AI The air changed first.
One moment Aurora stood in the narrow brick service tunnel under Golden Empress, fluorescent light humming over damp concrete. The next, the space in front of her folded like heat over tarmac. The faint distortion thickened, caught on the edge of her sight, and her Heartstone pendant pressed hot against her sternum.
“You feel that?” Her hand closed around the little crimson gem through her T‑shirt.
Nyx’s shadow stretched up from the floor drain and drew itself together. Limbs formed, then the suggestion of a face, violet eyes kindling inside the umbra.
“The Veil thins here,” their voice brushed along her ear, barely sound, more a draught of chill breath. “Dymas waits behind it.”
Rory blew out through her nose, short and sharp. “Right. Hel vineyard holiday. Sounds charming.”
“You chose Gluttony.” Their outline shrugged, the motion like smoke disturbed. “Complaints should go to the Prince.”
The distortion ahead thickened again. The corridor seemed to narrow toward it, bricks bending inward. The fluorescent hum dropped to a low drone, then to a single throbbing note that matched the rhythm pulsing from the pendant.
Rory stepped forward before her nerves had time to reform. The Fae-forged blade hung under her jacket, its cold presence along her spine steadier than any pep talk.
Her trainer crossed the shimmer.
The world turned inside out.
Every sense clenched. Light splintered white, then orange, then a soft molten gold that slid behind her eyes. Sound smeared. The hum stretched into choirs and clatter and the wet churn of a hundred mouths. Her skin pinpricked; for a breath she felt every grain of dust on her clothes, every loose hair against her cheek.
Then gravity caught her ankles again.
The tunnel had gone.
She stood on a stone terrace that clung to the side of a vast gorge. Terraces stepped down and up in every direction, like the shelves of a titanic amphitheatre, each crammed with life. Vines crawled along the balustrades, fat clusters of grapes drooping over the edge, skins so taut they seemed ready to split . Orchards spread below, trees bowed under fruits she had no name for: star-shaped pods that exhaled steam, translucent melons with hearts that glowed like banked coals.
Above, the sky burned amber. Not sunset; no sun, only a warm, diffuse light that poured from the whole dome like thickened honey. Clouds drifted in slow curls, a deeper orange threaded with rich wine-red, as if some careless god had swirled a glass.
Rory lifted a hand against the glow. Her palm looked too sharp here, every creased line etched darker, veins faintly lit from within, as if the light tried to seep into her.
“Welcome to Dymas.” Nyx’s shape rose from her shadow and solidified beside her. Here, their form gained weight . The edges of the silhouette sharpened; those violet eyes brightened until they almost threw their own light.
Smell rolled in next. Heat, ripe and heavy, wrapped around her. It carried caramel and seared meat, citrus oil, fresh bread, yeast, spices she’d only ever found in the back kitchen when Yu‑Fei experimented. Cardamom, clove, cinnamon, pepper, and behind it all a salt-sour note of overripe fruit and old wine left overnight in glasses.
Rory swallowed. Her tongue tingled as if she’d already eaten.
“Is the air... seasoned?”
“Breath is the first course here.” Nyx drifted to the terrace rail. Their hand, if it could be called that, rested against the carved stone baluster. “Try not to fill your lungs all at once.”
She joined them and looked over.
The gorge yawned vast and layered. Terraces like the one they stood on looped around its circumference, all the way down into a haze she could not see through. Every level held some revel. Great banquet tables stretched out, carved from stone so polished it reflected the amber sky. Figures sprawled at them, eating. Hundreds, thousands, in silks and leathers and rags, all bent over plates. A man in a tailcoat crammed fistfuls of grapes into his mouth, juice running down his beard, eyes glassy. A woman in a hospital gown gnawed meat from a bone already scraped clean, teeth squeaking over the smooth surface.
Between the terraces, spiral stairways wound, narrow as threads in places, broad elsewhere, all choked with movement: servers in neutral grey, arms piled high with platters; creatures that wore shapes almost human but wrong in angle or proportion, bearing trays that steamed and smoked.
Music floated up on the air. Not quite a tune, more an endless sequence of flourishes from unseen stringed instruments, punctuated by clatter, the crack of breaking shells, the wet smack of chewing .
