AI My boot slipped on the slick face of an ancient oak stone and I caught myself on the next one, palm scraping lichen that felt like wet velvet .
“Don’t bleed on it.”
Nyx’s voice arrived at my ear as a cold tickle, as if someone had breathed through a keyhole. Their violet eyes floated in a tall shape of shadow beside me, half-solid, edges fraying into the air.
I tightened my grip on the moonsilver dagger Isolde had pressed into my hand earlier. The blade stayed cold no matter how hard I squeezed. Cold enough to sting through skin, cold enough to keep me awake.
“I’m not bleeding,” I said, and checked anyway .
The crescent scar on my left wrist shone pale against my skin as I flexed my fingers. No new cut. Just that old mark, a childhood accident that had no business itching now.
Isolde moved ahead without sound. She didn’t push through brambles or step around roots. She simply went, silver hair sliding down her back, and the space obliged her. Her bare feet left no prints in the damp earth between the stones.
“Keep close, Rory,” she said, like she spoke to a child crossing a road. “The Grove enjoys taking liberties.”
The word grove felt wrong for what waited beyond the stone ring. I leaned forward and the world pinched, as if the air turned to cloth and someone pulled it tight. My pendant warmed against my chest, not a gentle heat, but a pulse . A heartbeat that didn’t belong to me.
I looked down. The deep crimson gem glowed from within, faint but steady, like embers under ash. The silver chain tugged at my neck as if it wanted to crawl towards whatever sat on the other side.
Nyx followed my gaze.
“Hel,” they whispered. “A thin place. Noisy underneath.”
I opened my mouth to ask what noisy meant and the boundary took offence at the delay. The shimmer in front of me rippled. My stomach lurched, and I stepped through.
The sound changed first. London’s distant hum vanished. No cars, no dogs, no people arguing about football. In its place, I heard a layered hush, like a crowd holding its breath. Then came a faint chiming, not bells exactly, more like glass being stirred in a bowl.
The smell hit me next. Sweet, green, sharp. Wildflowers crushed underfoot, sap from bark, something like citrus peel and old books .
The clearing inside was too clean. Not tidy, clean. Clean like a cut.
Wildflowers carpeted the ground in colours that seemed to argue with each other, violet against orange, deep blue against bone-white. They bloomed in neat spirals, as if someone had planted them with a compass. The trees stood in a wide ring, but their trunks looked wrong. Smooth as polished stone, veined with faint light that moved beneath the surface. I blinked hard, and the veins shifted position, as if the trees had blinked back.
Isolde turned to face us. Her pale lavender eyes held no reflection.
“Welcome,” she said. “Do not eat. Do not bargain. Do not answer questions you do not understand.”
“That’s a cracking start,” I said. My voice sounded smaller here, as if the place swallowed the edges.
Nyx’s shoulders rose and fell in a slow imitation of breathing. Their shadowy head tilted, listening.
“I hear footsteps that make no sound,” they said. “Many.”
Isolde’s mouth curved, not quite a smile .
“Everything here walks.”
I forced my feet forward. The grass, if it was grass, felt springy and warm through my soles, as if it remembered a sun I couldn’t see. Every step left a mark that filled in behind me, the ground smoothing itself as if it disapproved of evidence.
My pendant pulsed again. Heat, heat, heat. I tucked it under my shirt and it still felt like a coal pressed to my sternum .
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
Isolde started walking. She didn’t glance back to check if we followed.
“A door,” she said. “A mouth. A wound. Call it what you like. It has been nibbling at the Veil.”
Nyx drifted beside me, their form thinning as we passed under a low branch. The branch didn’t touch them. It shivered anyway, leaves trembling like nervous fingers.
“You brought me into your home,” I said to Isolde, keeping my eyes on her. “You could’ve told me it would feel like stepping into someone else’s dream.”
“It isn’t mine,” Isolde said. “And it is not a dream. Dreams let you wake.”
Ahead, the clearing narrowed into a path that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The flowers pulled back from it, making room. The path looked like packed earth, but when I stepped onto it, it rang faintly, like a drum skin stretched over something hollow.
Nyx’s violet eyes brightened.
“Below,” they whispered.
“Below what?” I asked, but the answer brushed my mind without words, an image of layers, thin skins stacked on top of each other . Earth. Fae. Hel. The Veil between, strained like a net.
We moved deeper and the trees changed. Their bark took on a sheen like glass. I saw shapes trapped inside, insects with too many wings, petals that opened and closed in slow agony, a human hand that pressed against the inner surface and then sank away. I stopped so fast my shoulder bumped Nyx.
“That was a hand,” I said.
“It was an idea of a hand,” Nyx replied. “The Grove keeps souvenirs.”
Isolde paused at a bend in the path. Beside her, a stone arch rose from the ground. It hadn’t looked like anything from a distance, but up close it made my teeth ache. The stone was carved with symbols that shifted when I tried to focus, like my eyes couldn’t agree on their shape. The arch formed a doorway with no door, filled with a curtain of darkness that didn’t behave like shadow. It stood too still.
My Heartstone Pendant flared with heat. The gem’s inner glow deepened, crimson going almost black at its heart.
Isolde laid a hand on the arch. Her fingers didn’t press against stone so much as hover a hair’s breadth above it.
“This was not built by my kin,” she said. “Older. Ruder. It was a gate once, when the Courts still pretended they did not trespass.”
I reached out without thinking. The air near the arch felt thick, and my fingertips tingled as if I’d touched static. I pulled back.
“What’s through it?” I asked.
Isolde’s gaze slid to my chest where the pendant sat hidden.
“What wants you,” she said. “And what you want.”
