AI The air in Richmond Park held the damp, green smell of recent rain, but as Rory followed the coordinates Nyx had whispered into her mind, the atmosphere began to change. The late afternoon light, already thin and grey, seemed to gather itself into pools of deeper shadow between the ancient oaks. Nyx moved ahead of her, their form a fluid darkness that drank the light, solid one moment and then bleeding into the long shadows cast by the trees the next.
“The boundary is near,” their voice came, not from a mouth but from the space around her, a soft rustle like leaves stirred by a night breeze. “Can you feel it?”
Aurora Carter—Rory to the few she trusted—pushed a strand of straight black hair from her eyes. She felt it. A subtle pressure against her skin, like static electricity raising the fine hairs on her arms. The crescent scar on her left wrist itched, an old nervous habit. She was relying on that cool-headedness she was known for, the out-of-the-box thinking that had gotten her out of Cardiff and away from Evan. This, though—walking into a hidden grove with a being of living shadow to meet a half-Fae seer—was several boxes further out than she was comfortable with.
They found the standing stones in a quiet, overlooked corner of the park, far from the walking paths. Five massive oaks, but they weren’t growing naturally. They formed a perfect circle, their trunks too straight, their branches intertwining overhead to create a dense, living ceiling. The space within the circle shimmered , a faint distortion in the air like heat haze off tarmac, but cold. The Veil. She’d read about it in the fragmented lore Nyx had helped her piece together. This was a thin place.
Nyx paused at the edge of the circle, their violet eyes glowing like distant stars in their shadow-face. “Once we cross, time will not be our ally. It moves to its own rhythm here. An hour may be a minute. A minute may be a day. Stay close.”
Rory nodded, her fingers finding the Heartstone Pendant beneath her shirt. The deep crimson gem was quiet, cool against her skin. No pulse of warmth . This wasn’t a Hellmouth. This was something else entirely.
She took a breath and stepped between two of the monolithic trees.
The world folded in on itself. Sound vanished—the distant traffic, the birdcall, the wind—replaced by a profound , listening silence . The light changed from the grey of a London afternoon to a soft, silvered twilight that seemed to emanate from the air itself . The temperature dropped, a clean, sharp cold that smelled of ozone and crushed petals.
They were in a clearing, but it was vast, far larger than the circle of trees outside suggested. The ground was a carpet of moss so thick and soft it swallowed the sound of her footsteps . Wildflowers bloomed everywhere, in impossible profusion and variety: bluebells nodding next to winter hellebores, fiery poppies beside snowdrops, all blooming together under the perpetual twilight. The air hummed with a low, almost musical vibration.
“This is the Fae Grove,” Nyx whispered, their form becoming more solid, more defined, as if the ambient magic here gave them substance. They looked around, their glowing eyes wide. “I have not walked in such a place since… since before. It is like the spaces between, but made alive. Made beautiful.”
Rory moved forward, her senses overloaded. The colours were too vivid, the scents too potent—honeysuckle and ice, damp earth and starlight. She reached out to touch the trunk of a tree that was not an oak but something slender and silver-barked, its leaves like shards of stained glass. It was cold, and a faint luminescence pulsed beneath the bark where her fingers made contact. She snatched her hand back.
“Look,” Nyx said, pointing.
Rory followed their gaze. Their footprints, pressed into the deep moss, were already fading , the moss springing back as if they had never trodden there. But her own footprints remained, clear impressions. Nyx left none. They were a shadow, and shadows leave no mark. The realization sent a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.
They walked deeper into the grove. A stream cut across their path, its water black and perfectly still, reflecting the silver sky like a sheet of obsidian. Rory knelt beside it. Her reflection looked back at her, but it was wrong. Her eyes looked older, tired, and for a fleeting second, the image shifted—she saw herself not in a leather jacket and jeans, but in something finer, darker, with a crown of twisting shadows on her brow. She blinked and it was gone, just her own startled face, her bright blue eyes wide.
“The water shows maybes,” a new voice said. It was melodic, but with an edge like frost on glass. “Or never-weres. Or yet-to-bes. It is seldom polite.”
Rory stood up so quickly she almost lost her balance. Nyx had melted into the deeper shadows of a willow, becoming nearly invisible.
The woman who stood on the other side of the stream seemed to have formed from the mist gathering between the trees. She was ethereal, ageless, with a cascade of silver hair that reached her waist and seemed to hold its own light. Her eyes were a pale, piercing lavender. She wore simple robes the colour of twilight, and she stood on the surface of the black water without sinking, without causing a single ripple. Where she had walked, there were no footprints on the mossy bank.