Rory’s stomach clenched. Hunger rose, sharp and unreasonable. She had eaten an hour ago upstairs, stolen dumplings between deliveries, but right now a stale crust of bread sounded perfect .
Her fingers clenched harder around the pendant. The gem burned against her palm, its inner light pulsing in time with something beneath her feet.
“Don’t inhale,” Nyx’s whisper brushed her. “Taste it, and you’ll want more.”
“I already want more,” she muttered, and forced herself to breathe shallow through her mouth. The flavours lessened, but some part of her stayed keyed to the scents, like a dog outside a butcher’s shop.
A bell rang from a lower terrace, deep and sonorous. The sound shivered through the stone under her soles. With it came a flicker at the edge of her sight—a ripple in the amber light, a faint dark haze that overlaid the revels, like grease on the surface of broth.
Nyx turned their half-formed face that way. “Belphegor’s kitchens wake. We should move before the courses change.”
Rory tore her eyes from the nearest table. Up close, its dishes seemed even more indecent. A silver platter bore a roast bird the size of a dog, feathers plucked but head intact, beak stained with its own juices. A tureen brimmed with something like stew, except the chunks within shifted on their own, pulsing with slow, blind life.
She stepped back. “You didn’t mention the food moves.”
“It wants to be eaten.” Nyx’s tone held no humour. “This realm feeds on the act, not the matter. Come.”
A stairway led down from their terrace, its risers made of ivory slats, polished so smooth they reflected warped shards of her face. Each step gave under her weight with a little squeak.
She frowned. “Bone?”
“Not always human.” Nyx flowed ahead of her, their feet never quite touching. “Mostly.”
“That helps.”
They passed close to one of the terraces. A man at the table glanced up, eyes meeting Rory’s for a fraction. He wore a restaurant uniform, sleeves rolled, hands blistered raw. A server’s apron stained the same red as the pendant against her chest.
His gaze slid past her without focus. His hand reached for a dish with practised motion, found a bowl, lifted it, poured its contents into his own open mouth. Thick white sauce streamed over his chin. He chewed, expression empty, then passed the now-empty bowl back to a waiting shape with too many fingers.
He never paused.
Rory shivered. “Can they see us?”
“Only if you want them to.” Nyx’s edges thinned, and shadows from the stacked platters stretched longer across the stair, swallowing their lower half. “For now, we are decoration.”
“Comforting.”
“It should be. Decoration often survives the first fire.”
The stair turned. As they descended, the scent shifted. Less sugar, more char. Smoke threaded the rooftops of the terraces below. Inset into the wall opposite, great ovens gaped, mouths glowing. Inside, whole carcasses rotated on spits the size of lamp-posts. Sparks leapt out, drifted like fireflies, and coalesced for an instant into small, humanoid shapes that raced along the wall before breaking back into embers.
They passed one of the ovens. Heat slapped her skin. Grease spat from the roasting flesh, but instead of falling, the droplets curved back inward, drawn to the turning meat as if by gravity. None hit the stone below.
“That’s not physics,” Rory murmured.
“Hel keeps its own laws.” Nyx reached toward the heat. Their shadow-hand did not burn, but it shuddered as if charred. “Nothing wasted. Nothing shared.“
The stairs opened onto a narrow path that cut between two orchards. The trees here grew closer together. Branches tangled overhead, forming a canopy that filtered the amber light into shifting bars. Fruit brushed her shoulders as she walked: plums swollen to the size of cabbages, pears that bled clear juice from jagged cracks in their skins. One cluster of something like cherries hung within reach, each cherry containing a tiny, perfect eye that swivelled to follow her.
She kept her hands tight at her sides.
A sound reached them through the leaves. Not the distant din of the banqueters, but a rougher rhythm: cleavers on wood, the staccato slap of dough on a table, knives tapping.
“Prep kitchen.” Nyx angled toward it. “We can cross faster that way.”
“Will they—”
“We are not on their menu.”
