AI My boot struck the edge of an oak root and the world folded around us like a page being turned.
The standing stones blurred, then resolved into a ring taller than memory, the ancient wood alive with faint runes that pulsed when Nyx's shadow brushed them. The air thickened with a taste of sweetness and metal. Leaves whispered in a language that almost meant something, and the flat noise of Richmond Park outside dimmed as if someone had turned down a distant radio. Moss grew up the inside of my throat. For a moment I could not tell if the ground underfoot was solid earth or the skin of something sleeping.
"Step light," Nyx breathed, voice like paper dragged over glass, and the shadow that clung around them rippled, shedding a scatter of motes that fell and vanished before they kissed the soil.
Eva's hand tightened on the strap of her rucksack. She swallowed and the sound echoed too loud. "This feels...wrong," she said.
"Wrong can be useful," I replied. My fingers found the Heartstone at my collarbone. The pendant hummed faintly against skin, a deep crimson thumbprint of heat. It pulsed once, then again, steady as a heartbeat, and the warmth travelled down my throat into the small crescent scar at my wrist, as if something beneath my skin recognised it.
Light here folded in layers. Sunlight from the park pooled in the clearing like water, while dimmer, moonless light threaded between leaves, painting everything with a soft, silver outline. Flowers opened out of season, their petals the colour of old coins and ink. A moth as large as a hand circled, wings patterned with eyes that did not watch us so much as study our intent.
"Isolde's grove," Nyx said. The name fell between us like a question. They watched the trees with the faint violet glow in their eyes. They moved as if testing the seams of shadow for a door.
"She keeps corners tidy," Eva muttered, trying to make a joke. Her voice faltered when stepped stones rearranged themselves under her boots, nudging her leftwards, guiding rather than permitting.
A scent threaded through—honey and iron, citrus peel and old coin. My skin prickled. Time here felt elastic; the air vibrated with layered echoes , so a footfall answered twice, three times, each echo slower than the last. I counted to three and lost track.
"Say what you came for," Nyx said. Their words were brief, the whisper of wind that travels behind you in a corridor.
I remembered why. The pendant, the anonymous gift, the name that had arrived in a postcard with no stamp three nights ago, Isolde Varga, Richmond Grove. Curiosity had hooked me. Curiosity had brought Eva and a shade of shadow who answered more questions than they asked.
"Answers," I said. "About the Heartstone."
"You hold a thing from Hel in a place between worlds," Nyx said. The violet in their eyes flickered . "This pleases neither."
"Then it should please us both," I said. My voice sounded small in that wide, listening space.
We pushed deeper. Trees arched over into a vaulted canopy; their branches braided tight and left windows where sky could peep. The soil changed to a carpet that swallowed sound. We walked without a path and the earth accepted us, as if remembering the suits of shoes that had come this way before . A brook sang somewhere with a tune that was not water, a thread of lullaby woven from metal and breath.
We found the grove's centre by accident, pulled there by a scent of smoke that did not burn. A ring of stones stood around a pool, though calling it a pool did the place no justice. It was a shallow bowl of glass so clear it mirrored stars and clouds at once. When Eva crouched to peer, no skin broke the surface; the glass accepted her gaze like a compliment and returned something older. I watched our faces, pale and sharp, circling the liquid as if around a truth.
Isolde sat on the far side of the pool, settled as though she'd always belonged to the place. She seemed to be both part of the grove and not. Silver hair spilled over her shoulders, catching the double light and making her look as if she might undo herself into threads. Her pale lavender eyes met mine without surprise. No footprint marked where she had appeared.
"Visitors at last," she said.
"Your timing," Eva said, forcing dryness.
"Time's a relative guest here," Isolde replied. She smiled in a way that rearranged the air. "Some guests leave wrapped in ribbons, some in regrets. What did you bring that cannot be folded?"
"Questions," I said. I stepped forward until the pendant warmed against the moonsilver of the Fae-Forged Blade at my belt. Isolde's gaze flicked there and held longer than politeness allowed.
"The blade," she said. "Nice blade."
"It isn't mine," Eva said before I could. She chose the wrong word, but Isolde did not rebuke. The seer never lied. She simply redirected.
"It will be," Isolde said. She stood. Her movement made the moss sigh. "Sit. Tell me, who gave the Heartstone?"
"No one," I said. My reply stuck. It felt like a half-truth. The pendant had arrived, but the hand that had put it in the world remained a shadow. I did not think Isolde would demand the whole of it, only nudge until the thread unraveled.