Isolde Varga. The Seer.
“You seek,” Isolde said, not a question. Her gaze drifted past Rory to the shadow where Nyx lingered. “And you are lost. Both true. You walk the margin of the page, shade. Neither ink nor paper.”
“I am what I am,” Nyx’s whisper came from everywhere and nowhere.
“And she,” Isolde’s lavender eyes locked onto Rory, “is what she may become. If she chooses. The path is fraught with teeth and temptation.” The seer glided across the water, stepping onto the moss as lightly as a breath. Up close, Rory could see no pores, no flaws in her skin. She was like a statue brought to life. “You carry a stone of Hell’s forge. It beats like a heart in the presence of that which would consume. It is quiet here. We are not consumers. We are… preservers. In our way.”
Rory’s hand went to the pendant again. “We need your help. We need to understand—”
“Understanding is a door that swings both ways,” Isolde interrupted, her voice taking on a rhythmic, chanting quality . “The Veil thins when the sun sleeps longest. The gates of appetite swing wide. A prince of Hel prepares his table, and the main course is a world. You have tasted his larder, have you not? The amber skies of Dymas?”
A flash of memory hit Rory: a vision Nyx had shared, not her own, of a place with a warm amber sky, of vineyards stretching to a horizon that glowed with internal fire. The realm of Gluttony. She nodded, mute.
“A hunger that endless cannot be sated by food or wine,” Isolde said. “It consumes realms. It consumes memories. It consumes names.” Her eyes flicked to Nyx again, and for a moment, something like pity touched her perfect features. “You have already lost yours, shadow-who-was-Aldric.”
Nyx’s form shuddered, coalescing into a solid, humanoid shape of darkness. Their violet eyes blazed. “Do not speak that name.”
“It is only a word. It has no power here, unless you give it power.” Isolde turned back to Rory. “You will walk into the amber glare. You will sit at a table you did not set. To refuse the feast is to insult the host. To partake is to be consumed. This is the riddle.”
Rory’s mind raced , the quick, lateral thinking kicking in. “So we need a way to refuse without insulting. A way to… not partake, but still achieve our goal .”
A faint, almost-smile touched Isolde’s lips. “The cool head thinks. Good. For a mortal, you see the shape of the problem.” She lifted a hand, and from the sleeve of her robe, she produced a dagger. It was slender and leaf-shaped, forged from a metal that looked like liquid moonlight . It was cold; Rory could feel the chill of it from two feet away. It had a faint, internal luminescence. “A gift. Forged in the heart of a dying moon, quenched in the tears of a forgotten spring. It is called Moonsilver. It can cut what steel cannot: bonds, wards, lies. It is particularly… indigestible… to demons.”
Rory reached out, her fingers closing around the hilt. The cold was intense, biting into her palm, but it was a clean, sharp pain. The blade felt alive in her hand, humming in tune with the grove’s silent song. The Fae-Forged Blade.
“A weapon is a kind of answer,” Isolde said. “But it is not the only one. Remember: in the house of Gluttony, the greatest sin is to bring your own appetite. Go now. Your time here dwindles, and the moss grows tired of holding your shape.”
Rory felt a sudden, dizzying lurch . The silver twilight began to bleach, the vibrant colours of the flowers washing out. The profound silence was pierced by the distant, mechanical sound of a car horn.
“Thank you,” Rory said, clutching the dagger.
Isolde was already fading , becoming mist and memory. “Do not thank me,” her voice echoed , fainter now. “I have not lied to you. But I may have set you on a path you would not have chosen. That is the way of oracles. Now go.”
Nyx was at her side, a solid pressure against her arm, pulling her back the way they had come. The grove was unraveling around them, the trees retreating, the light flattening. They stumbled back between the standing stones, and the world slammed back into place with the rude noise of a city park, the smell of wet grass and petrol, and the ordinary, relentless march of seconds into minutes.
Rory stood, panting, on the normal moss outside the circle. The Fae-Forged Blade was still in her hand, cold and real. She looked at Nyx. Their violet eyes were wide, troubled.
“An hour?” Rory asked, her voice hoarse.
Nyx listened to the distant chime of a church clock. “Seven minutes,” they whispered.
In the circle of stones, the air was still. The wildflowers were gone . Only the ordinary oaks remained. But in her hand, the moonsilver dagger gleamed, a piece of ancient, otherworldly wonder that refused to fade.