AI The silver chain of the pendant burns against her throat, the crimson stone throbbing like a trapped pulse . She yanks the collar of her delivery jacket up higher, ignoring the way the fabric catches on the crescent scar on her left wrist. Bramble thorns stick out of her denim jeans, and the air smells like damp earth and something cloying, like overripe blackberries left out in the sun for three days.
She’s just pushed through the last thicket of brambles that blocked the clearing, the same spot she’d mapped on a walk last month—tall oak trees, gnarled and ancient, marking a circle that should have been empty, overgrown with dead bracken. Instead, the ground under her boots is soft with clover, and bluebells carpet the dirt, their petals vivid purple even though it’s mid-January in London. The patch on her chest, the little gold dragon of Golden Empress, catches the faint light filtering through the oak canopy. She’d grabbed the jacket straight from her shift, still carrying the delivery bag slung over one shoulder, heavy with leftover vegetable spring rolls Yu-Fei had pressed into her hands before she left the restaurant.
She pulls out her phone, thumb fumbling for the home button. The screen lights up, showing 11:52 PM. She blinks. She’d left the restaurant at 10:47, driven to Richmond Park, parked in the layby by King Henry’s Mound, then walked twelve minutes to this spot. That should be 11:09 PM, at the latest. She presses the power button, but the screen stays bright, the time frozen. She shoves the phone back into her jacket pocket, then pulls out the crumpled note she’d tucked there three nights ago, scrawled in blue ink: The grove in Richmond Park. The one with the three oaks. He can’t follow here. Stay until dawn. No name, no return address, just the words. She’d laughed at first, tossed it in the bin, then found it again the next morning, crumpled on the floor, and kept it. Two weeks of Evan tracking her, of checking under her bed, of seeing his scuffed boots around every corner, and she’d had nowhere else to turn.
She steps forward, boots sinking into the clover, and spots movement at the edge of the clearing. A flash of pale, bleached linen skin, moving between the oak trees, just out of focus. She freezes, holding her breath, and the movement stops. She leans forward, squinting, and for a second she sees it: a tall, thin figure, no hair, skin the color of damp paper, hands ending in long, sharp black nails. It stands perfectly still, behind the farthest oak stone, watching her. Her hand flies back to the pendant, which now glows so brightly that the fabric of her shirt is lit up from underneath, and the figure flinches, pressing itself against the oak tree, its hands curling into the rough bark.
She takes a shaky step back, ready to turn and run for the bramble thicket, but when she looks over her shoulder, the thicket is gone . In its place is a wall of brambles, thicker than any she’s ever seen, their thorns glinting like glass in the faint light. She spins back, but the figure is gone too, vanished into the bracken without a trace. She stares at the spot where it stood, and there are no footprints, no marks in the clover, nothing to show it was ever there.
The pendant pulses once, sharp and hot, and she looks up. The sky above the clearing is no longer the crisp winter night she’d expected, just a soft, lilac glow, no moon, no stars, no sign of the constellations she’d spent hours learning about in pre-law. The bluebells have spread further, their petals brushing against her ankles as she steps backwards, tripping over a root that wasn’t there a minute ago. She falls to her knees, the pendant slipping out from under her shirt, clattering against the oak stone at her side. She brushes a strand of straight, shoulder-length black hair out of her face, and the stone glows for a second, matching the pendant’s crimson light, and then a strip of bark peels back, revealing smooth, silver metal underneath, etched with tiny, swirling symbols she doesn’t recognize.
She reaches for the pendant, but before her fingers close around it, she hears a low, rumbling growl, deeper than any bear, any wolf, any animal she’s ever heard. She looks up, and standing in the gap between the two nearest oak stones, blocking her way to the bramble wall, is another figure. This one is broader, taller, its skin covered in patches of green moss, eyes like glowing embers fixed on her. It raises a hand, claws long and sharp, and she flinches, curling into a ball on the ground. The pendant skitters across the dirt, coming to rest against the silver-etched oak stone, and the embers in the figure’s eyes dim, as if it’s being burned by the light from the pendant. It steps back, growling again, and vanishes into the trees.
She sits there for a long minute, chest heaving, until the growling fades completely . She picks up the pendant, brushing dirt off it, and tucks it back under her shirt, pressing her palm to the warm stone. The crescent scar on her wrist throbs, a dull ache she hasn’t felt since she was seven years old, when she’d fallen against a garden trowel and cut herself. She stands up, brushing dirt off her jeans, and stares at the wall of brambles blocking her way back. The bluebells are starting to wilt now, their petals turning brown, and the ground under her boots is no longer soft clover, but hard, packed dirt, exactly like the rest of Richmond Park. The air smells worse now, too, a mix of rot and cloying honey, sharp enough to make her nose burn.
She steps towards the bramble wall, reaching out to touch the thorns, and they prickle her fingers, leaving small, red cuts. She pulls her hand back, rubbing it against her jeans, and that’s when she hears it: a voice, low and rough, cutting through the quiet, sharp as a broken bottle.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
The voice is exactly Evan’s, stretched thin, like it’s been pulled apart at the seams. She spins, her delivery bag slipping off her shoulder, clattering to the ground, spring rolls spilling out across the dirt. Standing in the gap between the two oak stones, where the bramble wall should have been, is a man. Tall, lean, wearing the frayed grey flat cap she’d bought Evan for his birthday, scuffed work boots caked in Richmond Park mud. His hair is the same messy brown, his jawline the same sharp angle that used to make her soften, before the shouting started, before the slamming doors, before the way he’d grabbed her wrist when she tried to leave.
But his skin is too pale, almost translucent, and his eyes are black, no whites, no irises, just endless dark. And on his left wrist, a small crescent scar, identical to the one on her own wrist, the one from the garden trowel all those years ago.
The pendant under her shirt pulses once, so bright it lights up the entire clearing, and the figure smiles, his teeth sharp, too sharp, too many of them.