AI Aurora Carter caught her sleeve on a thorn branch and almost dropped the torch.
“Damn it.”
The word came out small, swallowed at once by the trees. She tugged free, checked the screen of her phone again, and stared at the pin she had saved that morning . The map still showed Richmond Park, a pale green shape and a blue dot drifting near the edge of nowhere, but the path under her boots had narrowed into something no official route admitted to. Brambles had knitted over the fence line. Roots rose through the soil like knuckled hands. Ahead, between the black ribs of old oaks, pale stone lifted from the ground.
So. Not a prank, then.
She shoved the phone into her coat pocket and touched the pendant through the wool. The Heartstone answered at once, a faint pulse against her chest, warm as a held breath. It had done that twice before, once in an alley in Whitechapel where a thing with too many joints had stepped out of a wall, and once beneath Holborn where the tiled corridor had opened into somewhere older than London had any right to be. Both times, trouble had followed.
“Brilliant,” she muttered. “Exactly what I wanted.”
That was not true. What she wanted was an answer.
Three nights ago, a slip of paper had appeared under her flat door above Silas’ bar. No name. No signature. Just a line in a neat hand: If you want to know who gave you the red stone, come to the grove beyond the old boundary. Come alone.
She had spent a full day calling it stupid. Then she had come anyway.
Aurora moved on. The torch beam slid across the standing stones and found the carvings cut into them, loops and branching lines softened by age. Oak roots coiled around the bases as if the trees had grown to keep the stones from leaving. Wildflowers crowded the clearing beyond in a scatter of white and violet, wrong for the season, wrong for the dark, each petal sharp as paper in the torchlight.
The air changed when she stepped between the first two stones.
Not colder. Not warmer. Denser.
She stopped at once. Her ears gave a painful little pop. The distant hush of the city vanished, no road noise, no late plane, no barking dog from some estate half a mile away. The silence did not feel empty. It felt occupied.
Aurora turned slowly , torch raised. The path behind her still showed, but it looked farther away than it should. The stones seemed taller too, their surfaces slick with a dim sheen, as if moonlight pooled on them even where the torch did not reach . Her pendant pressed warmth into her skin, steady now, not pulsing so much as waking.
“The grove,” she said under her breath .
She had heard the name before, always in the same tone, casual on purpose. A hidden place in Richmond Park. Fae-touched. Best avoided unless invited, armed, drunk, or suicidal. The stories never agreed on which.
She took one step deeper in and the flowers moved.
Aurora froze.
Nothing dramatic. No sudden parting. No hand rising from the stems. Just a shiver passing through the blooms from left to right, though no wind touched her face. It rippled on, circled a cluster of foxgloves, then stopped beside a low mound of moss and disappeared.
A rabbit, she thought.
Then she corrected herself at once. Rabbits did not move in neat arcs.
“Who sent the note?”
Her voice carried too cleanly. No echo . It landed in the clearing and stayed there.
No answer.
Aurora advanced with care, boots sinking into soft ground that felt springy beneath the leaf mould. She kept the torch low and listened. Her own breathing. The faint brush of her coat. Somewhere close by, a click, like a fingernail tapped against glass.
She swung the beam right. Nothing but trunks and the pale backs of mushrooms climbing one fallen log.
A second click, behind her now.
Aurora turned. Empty.
“Cute.”
She reached into her pocket and wrapped her fingers round the small folding knife she carried for parcels on deliveries and for men who mistook politeness for weakness. It would be worthless against anything properly monstrous, but metal in hand beat bare fists and legal regrets.
The centre of the grove held a flat stone sunk into the earth, broad as a table and ringed by wild thyme. Someone had left things on it. Not fresh flowers or offerings from a modern witch with a social media habit. Older stuff. A bird skull. A twist of rusted wire. Three acorns black as coal. A strip of faded blue ribbon tied round a twig.
Aurora played the torch over them and saw one more object near the far edge of the slab, half hidden by fern.
A photograph.
She came closer, heart kicking once, hard.
The picture had curled with age. Water had blurred one corner. Even so, the face in it was clear enough. A man in his fifties, broad shoulders, dark coat, barrister’s smile scrubbed away by candid surprise. Brendan Carter, her father, caught mid-turn as if he had just heard someone call his name.
“No.”
Aurora snatched the photograph up. The paper felt dry. Too dry for something left out here. She flipped it over. Blank.
The click sounded again, this time from directly beneath the stone.
She stepped back so fast her heel skidded in the thyme. The torch beam jumped. Shadows lurched over the standing stones.
“Enough,” she said, louder . “You wanted me here, I’m here. Show yourself.”
A laugh answered her.
It came from nowhere she could place, low and brief, not amused so much as pleased. The hairs on her arms lifted. Aurora turned in a tight circle and caught a movement between two trees, a pale shape passing behind bark too fast and too smooth for any person she knew. It did not rustle leaves. It glided.
“Not funny.”
The grove remained still. Then, from her left, her own voice said, “Not funny.”
Aurora’s mouth went dry.
The words had her cadence, her clipped vowels, her tired London polish laid over Cardiff roots. The mimicry was exact, down to the faint annoyance.
She held the torch steady by force. “Right. One of those.”
