlight, reflected the strange hues of this place. She glided over the sodden ground, her feet leaving no impression in the muck that threatened to swallow my boots. "The immediate threat has passed. We are merely... digested."
I blinked the spots from my vision.
Above us, the sky burned. It wasn't the grey of Cardiff or the black of the void, but a bruised, amber expanse, churning with golden clouds that looked uncomfortably like fat separating in a pan. A second sun—or perhaps a moon, it was too large to tell—hung low on the horizon, bloated and crimson.
"Where are we?" I asked, though the Heartstone pendant beneath my shirt already answered. It burned against my sternum, a rhythmic thrumming that matched the pulse in my ears. It was home. Or at least, it thought it was.
"Dymas," Nyx whispered. The Shade stood near a twisted, bulbous tree, their form flickering. The intense amber light seemed to boil the edges of their silhouette, forcing them to expend energy just to maintain a solid shape. Violet eyes burned from within the smoke. "The garden of excess. Gluttony's larder."
I turned a slow circle. We stood at the edge of a sprawling vineyard that defied logic. The vines were as thick as tree trunks, coiled around trellises made of polished bone. Grapes the size of grapefruits hung in heavy, glistening clusters. They were dark, veined with pulsing blue lines, throbbing as if pumping blood rather than juice .
"Don't touch anything," I said, eyeing a vine that seemed to lean toward me. "Isolde?"
The seer plucked a dying leaf from the air before it hit the ground. It turned to ash in her pale fingers. "This realm is hungry, Aurora. It gives so that it may take. Look closer."
I stepped toward the nearest vine. The bark wasn't wood. It was textured , pore-ridden. *Skin.*
I recoiled, hand tightening on the moonsilver hilt of my dagger. "Jesus."
"Belphegor has grand tastes," Nyx said, drifting away from the light and into the shade of the grotesque vines. "He grows his vintages from the finest stock."
"Souls?" I asked.
"Something far more tangible ." Isolde pointed a manicured finger down the row of vines. "Flesh. The soil here is composted from those who lost themselves to the feast."
A shiver worked its way down my spine despite the oppressive heat. We needed to move. Standing still felt like an invitation for the moss to grow over my boots and pull me down into the compost.
"We need to find the exit vector," I said, forcing my voice into the commanding tone I used when a delivery went sideways at the Golden Empress. "Nyx, can you shadow-step us through?"
"The shadows here are... thin." Nyx sounded strained. They reached out a hand, and the darkness beneath a vine rippled but failed to form a portal. "The light is oily. It clings. I cannot traverse the spaces between until night falls. If night falls."
"No night in Dymas," Isolde said, staring at the amber sky. "Only the eternal golden hour. The time of supper."
"Fantastic. We walk." I adjusted my grip on the dagger and started down the row, stepping carefully to avoid the writhing roots. "Isolde, keep your eyes on the timeline. If you see a path that doesn't lead to us being eaten, holler."
"I see many paths," she murmured, floating beside me. "Most are seasoned with paprika."
"Not helpful."
"One path smells of old iron and regret. We follow that."
We pushed deeper into the vineyard. The silence of the place was unnerving. There were no birds, no insects. Just the wet sound of the plants growing, a constant *squelch * and *stretch * that sounded like knuckles cracking under water .
The sweet smell intensified, mixing with something sharper—vinegar and copper. My mouth watered involuntarily. It was a biological response to the scent, primal and disgusting. I hurried my pace, trying to ignore the hunger pangs suddenly cramping my stomach .
"Control it," Nyx warned, appearing at my left shoulder. "The air carries enzymes. It wants you to feed."
"I'm fine because I haven't eaten since breakfast," I snapped, though my gaze lingered on a cluster of the pulsing grapes . They looked impossibly thirst-quenching. One bite. Just to wet my throat.
*No.*
I bit the inside of my cheek until the metallic tang of my own blood broke the trance.
The vineyard abruptly ended, giving way to a manicured garden of horrors. Fountains carved from obsidian spewed thick, red wine into basin pools. Statues depicting figures in throes of ecstasy—or agony, the line was blurred —lined a path of crushed pearl.
And ahead, looming like a tumor on the landscape, sat a villa.
It was colossal, a sprawling monstrosity of white stone and gold filigree. But the angles were wrong. The columns bulged in the middle; the windows looked like heavy-lidded eyes .
"The Seat of the Prince?" I whispered.
"A pantry," Isolde corrected. She stopped, her ethereal form shimmering. "We are not alone."
I froze. "Where?"
"Everywhere."
A rustle from the hedges to our right. I spun, raising the dagger.
A creature stumbled onto the path.
It might have been human once, or Fae, or something else entirely. Now, it was a sphere of flesh. Its skin was stretched translucent over layers of yellow fat, weeping oil. It had no legs, only calloused hands that it used to drag its immense bulk forward. Its mouth was a gaping, circular maw lined with rows of flat grinding teeth.
