AI The Heartstone pendant throbbed once against Aurora’s chest, a small hard knock beneath her shirt.
She stopped so fast Nyx nearly drifted through her shoulder. Their shadow-form tightened, edges sharpening as if a wind had cut across them. Ahead, the air over the chalk circle warped like heat above a hob.
“That wasn’t there a second ago.”
Isolde stood on the far side of the circle with her silver hair hanging straight down her back, though the night wind pushed the grass flat around Aurora’s boots. The half-Fae looked at the shimmer, not at any of them, pale lavender eyes fixed on the place where the dark between two standing stones had gone thick and glossy.
“The Veil bruises before it splits.”
“That’s your version of good news?” Aurora rubbed the pendant through her shirt. Warm now. Warmer than skin. “Because it sounded grim.”
“The door stands open.” Isolde stepped closer to the distortion. No footprint marked the damp earth beneath her bare feet. “What waits beyond it decides the tone.”
Nyx’s violet eyes burned through their face of shadow.
“Charming.”
Aurora pulled the Fae-forged blade from inside her jacket. The leaf-shaped dagger caught a sliver of moonlight and answered with its own cold glow. The hilt bit frost into her palm.
“Right. We’re all pretending this is normal, then.”
“It stopped being normal the day you began to notice what watches back,” Nyx murmured.
The shimmer widened. No rip. No dramatic flash. Space simply gave up and folded inward. The black between the stones deepened into a corridor of amber haze. Warm air breathed out of it, thick with spice and sugar and something rich enough to make her mouth flood.
It smelled like caramelised pears and roast meat and wine poured over hot iron.
Aurora swallowed.
“God. It smells like a kitchen after a wedding and a fire.”
“Dymas,” Isolde answered. “Gluttony wears a silk glove.”
Aurora glanced from the portal to the dark line of trees behind them. Richmond Park sat silent under moonlight, deer moving somewhere beyond the oaks, London a far-off pulse at her back. The portal hummed in front of her with the patient confidence of something older than roads, older than language, as if it had never doubted they would come.
“You’ve been there before?”
Isolde smiled with one corner of her mouth.
“I have stood near its table. I did not stay for supper.”
“That sounds deeply sinister .”
“It was deeply seasoned.”
Nyx made a sound that might have been a laugh if laughter had ever lived in tombs.
Aurora blew out a breath and tightened her grip on the dagger.
“If we walk in there and find out hell has sommeliers, I’m leaving.”
“You won’t leave quickly if you wait too long,” Nyx said. “The tear’s unstable.”
“You could have opened with that.”
“I did. You enjoy commentary.”
The portal flexed. Amber light slid over Aurora’s knuckles. The warmth from the pendant spread across her collarbone like a live thing stretching awake.
She stepped first.
The world did not spin. It lurched .
One moment wet English grass pressed beneath her trainers. The next, pale stone met her soles, warm as a hearth. She caught herself on one hand. The dagger rang against the floor, a bright silver note that travelled further than it should have, skipping out through a vaulted corridor and returning in thin, musical echoes .
Nyx flowed through behind her, then gathered into a man-shaped darkness at her side. Isolde crossed last. The tear narrowed at once, shrinking between two towering pillars the colour of old honey, then sealed with a soft intake of air.
Aurora rose to her feet and stared.
The corridor stretched ahead in a slow curve, its ceiling lost among branching arches shaped like vines turned to stone. Fruit the size of lanterns hung from those arches, glowing from within—pears with translucent skin and pomegranate-like clusters full of tiny golden lights. Thick roots coiled through the walls, though the roots glittered with veins of copper and mother-of-pearl. Water ran somewhere close by, but not with the clear chatter of a stream. This water moved with a syrupy hush, as if it carried more than itself.
The air wrapped around her. Warm. Heavy. Not stale, just crowded, packed with scents until each breath felt like swallowing a course from some enormous meal. Citrus peel. Smoke. Warm bread. Crushed herbs. A sweetness so ripe it bordered on rot.
Her stomach gave a small, treacherous twist.
“Bloody hell.”
Nyx tipped their head back to watch the glowing fruit sway above them, though no wind moved.
“Not hell in whole. Only one appetite within it.”
Aurora looked down the corridor. In the distance figures moved across an opening, tiny from here. Some human, some not. She caught the flash of a tray, a curl of steam, the lift of antlers on something broad-shouldered and tall. Voices drifted in and broke apart before they reached her, laughter threaded with clinking glass.
“This is Gluttony?”
Isolde walked past her as if crossing the threshold of a chapel .
