AI The blade bit the air like ice, and the world cracked.
Rory shoved her fist through the cut she had carved in nothing, silver chain biting her skin as the Heartstone throbbed warm against her sternum. The Veil tore with a sugar-glass sound. Cold rushed out, not winter cold, but pantry cold, sharp with stale cinnamon and old grease. Nyx slid through after her like a sliver of night finding its seam. Isolde stepped last. She left no tracks on the frost rimming the threshold.
Close it, child.
Rory dragged the Fae-forged dagger through the trembling edge. The wound in the world healed with a hiss. The sound echoed and kept echoing .
She straightened and blinked. The sky beyond the oak circle had been gone . Ahead stretched a vaulted hall, or a mouth someone had trained to pretend to be a hall. Amber light bled from somewhere with no sun. A thousand plates lacquered the walls, bone-white, each stamped with a crest of a crowned fork. Tables rose like altars, the long faces of polished wood shining dark as liver. Far above, chandeliers of hanging ladles turned slowly , catching the amber and releasing it in glints.
Everything smelled like burnt sugar and marrow. Her throat slicked.
Nyx's eyes glowed faintly violet in their shadow-shape. Their voice came as a draught along her ear. This is new.
"That a good new or a oh-God-if-I-die-here new?"
They tilted their head, a silhouette learning curiosity. If you die here, the menu changes.
Isolde's silver hair fell in a clean line down her back. She stepped over a scattering of seeds as if they had agreed not to touch her. In the hush, the seeds clicked, tiny as teeth. The Seer smiled with only the corners of her mouth. The Prince who gorges built chapels to appetite. The first stones still remember hymns.
"Belphegor," Rory muttered.
A distant bell sounded, one note struck by an invisible ladle. The note trembled the tables. A hundred knife-blocks lifted their knives a fraction, as if in greeting.
The Heartstone warmed against Rory's skin. She closed her fingers around it through the fabric. It pulsed in a steady rhythm, like a small animal set under her collarbone. She felt the pulse answer something deeper in the hall. A call, and an answer.
"Lead or follow?" she said.
Isolde tipped her chin. A coppery tang sharpened the air as something unseen breathed in. Better to lead between bites.
Nyx drifted forward, their edges reaching for shadow as if they could wring it from places where light had settled. Rory kept the moonsilver blade low and close, its cold numb along her fingers. The cold steadied her. She had carried hot fear since Evan and had learned to cool it. Here, fear took other shapes, sweet and bright and meant to be eaten.
They crossed between tables. The tabletops inlaid with mosaics showed contests fought with skillets and sugar. Men in chef's whites wore laurel crowns, their faces thin and triumphant. On the floor, someone had tiled in the shape of a mouth, wide and laughing. They stepped deliberately between the tongue and the teeth. Isolde's bare feet found every safe tile, and because that was unfair to mortals who left marks, Rory followed Nyx instead.
A doorway to the left yawned, its arch relief-carved with grapevines that were too glossy for stone. Grapes the size of fists bulged there, wet and ready. One dripped. The drop fell as slow as thought and hit the floor with a soft slap that made Rory's stomach clench. A tangy perfume blew through, bright as crushed mint, then turned and stung like vinegar. Her eyes watered.
"Rule one," she said because rules kept her hands from shaking. "Don't eat anything. Not even if it cries."
The grapes shivered as if laughing .
Beyond the arch, a garden stretched within the hall, rows of trellises running away beyond sight. Vines braided themselves into lattices and arches, every direction an invitation. Fruit hung in strange procession, familiar shapes gone strange. Figs peeled back like eyelids revealing milky seeds. Pumpkins sat like throttled heads, their vines tightening faintly. Apple trees bore apples so flawless that Rory felt uglier just looking at them. When a breeze found the leaves, it made a sound like whispered recipes. Butter, the voices breathed. Bone stock. Names.
Nyx reached a hand and the leaves shadowed under their fingers. The vines rose as if to feel the cool. Nyx withdrew. Even gluttony remembers ghosts.