Her voice, from somewhere behind the stone, answered, “Right. One of those.”
Aurora backed away from the slab. The pendant burned hotter. Warmth spread through the silver chain and prickled at the nape of her neck. She looked down. The Heartstone glowed through her coat, a deep crimson stain under the fabric.
A portal nearby. Or opening. Or tear. None of the terms people used for Hel and the places brushing against it sounded safer than the others.
Something tapped her shoulder.
Aurora spun and slashed with the knife.
Steel met only air. The torch beam carved across flowers, stone, bark, and for one split second, a face leaned inches from hers.
Not a full face. Enough of one. White skin stretched too smooth over fine bones. One large eye, dark as wet earth. A mouth smiling with closed lips, as if manners mattered.
Then it was gone .
Aurora stumbled back, breath breaking loose. Her shoulder hit one of the standing stones. The carved surface felt warm. Living warm.
“Easy,” said a voice from the trees, and this one was not hers.
It sounded feminine, musical if music had learned spite. The accent slid around place and class and landed nowhere human.
“You came hunting a key and brought a kitchen knife.”
Aurora angled the torch towards the sound. The beam dimmed halfway there, as though the dark thickened and drank it. “You left the note.”
“I left a note.”
“Then come out.”
“No.”
A shape detached itself from the trunk of an oak, not stepping forward but unfolding from shadow as if the tree had hidden it in its bark. She was tall, thin, and wrong in the subtle ways that unsettled more than claws ever could. Her limbs bent with too much grace. Her hair hung long and pale, not blond but colourless, like silk soaked in milk . A dark green dress clung to her in layers that seemed woven from leaves, lichen, and funeral cloth . When she tilted her head, Aurora caught the gleam of small pointed teeth between her lips.
The woman’s eyes settled on the photograph in Aurora’s hand.
“There he is,” she said. “The honest man.”
Aurora curled her fingers over the picture. “You know my father?”
“Oh, child, lots of things knew your father.”
“Don’t call me child.”
A smile deepened. “Then stop walking into old places without permission.”
Aurora shifted her weight and kept the knife low. “You said you had information.”
“I said you could learn who gave you the stone.”
The fae woman glided a little nearer. Flowers bent away from her feet.
“Not the same thing.”
“Close enough. Start talking.”
The woman’s gaze dropped to Aurora’s chest, to the red glow under the coat.
“That little heart belonged elsewhere. It crossed a boundary wrapped in blood and oath. It should not rest against mortal skin, yet there it lies, beating for you. Curious.”
“Who gave it to me?”
“Someone who needed a door opened.”
The click came again, all around them now, quick and dry, like teeth chattering in a closed mouth. Aurora swept the torch across the grove. Between the trunks, shapes gathered. Low to the ground. Thin. Pale where the light struck, dark when it slid away. Eyes blinked near the roots, too many and too level.
The woman watched Aurora notice them.
“There,” she said. “You feel it now.”
“What are they?”
“Hungry things. Not mine. They smell the under-place on your trinket.”
Aurora’s grip tightened on the knife. “You invited them.”
The woman gave a tiny shrug. “I loosened the hedge. You brought the bait.”
One of the shapes darted forward, then stopped just shy of the circle of wildflowers. It stood on two legs for a heartbeat. Its body looked child-sized and hairless, skin grey as ash. The face had no nose to speak of, only slits, and the eyes shone with a damp shine like snail tracks. Its fingers were too long, each tipped with a black nail that clicked on stone.
Another emerged. Then a third.
Aurora moved sideways, putting the standing stone at her back again. “If this is your version of a conversation, I’m underwhelmed.”
The fae woman’s smile returned, sharper now.
“You came for truth. Truth costs.”
“Invoice me.”
“Your father bargained here.”
The words landed harder than they should have, because the thing nearest Aurora flinched at the sound of bargained and turned its wet eyes towards the fae. It knew the word.
Aurora kept her stare fixed on the woman. “For what?”
“For a daughter who would live.”
The grove went dead quiet.
Even the clicking stopped.
Aurora heard only the blood in her ears and, beneath it, a low hum rising from the Heartstone. Not warmth now. Pressure. The pendant pressed so hard against her sternum it hurt.
The fae woman leaned in.
“He paid in years and law and something sweeter. He thought the account closed. Men like that always do.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Oh, certainly. Parts of it.”
A sound cracked through the grove.
Stone on stone. Deep. Final.
Aurora looked over her shoulder. The standing stone behind her had split from top to base along one carved seam. Crimson light bled from the gap. Not light exactly. A colour so dense it seemed to pour.
The hungry creatures shrank back, hissing through slit mouths. The flowers around the broken stone blackened at once, their petals curling in on themselves. Copper hit Aurora’s nose, not fresh blood, older, mineral, buried deep and dragged up.
The Heartstone flared hot enough to burn. She yanked it from under her coat. The crimson gem blazed in her palm, and within it something moved, a thread of darkness twisting like a pupil opening.
The fae woman stepped back for the first time.
“Well,” she said softly . “There’s your answer.”
The split in the stone widened with a grinding groan. From the seam came a long pale hand, jointed wrong, tipped with nails the colour of old ivory, and it hooked round the edge from the other side.