Nyx’s shadow sharpened at the edges.
“A bargain,” they murmured. “Always a bargain.”
I swallowed. I had no interest in bargains, not with places that made the ground erase footprints. I wanted straight lines and written contracts and loopholes I could see.
Isolde stepped under the arch. The curtain of darkness parted for her like it recognised her blood. She didn’t disappear. She simply occupied the far side, and for a moment she existed in both spaces, doubled like a reflection out of alignment.
“Come,” she said.
“Of course,” I muttered, and followed.
The darkness brushed my skin. Not cold, not warm. Dry, like fine powder. It tasted metallic at the back of my throat. I blinked and the world on the other side unfolded with a slow cruelty, like a hand unrolling a map made of skin.
The path continued, but the forest fell away into something else, an immense hall without walls. The ground underfoot turned to pale stone etched with shallow grooves. They spiralled outward in patterns that made my eyes want to follow them until my head spun. Strange growths rose from the grooves, not plants, not coral, something in between. They glistened like wet sugar and clicked softly as they moved, opening and closing like mouths tasting the air.
Above us hung shapes that looked like chandeliers until they twitched. Clusters of thin, bone-white branches held glowing sacs that pulsed , shedding light that didn’t reach the corners. The glow hummed faintly in my ears.
I could hear water somewhere. Not flowing, but dripping, each drop landing with a slow, satisfied sound .
Nyx inhaled, a sound like silk tearing.
“This place remembers Hel,” they said. “And the Fae cut their own corridors through it.”
Isolde walked ahead, footsteps silent on the stone.
“This is a stitch,” she said. “A seam between realms. Old work. Poorly tended.”
My dagger’s cold deepened. The moonsilver blade picked up the glow from the sacs overhead and threw it back in thin lines. The air prickled at its edge. When I angled it, the grooves in the floor seemed to recoil.
“That’s new,” I said.
“It dislikes your knife,” Isolde replied, not looking back . “The blade tells the truth. Wards hate that.”
We passed a cluster of the clicking growths. One leaned towards me, its mouth opening wide. Inside, I saw a tiny mirror, and in the mirror a version of me smiled with someone else’s teeth. I jerked away and the thing clicked shut, offended.
“Don’t look,” Nyx said, their voice close . “It steals faces. Small thefts first.”
“Good to know,” I said, and kept my eyes on Isolde’s back.
The hall narrowed again, funnelling us towards a low opening in the stone. The edges of the opening looked chewed, as if something had worried at it. The grooves in the floor converged there, lines like veins leading to a wound.
The Heartstone Pendant burned now. Not enough to scorch, but enough that sweat broke along my spine. The gem’s glow bled through my shirt in a dark red stain.
Isolde stopped at the opening. She crouched, still graceful, and laid her hand near the chewed edge. Her fingers trembled for the first time.
“This is fresh,” she said.
Nyx’s eyes narrowed to slits of violet light.
“Fresh for you means what?” I asked.
Isolde lifted her head.
“Decades,” she said. “Perhaps less. Time in the Grove plays dice.”
Something moved inside the opening. Not a shape I could see, but a shift in the air that tugged at my skin. A smell rolled out, rich and wrong. Spiced wine. Roasted meat. Sugar burning in a pan. Under it, a bitter tang like old blood.
My stomach clenched with sudden hunger so sharp it felt like pain . I hadn’t eaten since midday. That should have been a mild annoyance, not a voice in my gut screaming to crawl into a hole for a mouthful of whatever waited inside.
Nyx made a sound like a warning hiss.
“That is Dymas,” they said. “Gluttony.”
Isolde’s gaze flicked to me, then to the pendant.
“Your trinket recognises its cradle,” she said.
“I didn’t ask for it,” I snapped, and the words bounced oddly, as if the hall enjoyed arguments .
The opening breathed. The clicking growths around us turned their mouths towards it in unison.
A whisper rose from within, not Nyx’s, not Isolde’s. A voice layered with too many tongues, speaking with the casual confidence of something that expected to be obeyed.
“Sweet thing,” it crooned. “Bring me the red stone.”
My hand went to my chest. Instinct. Protection. Fear.
Nyx stepped between me and the opening. Their shadow thickened, swallowing some of the glow. The air grew colder around them.
“No,” Nyx said, a single word, thin and sharp .
The voice laughed. The sound carried the clink of cutlery.
“Shade,” it said. “Still playing at guardianship. Still starving.”
Isolde rose. Her silver hair floated for a moment as if the hall had inhaled.
“Names have teeth,” she said. “Do not feed it yours.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” I muttered, but my throat felt dry .
A shape slid into view inside the opening. At first it looked like a man crawling on hands and knees. Then it unfolded. Too many joints. Too long a spine. Its skin shone like oiled leather, stretched tight over a body built for hunger. Its mouth opened, and a second mouth opened inside that, and a third behind it, each lined with fine, neat teeth like a comb.
It sniffed, and its eyes rolled towards me, milk-white and eager.
My pendant flared so hot I gasped.
The creature’s lips peeled back.
“There,” it said, voice now simpler, almost conversational. “There you are.”
Isolde’s hand darted out and caught my wrist, fingers like iron.
“Do not run,” she said. “Running makes it play.”
Nyx spread their arms and the shadows in the grooves of the floor lifted, writhing towards them like snakes seeking a charmer. The hall’s light dimmed.
The creature laughed again and lunged, not towards Nyx, not towards Isolde, straight for my chest.
I ripped my wrist from Isolde’s grip, drew the Fae-forged blade, and drove the cold moonsilver edge up towards the thing’s first mouth as it snapped shut on empty air.