Bright light spilled ahead where the trees ended. Rory stepped out into an enormous courtyard roofed with heat and noise. Rows of tables cut the space into lanes. At each one, figures worked. Some looked human, some anything but. A woman with skin the colour of cocoa and four arms worked two chopping boards at once, blades flashing, sending diced vegetables into one bucket and meat into another without seeming to glance. Beside her, a figure with a goat’s head scored pastries with careful precision, each perfect cut in a repeating delicate pattern.
No one spoke.
The silence of it unnerved her more than the feasts. Mouths clamped shut, faces drained of expression, all focus bent on their tasks. Only the tools made sound.
As she and Nyx slipped along the edge of the nearest lane, a thin boy at the end of the table hiccupped. His hands never stopped moving over the mound of dough he kneaded. Tears tracked through flour on his cheeks, leaving pale streaks. His apron bore the logo of a high street bakery Rory recognised from Camden.
Her chest tightened. “He’s—”
“A contract honoured.” Nyx’s voice rasped softer. “Hel loves a chef. They arrive with recipes ready.”
“How do you know that?”
“I remember recruitment.” Their gaze brushed over the workers. “Once, I tried to bargain my way past these fires. Different sin. Same kitchen.”
She glanced at them, but their face already closed again, just suggestion and shadow.
They emerged from the far side of the courtyard onto a balcony that jutted out over the gorge, higher than before. From here, the terraces formed spirals below. At the centre, directly across from them, a palace rose.
If the kitchens and tables were grand, the palace dwarfed them. Its lowest levels fused with the rock of the gorge, carved out of it and into it at once. Above, towers climbed, each shaped differently: one like an enormous wine bottle, glass walls tinted deep green, bubbles forever climbing within; another flared at the top like the bowl of a goblet; a third spiralled like smoke from a chimney. Between them, bridges arched, thin as knives, strung with what at first looked like lanterns .
Rory squinted. The ‘lanterns’ pulsed faintly. They weren’t glass. Each one held a writhing, translucent shape, mouths distended in mute screams as some syrupous liquid poured into them from above.
Her stomach rolled. “Let me guess. VIP section.”
“Prince Belphegor’s palace.” Nyx inclined their head. “Seat of Gluttony. The contracts live there.”
“And the Heartstone?”
As if in answer, the pendant flared. Heat seared through fabric and skin. She hissed and yanked it out. The gem no longer glowed faintly; it burned with a thick, inner light, as if a coal had lodged inside.
Nyx’s eyes fixed on it. “It likes this place.”
“It can like it from a distance.” She blew cool air over her reddened fingers. The stone dimmed a shade but stayed warm, pulling, as if some invisible thread ran from it to the palace’s heart.
A shiver crept up the back of her neck. The gorge had felt vast from above. From here, with the palace looming opposite and the terraces stacked beneath, it pressed in. The amber light pooled thicker. Voices carried up, distorted, a stew of praise and pleading and the wet, repetitive sounds of eating.
“You feel that?” She watched the distant towers, the twitching lantern-souls.
“Dymas notices us now.” Nyx’s outline thinned, as if something tasted at their edges . “We step deeper, it will press back.”
“You mean this wasn’t deep.”
“This was the appetiser.”
Rory stared across the gulf. The palace windows glittered, hundreds of hungry eyes cut into stone and glass. The pull from the Heartstone answered in her palm, steady, insistent.
“Path?” She scanned the terraces below, the stairs, the bridges. None led straight to the palace; they curled aside, diverted, looped back.
Nyx lifted their chin toward a lower level. “Service bridge. There.”
She followed their line of sight. Half hidden behind a smoking column, a narrow bridge clung to the gorge wall. Its surface shone metallic, strewn with dull glints.
“How do we get down without becoming the main?” Her eyes tracked the nearest stair, already filling with a troop of servers hauling spit-roasted creatures between them.
Nyx turned to her, their features carved clearer for a breath.
“You brought a Fae blade,” their whisper thinned to almost nothing. “Time to cut through more than wards.”
Her hand went to the dagger at her back. The moonsilver metal breathed cold into her palm, eager and patient both.
She stepped closer to the stone balustrade and looked down, measuring the drop, the reach to the next terrace, the way the rock face indented.
“All right.” She drew the blade. It caught the amber light and threw it back pale and sharp, an alien moon against a devouring sky.
“Let’s see what this place does when something refuses to be eaten.”