“Did you expect chains and ash?”
“I expected less… hospitality.”
“Hospitality and hunger often share a house.”
Aurora fell into step beside her. The stone underfoot held patterns that shifted when she looked too long. Vines. Script. Veins of red crystal pulsing faintly under the floor, like blood beneath skin. Every few yards, shallow alcoves opened in the walls. In one, a fountain poured dark wine from the mouth of a marble hound into a basin of black glass. In another, silver platters carried pastries lacquered to impossible shine, untouched and steaming as if they had only just left an oven.
She slowed near the platters.
They smelled unreal. Butter and orange blossom. Cinnamon. A sharp note of clove. One tart had a filling that changed colour when she tilted her head, ruby to violet to a molten gold. Heat rose from the pastry. Her mouth watered so hard it almost hurt.
“Don’t,” Nyx whispered.
She jerked her hand back. She had not noticed she’d reached for one.
“Wasn’t going to.”
Nyx looked at her fingers.
“You were.”
Isolde did not turn.
“A place like this greets visitors through the tongue first. The mouth opens more doors than the hand.”
Aurora shoved both hands into her jacket pockets, one still wrapped around the cold hilt of the dagger. The contrast helped. The blade’s chill climbed into her wrist, sharp enough to scrape the haze from her head.
They moved on.
The corridor widened into a terrace, and the sight beyond it pulled all three of them to a halt.
Dymas spread below like a banquet laid across a kingdom.
Vineyards climbed golden hills in perfect sweeps, their leaves not green but shades of bronze, rust , and deep plum, as if autumn had been polished instead of allowed to decay. Between the vines grew trees laden with impossible fruit: figs with skins like blown glass, apples banded in silver, heavy clusters of black grapes that glimmered blue at their edges. Canals cut through the slopes and carried a liquid the colour of pale amber. Bridges arched over them in white stone carved with beasts devouring suns, moons, crowns.
Farther off, palaces rose from the valley floor. Their domes gleamed like beaten copper under an amber sky that held no sun Aurora could see, only a broad molten light spread across the heavens as though the air itself had been poured hot. Towers leaned at angles that should have fallen but did not. Smoke climbed from thousands of chimneys, each plume scented differently even from here. One smelled of pepper and charred rosemary. Another of honey and saffron. Another of seared blood.
Somewhere below, bells rang.
Not church bells. Smaller. Brighter. A scatter of kitchen chimes calling service.
Aurora stepped to the terrace edge. The stone balustrade had been carved into a line of open mouths, each one biting the next tail.
“Jesus.”
“No,” Isolde said softly . “Other management.”
Aurora snorted despite herself, then leaned over for a better look. Roads wound through the valley, crowded with movement. Wagons rolled under loads of casks and baskets brimming with produce. Slim creatures with six antelope legs drew lacquered carts. Winged things swooped low over orchards with ribbons tied to their claws. Near one square, she saw a crowd gathered around a raised platform where white-clad figures worked at long tables, hands flying with knives that flashed in the amber light.
A cheer went up. Even at this distance it carried the raw hunger of a stadium.
“What are they doing?”
Nyx narrowed their glowing eyes.
“Competition.”
“With food?”
“With status. Food is only the weapon.”
Aurora watched one of the figures lift something steaming high above their head while the crowd thrust goblets into the air.
“That’s deranged.”
“That’s organised desire ,” Isolde replied. “Derangement has less symmetry.”
The terrace ran into a set of broad stairs. Each step had been hollowed in the centre, making them feel worn by centuries of traffic. As they descended, the air thickened further. Music crept up from below—stringed instruments plucked in rushing patterns, pipes weaving through them, a beat like a pulse under skin. The sound should have felt festive. Instead it hit her ribs and stayed there, slightly too fast.
Halfway down, Aurora paused and looked at a wall inset with mosaic tiles. At first she thought it showed feasting scenes: tables, cups, fruit, figures with raised hands. Then she noticed the plates on the table held not birds and loaves but jewels, hearts, little folded crowns, keys . The faces around the table did not smile. They bared their teeth.
She touched one tile with the tip of the dagger.
Cold moonsilver met warm glass. For a split second the image shifted. The figures lunged across the table at one another, hands buried wrist-deep in the spread, mouths stretched wider than any human jaw should allow.
Aurora snatched the blade back.
“Did you two see that?”
Nyx had already turned.
“These walls remember.”
“Helpful. I love architecture with trauma.”
Isolde studied the mosaic with a distant look, like someone listening to a song played in another room.
“Desire leaves grease on everything.”