"Is this Hel proper?" Rory kept her voice moving, kept it from settling. "Or is it a kitchen annex with delusions?"
The Seer did not look at her. This is Dymas, she said as if tasting the name . A slice only. A crumb fallen from a bigger loaf. And crumbs often hold the flavour.
"Comforting."
Footsteps, she realised, carried. The sound of her boots came back to her three heartbeats later, but not mirrored. Answered, as if something else had matched her gait for the pleasure of it. She slowed. The answer slowed. She stopped. The echo went on by one and a half more steps, then paused like a thought caught in a throat.
She gripped the Heartstone through fabric. Heat had climbed. The little stone knew a portal when it smelled one, that was the gift, or the curse, or the lifeline. It would get brighter and warmer as they drew close, the benefactor had written in the note. It had not said anything about what the portal took, only where it existed.
Rory pointed towards where the pulse felt thickest, a weight in the air, a sound without pitch. "There."
Nyx looked that way . Their head tipped. Between trellises ahead, beyond a hedge made of braided tablecloths grown stiff as bark, amber light thickened. Isolde stepped, and the hedge slackened for her like cloth at a familiar hand.
They passed through. The air cooled more, pantry to cellar. Frost filmed the edge of Rory's breath, fine and quick and gone. They entered a chamber that had trained itself to be circular. The walls curved inward as bowls do. Shelves circled the round room, floor to ceiling, each shelf holding jars sealed with red wax. Whatever slept in those jars had pressed up against the glass until it had learned the curve.
Between the shelves rose an altar of butcher's blocks fused together long ago. Knife scores spelled out a language Rory almost understood. Her name fitted there. Aurora could be carved with two deep strokes and one shallow. She did not look too hard.
In the middle of the butcher's-block altar, a grate rose. Under it, a faint red glow throbbed with the heartbeat in her chest. The Heartstone tried to leap out of her shirt like a bird muffed too tightly .
Nyx stood at the edge and leaned without leaning. A thing like heat, but not heat, moved across their face. They whispered. The oven still remembers breath. Something fed it.
"A soul?" Rory's tongue nearly stuck to her teeth on the word.
A contract, Isolde said. Her voice had settled an inch lower in the room. Broken. It smokes when you let it go. The next asks for sweeter terms.
Rory touched the grate. Metal heat came through faint. The Fae blade laid across the bars sent cold seeping down, and a thread of steam curled up as if the oven resented the chill . Her crescent wrist scar ached in answer to a memory of a stovetop. She gripped the dagger until the ache cooled too.
Something moved behind the jars. She turned too fast and nicked her fingertip on a splinter raised from the butcher's blocks. Blood beaded, fresh and honest.
The chamber, politely, woke.
A hum rose along the shelves. The wax seals softened and depressed. The first jar to open unsealed with a small wet suck and let out a smell like a bakery turned too hot, flour singing, sugar blackening. What had slept inside pushed a thin, translucent tongue to the lip. The tongue tasted the air, tasted her.
Nyx unfurled from shadow and moved to her side, a taller dark. They whispered, quick this time. Do not let it learn your flavour.
"Tell it I am burnt toast," Rory said, licking blood from her dwindling cut. "Unlovely and no jam."
Something in the far jar shuddered at the idea of jam. The tongue withdrew. The seal reformed. A handful of other jars continued to hum like bees behind walls.
Isolde did not step back. She placed her palm on the nearest shelf and closed her eyes. Her lashes did not touch her cheeks. There is a way that does not pay with teeth, she said in that not quite voice . There is a knife that cuts without wound.
Rory raised the Fae blade. "This one?"
Moonsilver caught no reflection from the amber light. It looked like a piece of night someone had taught to behave like a knife. She touched it to the grate. A quiver ran through the butcher's-block altar, as if wood remembered being trees and twitched.
On the wall opposite, words rose from the grain. Not carved, not painted. Raised like welts. MENU, said the first. Courses followed:
Appetiser, Small Lies.
Fish, Secrets in Butter.
Meat, The Heart's Thicker Cut.
Pudding, Regrets with Custard.