It ignored us. It dragged itself toward the wine fountain, plunging its face into the red liquid with a desperate, gurgling sob.
"A Glutton," Nyx noted, voice devoid of pity . "A resident."
"It's suffering," I said, watching the creature gorge itself until its skin began to tear.
"It is in paradise," Isolde said softly . "This is what it wanted. Endless consumption."
"It's grotesque." I turned away, nausea rising again .
"Aurora," Nyx hissed.
I looked back. The creature had stopped drinking. It lifted its head, red wine streaming from its jowls. Its eyes, buried deep within folds of flesh, fixed on me.
Or rather, on the pendant.
The Heartstone flared, burning hot against my skin. The red light pulsed through my shirt, casting a bloody glow on the crushed pearls.
The creature shrieked. It wasn't a vocal sound but the noise of air being forced through a blocked pipe.
"Run?" I suggested.
"Run," Nyx agreed.
The creature lunged—far faster than something that size had any right to move. It propelled itself with massive, distorted arms.
I dodged left, diving over a low hedge of razor-sharp briars. The creature smashed into the spot where I’d been standing, cracking the pearl path.
"Left flank!" Isolde called out, pointing not with her hand but with her will .
I scrambled up and sprinted toward the treeline of the garden. Behind us, the shriek was answered . From the villa, from the fountains, from the depths of the vineyard—a chorus of wet, hungry wails erupted. The dinner bell had rung.
"To the heavyymetal gate!" I shouted, spotting iron bars set into a stone archway ahead.
Nyx dissolved into smoke, reforming ten feet ahead, then dissolving again, flickering forward. Isolde simply was there, then here, moving without traversing the space between. I was the only one actually running, my boots pounding against the opulent tiles.
Heavy slaps of flesh against stone echoed behind me. The ground shook.
I reached the gate. Locked. Of course.
"Nyx!"
The Shade slammed a solid hand of darkness against the lock. "Warded. Blood magic."
I looked back. The first creature was gaining, and three more were pulling themselves out of the wine fountains. They were massive, wet, and unstoppable.
"Isolde, can you open it?"
"I cannot undo what has been sealed by appetite. The gate requires a tithe."
The Heartstone seared my chest. It wanted to be used. I gripped the pendant through the fabric of my shirt.
*Open,* I thought, pushing my will into the stone. *Open, you bastard.*
The stone didn't respond to the thought. It responded to the proximity of the realm. It drank the ambient energy—the lust, the hunger, the excess.
The gate groaned. The iron bars twisted, growing teeth, forming a mouth.
"A tithe!" The gate spoke, its voice the grinding of metal on bone . "Meat for the passage!"
The lead creature was twenty feet away. Its maw opened, wide enough to swallow me whole.
"I don't have meat!" I yelled at the gate.
"Then bone!" the gate roared.
I looked at the creature. Then at the gate. Then at the Fae blade in my hand.
"Isolde, duck."
I spun around, planting my feet. The creature launched itself, a flying boulder of hunger.
I dropped to my knees, sliding forward on the slick tiles, and thrust the moonsilver blade upward.
There was no resistance. The Fae metal sheared through fat, muscle, and ribs. I rolled aside as the creature’s momentum carried it past me—and straight into the gnashing teeth of the iron gate.
The gate clamped down. Metal crunched through the monstrosity. A sprays of hot, oily blood coated me from head to toe. The gate chewed, the sound deafening, drowning out the screams of the others closing in.
"Go!" I scrambled through the small gap appearing as the gate’s jaw unhinged to swallow its meal. I grabbed Nyx’s corporeal arm and hauled them through, Isolde flowing right behind us.
We tumbled onto a cold stone floor, the heat of the garden instantly replaced by a subterranean chill .
The gate slammed shut behind us, sealing with a satisfied burp.
Silence returned.
I lay on my back, chest heaving, wiping the creature's blood from my eyes. It tasted like spoiled vintage port .
"Acceptable improvisation," Nyx whispered, dusting off their shadowy coat.
I sat up, coughing. "Where are we now?"
Isolde stood, her silver pristine , untouched by the gore that covered me. She looked into the darkness of the corridor stretching ahead. Torchlight flickered far down the hall, revealing shadows that swayed in time to distant music.
"Out of the larder," she said, her voice dropping to a terrifyingly sombre register . "And into the kitchen."
A heavy set of double doors at the end of the hall creaked open. A tall, thin silhouette stood backlit by the roaring fires of the ovens beyond. It held a cleaver the size of a tombstone.
"Fresh ingredients," a voice boomed, rattling the stones in the wall.
I gripped my dagger, though my hand was shaking . "Seven hells."