She bent to the pool and dipped a finger in. The surface trembled and showed us scenes that were not ours: rows of candles in a hall that smelled of roasted figs, a table bent under platters of sugar-glossed meats, and a sky that burned the colour of amber. The images were brief and sharp like pebbles thrown into the glass, and one of them made my stomach twist.
"Dymas," Nyx breathed.
The moth circled nearer, almost intimate. I felt warmth bloom in the pendant. For a breath I realised it pulsed with the same rhythm as the images. Not just memory, but a tug .
"Why would a thing from Hel seek me?" I asked.
Isolde did not look at me when she answered. "Some debts travel elegantly. Some appetites have manners. Others have teeth."
She folded her hands in her lap and the pool stilled. "What you carry is a knot tied with two tongues. Pull one and the other will speak. Pull both and the knot will bite."
Nyx tilted their head. "You speak in riddles."
"A seer must never lie," Isolde said, and the words lay flat, factual, not simple. "I cannot tie falsehood to you, but I can arrange words so they gleam like fruit. You must decide if you will taste."
"What do you want from us?" Eva asked. Her pitch sharpened. "We brought you offerings. An apology for disturbing your privacy."
"A fae does not take apologies nor privacy," Isolde said. "She takes exchange. Who brings a knife to a table and expects dessert?"
"You are offering help," I said.
The seer let out a sound like a feather falling. "I offer orientation. The Veil thins. That concerns everyone. It concerns those who carry pieces of other places like coins in pockets. You walked in with Hel upon your skin, Aurora Carter. The grove smells that."
I stared at the pool. The reflection showed my jaw clenching . The pendant tugged warm and insistent, as if it wanted to be anywhere but where it hung.
"Is the Veil really thinning?" I asked. I kept the fear flat. Questions kept me steady.
Isolde smiled without showing teeth. "Thin as a note. But notes can cut."
"Then why give me the Heartstone?" I asked.
"It finds people who can carry it," Isolde said, and then her voice softened with an edge that felt like pity . "Someone chose you because you did not run from certain shadows. Someone believed you would not be loud enough to break the pattern. They were wrong in part."
Nyx took a step closer. Shadow bent around their legs like a cloak. "Or right," they whispered. "Some patterns must be broken."
"Some must," Isolde replied, and her eyes flicked to mine as if measuring . "But breaking often leaves scraps. You have already bled something into the world."
I thought of the night the pendant arrived. The indifferent postbox. The anonymous handwriting. Who would choose me? I had left law school. I delivered food. I lived above a bar. Nothing about my life suggested someone else had turned my name into a key.
Isolde snapped her fingers and a breeze knitted itself into a ribbon, looping around the pendant. "Show," she said.
Images surfaced in the pool again, this time slower, patient. A kitchen with copper pots, a man laughing with a mouth full of raisins, a book burned at the spine. A hall with a banner stitched in the shape of a stomach . The streaks of amber sky that matched the Dymas scenes spilled across the water and slowed into a place I could almost step into.
'Feeding,' Eva whispered.
"Feeding and contracts," Isolde said. "Dymas delights in exchange. The Heartstone is a token. The token pulls a bargain's scent like blood to a hound."
My fingers found the blade at my belt. The moonsilver felt cold, an old truth pressed into my palm. The blade had been given to me, Isolde's gift, but it had felt like a thing borrowed rather than owned. Now it felt like a hinge.
"Can it be returned?" I asked.
Isolde sank back onto the ring of root and watched me. "Things leave as they choose. You may return the token to where it prefers to sleep. Then new hunger will take its place. Or you may keep it and learn its manners."
Nyx's shadow shifted toward the pool as if listening for something beneath the glass . The violet light in their eyes thickened.
"You will teach us," I said. "About manners. About the Veil."
"That depends on the price," Isolde said. Her hands lay palms up like a measure. "I will show you seams. I will teach you to read the folding. But I will not tell you who gifted your coin. Answers do not grow without roots."
"What price?" Eva snapped.
Isolde laughed, the sound like wind passing through coins. "A favour for a favour. A step walked without complaint. A memory given to the grove. Not your whole past. A taste. You needn't fear."
I thought of my father, his legal briefs and careful hands, and the nights I had run from Evan. I thought of the scar on my wrist, the tiny crescent that had once been an accident and now seemed like a mark pointing to something more. I felt a cold, precise clarity. I would trade a memory. I would trade the memory of the smell of burning toast when I left Cardiff as a teenager if it would buy me knowledge of who put a piece of Hel in my palm.
I nodded. "We accept."