For the first time, Rory wanted nothing to do with custard.
The oven beat under the grate. The Heartstone strained to leap from her hand and dive like a swallow. Rory pressed it down until the chain dug and thought about drowning. She set her jaw. "If I open it, what comes up?"
Nyx breathed quiet. If you open it wrong, hot hands.
Isolde tipped her head a fraction. If you open it right, a door.
Rory breathed through her nostrils where copper still stung. She pushed the blade point between the bars and slid it into the heat that did not burn. The stone under the grate hummed, a lower tone. She cut six inches, two inches, a circle that was not a circle but rather a loop in thought . The moonsilver did not dull. She left the last strand for a second. Details mattered here. Always had.
"On three," she said because it gave her a spine. "One. Two."
She sliced. The grate fell open. A breath rose, more like a kitchen sigh than a grave 's exhale. The Heartstone pulled like a hound on a short leash. A shimmer rose inside the oven where no fire had burned for centuries. Rory did not think that and did not count time here where time kneaded itself differently.
Light bulged. The room tilted. Her stomach slid in place. Fractions of recipes whispered in her ears out of order, measurements for people. Two cups forgiveness, sifted. Half a pound of pride rendered slow. Her mouth filled with spit.
A figure rose in the shimmer. She first took it for trick of heat. Then it put its hands on the oven mouth and pulled. Wax popped on two dozen jars. Lids rolled. The figure stepped out.
He wore a white coat that might have been linen once but now shone like fat had loved it too long. His face was smooth as carved icing, eyes two currants black enough to drink light. Four extra hands hung at his sides, folded until they were not. Knives threaded his belt. His toes were bare, each toe tipping with a hardened droplet the colour of treacle. He smiled. A hundred small dimples opened in his cheeks like air holes in bread baked correctly.
"Service," he said. His voice came hot and patient, like a man who had tasted every panic and found it all under-seasoned. "Is it the solstice already?"
Isolde did not move her hand from the shelf. Truth tastes better unripe, she said.
He looked past the Seer as if she were part of the architecture. His currant eyes set on Rory. The pupils pinched and widened. He inhaled through his mouth and that was a mistake because the chamber breathed with him. He tasted. His gaze went to the Heartstone rise and fall under Rory's shirt. "Ah," he said. "A reservation."
"The Heartstone is mine," Rory said, surprising herself because the possessive came like a blade sliding across a throat, clean and with purpose.
He smiled wider. Dimples deepened. "Belphegor keeps a generous table. All hearts are welcome on it. Come then. We are starving for novelty."
Nyx blurred and was suddenly between Rory and the thing that had named service. Their whisper wound around the air and found edges like floss along teeth. You slept too long, cook. The menu changed.
The chef tasted the shadow with his eyes. His upper hands remained folded. The lower right uncurled and plucked a boning knife from his belt. It looked more used than the others. He spun it with a child's contentment. "Hungry things keep no proper clocks. We eat as the bell tells us. And the bell..." He flicked the knife. It sang. In the hall beyond, a greater bell answered, a depth note that set the fruit to trembling and the plates to rattle faintly on the walls.
Rory felt the sound split in her ribs. Cracks formed in the wax on a hundred jars at once. Tongues pressed quickly to find the air. The garden shivered. Outside, vines quickened as if in a storm.
Isolde's hand came away from the shelf at last. She turned her face to Rory. Do not let him ask your name. Names are binding. Numbers are bargains. But hunger haggles in portions.
"You always pick the cheerful sightseeing routes," Rory said, because if she stopped talking she might start tasting her own heart to see whether it went with herbs de Provence.
The chef watched their mouths move and chose. He pointed with the boning knife to the grate Rory had cut. "Open well," he said. "Bold. We appreciate initiative." His extra hands unfolded with the ripple of a centipede. He held no more knives. He held silver cloches, three of them, lids domed and polished to blind. He set them one by one across the butcher's block. The lids clicked down. He nodded to himself as if pleased by small work done right. "Course one."