“That sentence belongs in a threat, not a conversation.”
They continued down.
At the foot of the stairs they entered an avenue lined with low pools. The liquid in them was clear at first glance, then not. As ripples crossed the surface, images swam up from below—a child biting into a peach, a soldier draining wine from a helmet, a woman with both hands full of pearls, laughing until her face blurred. Aurora stopped at the nearest pool. Her own reflection surfaced for a breath. Not quite her. This version of her wore a red dress she had never owned, a gold chain at her throat, a table spread before her with enough food for twenty. Her hands reached out, taking, taking, taking.
She stepped back so hard her heel clipped the lip of the basin.
Nyx’s hand, cool and insubstantial, steadied her elbow.
“Don’t meet the water too long.”
“What is it?”
“A courtesy.”
“That looked more like a sales pitch.”
“The difference matters less here.”
A shape moved at the far end of the avenue. Then several shapes. Tall figures in layered robes the colour of bruised figs, their collars stiff with beadwork that glinted like fish scales. They walked in measured silence , carrying trays covered in silver domes. No faces showed beneath their veils, only smooth darkness and two pinpricks of furnace-red where eyes might have been.
Aurora’s hand went to the dagger again.
The procession passed across the avenue and turned into an open arcade. As one tray tilted, a smell drifted free—rich, savoury, unmistakable. Roast lamb. Then something metallic underneath it. Blood pennies on the tongue.
She kept her voice low.
“Tell me those aren’t looking at us.”
“They are,” Isolde answered.
“Do we need to run?”
“Running invites appetite.”
Nyx’s silhouette rippled. Their edges bled into the shadows cast by the pools and the pillars.
“We walk as if expected. Predators taste panic first.”
Aurora lifted her chin and forced her pace steady. One step. Then another. The pendant beat warm against her sternum in time with the pulse beneath the music.
The avenue opened into a garden.
If the vineyards above had felt cultivated, this place felt dreamt by someone with no patience for seasons. Blossoms burst from twisting black branches in colours she had no names for—one bloom gleamed like oil on water, another held a blue so deep it looked cut from midnight. Vines crawled over trellises made from giant rib bones polished smooth. Fruit hung low enough to brush against her shoulders: heavy golden plums, pale segmented globes that clicked softly together, long spirals of scarlet pods that gave off sparks when they touched.
At the garden’s centre stood a tree large enough to roof a house. Its trunk was pale and smooth like flesh under candlelight. From its branches hung crystal vessels filled with liquids of every shade. Red. Green. Opal white. Smoke grey. A few dripped into the roots below, and each drop made the ground shiver.
Aurora approached it before she could stop herself.
Embedded in the bark were objects. Forks. Rings. bone dice. Tiny silver bells. A child’s shoe. A key blackened by fire. They sat just under the surface, half-swallowed, as if the tree had eaten them slowly .
“What is this?”
Isolde circled the trunk without touching it.
“An old appetite.”
“That clears nothing up.”
“The roots feed on offerings,” Nyx murmured. “Or trophies.”
Aurora looked closer. The things inside the bark were not random. They came in layers. Near the roots lay crude items worn by use—wooden spoons, chipped cups, bent coins. Higher up, finer objects gleamed: signet rings, pearl pins, a dagger hilt crusted with gems. The tree had grown through every one.
A soft chiming came from above.
She lifted her head. One of the crystal vessels held not liquid but moving light . Tiny points swam within it like trapped stars. Another held a small dark shape, curled tight. Not an object. A bird? No. The shape shifted. A hand no larger than a baby’s opened against the glass from inside.
Aurora recoiled.
“What the hell was that?”
Isolde’s face sharpened, all softness gone.
“Not a meal.”
“That’s not enough information.”
“Then take more.”
A voice drifted from behind the tree, smooth as poured cream and carrying far too easily through the leaves.
“You stand in Prince Belphegor’s first cellar and complain of mystery. Earth has grown rude.”
The three of them turned together.
A man stepped into view along the curve of the roots, tall and broad through the shoulders, dressed in cream robes embroidered with vines of red thread. His skin held the warm bronze cast of the realm’s light. His hair, black and bound at the nape with a strip of gold, left his face bare. Beautiful face. Precise mouth. Eyes the colour of old brandy.
He carried a pruning knife shaped like a crescent moon. A smear of crimson stained one cuff.
His gaze slid over Isolde, paused on Nyx with open distaste, then settled on Aurora and the pendant beneath her shirt as if he could see straight through cloth and skin.
“There you are,” he said. “I’ve been waiting at the wrong entrance.”