Isolde inclined her head and the pool opened like an eye. She touched my wrist and heat flared. The memory I surrendered unspooled itself, not raw but edited, the edges softened . When it returned to me it tasted slightly less of my mother. The grove took it and drifted into a humming contentment that made the leaves shiver.
"You will remember the shape," Isolde said. "But no longer the exact flavour. You will learn to hone what you own."
Nyx placed their hand on the pool's surface. The water did not wet them. They closed their eyes and the violet in their pupils flared outward, painting a line of light that stabbed through the glass world and struck something beneath. The surface of the pool shuddered and then a ripple ran through the clearing like a secret passing its hand along.
Something else noticed.
From the ring of standing stones, faint sparks like pinpricks of amber light began to bloom, spreading along the runes like fireflies waking. The warmth in the pendant leapt, violent now, and the Heartstone throbbed against my sternum as if tethered to an animal that wanted out.
"That is not the grove," Nyx said. Fear threaded the whisper .
Isolde's gaze narrowed. She moved faster than she had a right to, and the silver braid of her hair whipped out and twined around the pendant. "Hel smells wrong here," she said. "It does not come through clean. It tastes of spoilage and of detail. Someone has left a window cracked."
The eyes of the grove turned toward the stones. The moth scattered, wings beating a frantic rhythm. From the ring of amber light a scent came, cloying and sweet, like overripe fruit left beneath a swelter. It tugged at the back of my teeth.
"Belphegor's hand," Eva said, folding her arms as if a physical barrier could shield us. "Prince of Gluttony."
"Prince likes visitors," Isolde said. Her voice dropped into a tone that did not fit the rest of her. "He likes to see who will be consumed and who will feed him. This is like a beckon, a taste left for the taking."
"You mean a portal," Nyx said.
"A thin place," Isolde corrected, and the seer smiled without warmth . "If it opens, it will not be for a kind chat. It will be for appetite."
My pendant howled. The Heartstone's inner glow flared, a single, sharp pulse that made the pool ring like a bell. The ground hummed underfoot and the standing stones answered in kind, their runes flaring to match the pendant's beat.
"We need to close it," I said.
A low rumbling answered me, not from the earth but from the grove itself, as if ancient roots shifted and spoke. Isolde's fingers tightened around the pendant, though she did not take it from me. Her silver hair whipped into a snare that glowed faintly like moonlight coiling round steel.
"Close a crack at the Veil," she said, "and you invite the thing that made it. Close it with force and something might wedge within. You close it with a song."
"A song?" Eva repeated. Sound wavered like a thread stretched taut.
"Songs are bargains," Isolde said. "We sing in old ways. We utter untruths and true things together. You will sing what you have given. The grove will swallow the note and the note will swallow the breach."
The grove leaned in. Leaves trembled . I realised then that whatever thrummed in that ring of amber light wanted to reach my pendant as much as I feared it did. The Heartstone pulsed like a throat preparing to call.
Nyx stepped forward, shadow stretched thin, their voice a blade of hush. "I will keep the dark at the edge," they said, and their shadow curled around the standing stones, pooling and thickening like oil. "You will not let it taste."
"Speak the line," Isolde said.
"You want us to sing?" Eva's laugh was brittle.
"A song and a forgetting," Isolde said. "A note for a seal."
I felt the sharp tilt of choice and I chose the sound. I had carried strangers' burdens across city streets; I had outrun fists and legal arguments. I could trade a memory. I could sing a line to a grove that ate secrets. The pendant burned like a heartbeat. The amber lights drew closer, greedy and soft.
I opened my mouth.
The first syllable left me thin and high, not a sound I owned. The grove took it like a seed. Leaves absorbed it. The pool shivered and the amber sparks stuttered.
Then something huge inhaled from the other side of the stones. A pressure hit the clearing that felt like an animal smelling something far away and deciding it wanted it.
Isolde's face changed, all seer and knife-sharp. "Not yet," she snapped, and for the first time she sounded afraid.
Nyx's shadow snapped outward like a living hand and the amber lights recoiled, but something big and patient and clever had already pressed its face to the glass. It pressed harder.
The Heartstone's throb doubled. The pendant tried to wrench free.
A terrible, hungry sound slipped through the Veil, a voice that spoke in suggestions and licks, and the grove answered us in the only way it had been taught : with a song, and a closing that was never gentle.
The last thing I saw before the world tipped was Isolde's hand tightening like a vice around the pendant, and the amber light, which had been so polite a moment before, thrusting its first, greedy finger through the seam.