The cloches lifted on their own. Steam rose. On three little plates lay three little versions of something that made Rory's stomach small. Each plate held a steaming pasty in the shape of a heart. Crimped edges perfect . She smelled thyme and that heavy concrete smell of rain on hot stone that had no place in pastry.
The chef smiled across the offerings. "Tastes best if you know what you are swallowing," he said.
Nyx's edges tightened. They spoke softly and their voice reached Rory without crossing space. Do not eat. Do not refuse. Play.
Rory dragged air through her nose. The pendant hammered. The oven-light behind the chef pulsed . This had been the door, and now it had become a table. Her fingers itched to put the knife through something that would end a choice.
She reached for the Fae blade and then stopped because the metal had turned slick. Not with heat, not with oil. With want. The moonsilver thirsted. It knifed under wards well enough. It also liked demons. A thrill ran up the hilt that was not hers.
At her side, Isolde said without looking at her, Salt the path. Walk, do not run. Leave crumbs only if you want to be followed.
"How do you salt a path in a kitchen that wants to lick you clean?"
The Seer turned her palm up. A pile of salt lay there, white as lies on wedding days. She pressed her hand and the salt she did not hold fell, grains hanging in the air a moment before kissing the floor. They fell in a straight line leading from Rory's boot to the way they had come, if the way still existed. It did not look like a door anymore. It looked like a close mouth .
The chef's head ticked a fraction. "No seasoning," he said and his voice sprayed the steam finer. "How rude."
Behind him, deeper in the hall, something big turned over in its sleep. A rumble built. The chandeliers of ladles chimed and chimed and would not stop. The floor under the butcher's blocks shifted as if a tongue flexed. Rory slid one foot back on instinct and felt the grain of the wood roll under her sole. Not wood. Muscle pretending to remember wood.
The chef's smile went away. His eyes went flat as spoilt milk. He raised one cloche lid and brought it down like a bell.
From the garden, the vines came. They surged through the arch like a tide, tendrils whipped to cords, leaves edged like razors. Fruit burst, spraying seeds that hissed against salt. The first tendrils hit the salt line and recoiled smoking, then reached again with an anger that plants should not own.
Nyx flowed at them. Their body turned broad, a wall of shadow that vines punched and could not find purchase in. Their whisper cracked like linen. Back.
Isolde held two fingers up and traced a slow circle in the air. The circle caught the chime of the ladles and sent it back. For an instant the sound thinned and the vines lost rhythm. She could slow but not stop. She could not lie to hunger and make it believe.
Rory planted her boots, set the Heartstone chain against her neck to burn less, and lifted the Fae blade to meet the first tendril that came clever and low. It went for her ankle. She cut. The moonsilver went through it like lake water. The tendril fell and writhed and smelled bright as crushed cucumber and then bitter as aspirin. Another followed, and another.
The chef clapped, a gentle sound under the riot. "Good wrists," he said. "You will plate quickly for us."
More bells answered from beyond the hall, not kind, not few. The air thickened. The oven behind him bulged a fraction, its mouth wider. Things in jars began to mutter. One lid popped and a whisper crawled out that used to be a prayer in a language Rory did not know.
Isolde's salt drew a line which the vines could not cross easily. But lines bend in halls made of mouths.
Rory cut again and felt the blade thrill like a thing fed. The tendril recoiled and lashed up, catching her sleeve and yanking. She ducked but lost balance. The butcher's block pressed to her hip and something under it pulsed . Her body gave her a choice between falling into the chef's arms or away into the garden's teeth.
She chose neither. She threw herself along the salt, sliding sideways, shoulder low, blade high. The pendant thumped her sternum. The Heartstone hit the butcher's block with a small chime.
The oven answered.
The light under the grate swelled and snapped. The grate Rory had cut opened wider on its own, a yawn she had not asked for. Hot hands reached for her ankle from below, tendrils of smoke that made her bones ache. She kicked back on instinct. Her heel connected with something that wore treacle on its toes. The chef stepped into her with three hands and the knife in the fourth lifting, and the ladle chandeliers rang their bright little doom as the floor beneath all of them buckled and began to slide inward like a throat preparing to swallow.