AI The scuffed black rubber heel of Rory’s delivery boot caught on a half-buried root, and she lurched forward, only kept from face-planting into velvet green moss by a cool, weightless hand curled around her left wrist. The small crescent scar there tingled, the same way it always did when Nyx touched her. She righted herself, brushing damp crumbs of leaf mould from the knees of her faded cargo pants, and glanced back at the gnarled oak standing stones that marked the edge of the clearing they had crossed ten minutes prior. She’d walked Richmond Park a hundred times since moving to London, had tramped its paths in rain and sleet and summer sun, and never once had those stones existed. Thick with ivy and carved with symbols that shifted when she stared too long, they vanished behind a wall of beech trees the second she blinked, as if they had never been there to block her view.
Isolde waited ten paces ahead, her waist-length silver hair catching the odd golden light that filtered through the Grove’s canopy. Rory stared at the ground between them, at the thick soft moss that held the deep print of her own boot soles, and the empty space where Isolde’s bare feet pressed into the growth. No indent, no displaced clump, nothing. The half-Fae seer moved as if she weighed nothing at all, as if the earth itself refused to mar its surface for her.
“You were warned the threshold doesn’t suffer clumsy mortals.” Nyx’s voice wound through the air, a whisper carried on a breeze that didn’t stir the leaves around them. The shade stood a head and shoulders above Rory, their humanoid shadow form shifting at the edges, their faintly glowing violet eyes fixed on Isolde as they spoke. At 6’2, they loomed over most mortals they met, a side effect of the solid form they wove from shadow when they walked in the mortal realm.
“Bloody trees attacked me first. Not my fault.” Rory brushed a strand of straight black hair from her face, her bright blue eyes narrowing at the nearest oak, as if it might reach out and trip her again. “I thought woods were supposed to stay still. You know, rooted to the ground.”
“The woods move for those who do not know their names.” Isolde turned, her pale lavender eyes locking on Rory’s, her ageless face softening into a faint smile. She could not lie, bound by Fae compulsion, but she wrapped every truth in riddles that left most who sought her out more confused than they arrived. “You have not earned the right to have them stay still for you, little mortal. You are a guest here, not a keeper.”
They moved deeper into the Grove, and Rory’s senses reeled. Wildflowers bloomed in every direction, bluebells tangled with poppies, daffodils twisted around nightshade, every species that should bloom in a separate season growing side by side, vibrant and unapologetic. It was mid-November in London, a week after Guy Fawkes, when the only things growing outside the Grove were dead leaves and mould. The air smelled of jasmine and burnt cinnamon, thick enough to taste on her tongue, and somewhere in the distance a harp trilled a tune she could not place, no player visible through the trees. Bees buzzed around the flowers, their bodies black and gold, an impossibility in the cold of an English autumn. When she fumbled for her phone to check the time, her watch claimed they had been inside the Grove for 47 minutes, while her phone, still syncing to the network outside the boundary, read 12 minutes. She blinked at the conflicting numbers, and Nyx huffed a laugh that sounded like rustling leaves .
“Time doesn’t stick here. Isolde wove the grove’s magic to tug it out of shape, keep Fae hunters and mortal treasure seekers from tracking what lies within. An hour inside can be three days outside, or three minutes. You learn to stop checking.”
Rory stuffed her phone back into her jacket pocket, her fingers brushing the small moonsilver dagger Isolde had pressed into her hands that morning, before they crossed the standing stones. The Fae-forged blade was always cold, even through the fabric of her jacket, and it hummed faintly when she touched it, a low thrumming that matched the pulse of the Heartstone Pendant she wore under her sweater. The deep crimson thumb-sized gem had arrived in her mailbox a week earlier, no note, no return address, and it had grown steadily warmer the closer they drew to the Grove’s core. She pressed a hand to her chest, the gem throbbing under her palm, and called out to Isolde.
“What’s wrong with this stupid rock? It’s been getting hotter since we crossed the threshold. It didn’t do that back at my flat.”
Isolde stopped walking, and the hair on the back of Rory’s neck stood up. The seer’s head tilted, as if she was listening to something only she could hear, and when she spoke her riddles were gone , her voice sharp and raw.
“Your stone was forged in Dymas, the realm of gluttony, carved from the heart of a mortal who sold their soul to Belphegor for a lifetime of feasts. It pulses when it draws near to the rift that splits the Grove’s core, a tear in the Veil that bleeds into Hel. I have guarded it for three hundred years, since I was exiled from the Fae Courts for sharing visions with mortals. It grows restless as the solstice nears.”
The Veil. Rory had heard Nyx mutter about it, the shimmering barrier that separated Earth from the other realms, that weakened every winter solstice, that frayed at the edges to create rifts that let things cross between worlds. She’d thought it was a fairy story, until she’d found her abusive ex Evan in her flat’s hallway three weeks earlier, the man who had tracked her from Cardiff, his throat torn out by something that left claw marks that couldn’t have belonged to any Earthly animal. She’d run to Silas, the bartender who owned the building she lived above, and he’d sent her to Nyx, and Nyx had sent her to Isolde, and now she was standing in a hidden Fae grove, holding a ancient dagger and a demon-forged relic, and her life made less sense than any of the bad horror films she binged on slow shifts delivering takeaway for the Golden Empress.
She stepped past Isolde into the central clearing, and her breath caught. Purple fireflies weaved patterns across the air, constellations that shifted and danced, brighter than any star she’d ever seen in smog-choked London. A small pond sat in the middle of the clearing, its water so clear she could see smooth white stones at the bottom, and she leaned over to stare at her reflection. For a heartbeat, it wasn’t her staring back. It was ten-year-old her, climbing a tree in her parents’ Cardiff garden, falling and slicing her wrist open on a broken branch, the scar that would mark her for life blooming red. Then it was 24-year-old her, Evan’s fist raised to strike her in their old Cardiff flat, his face twisted with rage. She stumbled back, gasping, and Nyx caught her shoulder, their shadowy form solid enough to feel like a real hand.
“The water shows you what you outran. Not a curse, a reminder . Fae magic doesn’t waste time on cheap tricks.”
Rory nodded, her heart hammering, and reached up to grip the Heartstone again. It was burning now, so hot it seared her palm through her sweater, and she yelped, yanking the chain over her head to hold it away from her skin. The crimson gem blazed, casting long red shadows across the clearing, and the ground under their feet shook. The oak trees around them swayed, though no wind blew, and the pond’s water boiled, sending steam curling into the air. The fireflies scattered, vanishing into the trees, and Isolde drew her own blade, a longer version of Rory’s moonsilver dagger, her voice ringing out clear.
“The Veil frays. Belphegor’s hounds cross the rift. They smell the mortal blood on you, Rory. They’ve been hunting that stone for a hundred years.”
The ground split open ten feet in front of them, a jagged crack that spilled warm amber light into the clearing, the sky of Dymas bleeding through the Veil’s tear. The smell of roasted pork and spiced mead washed over them, thick and cloying, and a deep, baying howl echoed up from the crack, getting closer by the second. Nyx pushed Rory behind them, their shadow form swelling to fill the space between her and the rift, their violet eyes blazing. Rory fumbled the Fae-forged dagger out of her jacket, the leaf-shaped blade glowing bright in the dim light of the clearing, its cold metal a sharp contrast to the burning Heartstone in her other hand. Another howl rang out, closer this time, and a massive shadow moved in the amber light, claws scraping at the edges of the rift. Isolde’s blade lit up, matching Rory’s, and she shouted over the snarls rising from the crack.
“Stand fast. They don’t get to take what’s ours.”