AI The last of Richmond’s December frost bit Rory’s cheeks before she stepped across the oak standing stone marking the Fae Grove’s boundary, and suddenly the cold was gone , replaced by air thick enough to sip, warm as a baker’s oven and sweet with crushed blackberries and aged brandy. She stumbled, her scuffed bike boots—worn thin from two years of zipping around London for Golden Empress restaurant, rain and potholes and a thousand late-night drops to drunk undergraduates—sinking into moss that smelled of vanilla and fermented grapes. For a beat she couldn’t breathe, staring up at a sky that wasn’t the gunmetal grey of London’s winter, but a liquid warm amber, streaked with wisps of cloud that looked like spun saffron . The deep crimson Heartstone at her throat pulsed , its silver chain digging into her sternum as it thrummed with a heat that seeped through her wool sweater, a constant, living thud that matched the beat of her own heart. It had only ever glowed like that once before, when they’d found the rift in the Grove, the Veil between worlds thin enough to slice with a knife thanks to the winter solstice, just as the old lore warned.
She looked back, and saw Nyx step across the threshold after her, their 6’2” shadow frame rippling at the edges, the faint glow of their violet eyes cutting through the honeyed light. Isolde followed, her waist-length silver hair floating around her shoulders like a cloud, and when Rory looked down at the moss to check the half-Fae hadn’t slipped, she saw nothing. No bent fronds, no indent of Isolde’s soft leather boots, not even a crushed wildflower—they bloomed at her feet, bluebells and poppies that had no business growing in any winter Rory had ever known, just as they bloomed year-round in the Fae-touched clearing they’d left. Isolde never left footprints, Rory reminded herself, though the sight still sent a small skitter of unease up her spine. The Fae had told her once, in that riddling way of hers, that what did not belong to the earth could not mark it, unless it meant to stay.
This place wasn’t earth. It was Dymas, the realm of gluttony tucked in the belly of Hel, and they’d crossed through the rift to get Eva back—Eva, who’d lured Rory to London to escape her abusive ex Evan, only for Evan to reveal he wasn’t just a terrible partner, but a minor demon from Dymas, who’d dragged Eva back to his home realm to pay an old blood debt. That was why Isolde had given Rory the Fae-forged blade, the slender leaf-shaped dagger strapped to her hip that hummed with a constant cold, even in Dymas’s sweltering air. It glowed faint blue at the edges, cutting through the amber light, a reminder of its power to slice through wards, to tear through demon flesh, a rare gift from the Fae Courts that Isolde had smuggled out when she was exiled .
They moved deeper, Rory’s hand brushing the hilt of the dagger as they walked through an orchard that stretched as far as the eye could see. The trees weren’t any she recognized, their bark black as polished obsidian, their branches heavy with fruit that glowed from within. Pomegranates split open on the branches to spill gold juice that dripped to the moss, soaking into the earth with a soft hiss. Peaches the size of her head grew in clusters, their fuzzy skin bearing miniature human faces that whispered when she passed, their voices thin as thread, begging her to pick them, to taste how sweet they were, how they could sate every hunger she’d ever carried. Rory averted her eyes, her palm coming up to rub the small crescent scar on her left wrist, the faint silver line from a childhood bike crash that she worried when she was scared . The scar itched, as if it could sense the wrongness of the place, the way everything in it reached for her, begged to be consumed.
Nyx’s voice was a whisper carried on the wind, as it always was, soft enough that Rory had to strain to hear it over the distant jingle of bells and the roar of a crowd, far off at the end of the orchard. “They don’t just want to be eaten. They eat back. A mortal takes a bite of that fruit, and they belong to Belphegor. Contracted, for eternity, to chop the next harvest, to cook the feasts that the court eats. Never to taste a bite themselves.” Nyx’s shadow form rippled, and Rory remembered they’d once been human, too—Aldric, a sorcerer who’d messed up a summoning in 1643, trapped as a Shade able to slip between shadows but never fully belong to any world. They’d seen more of Hel’s realms than most mortals ever would, had more right to fear their excess than anyone else in their small group.
Isolde spoke up a moment later, her voice clear as a bell, cutting through the whispers of the peaches. “The hunger that gnaws at your bones is not your own, little Rory. It is the realm’s, breathed into every crack and crevice, to turn visitors into prey. You crave your mother’s Welsh cakes, your father’s soda bread, the fried chicken you and Eva ate after your last university exam? It will feed you that fantasy, and you will eat until you are nothing but a pile of bones for the vines to root in.” Rory’s head snapped to the half-Fae, her bright blue eyes wide, because Isolde was right—she’d been thinking of those very things for the last five minutes, had been daydreaming about the way her mum’s Welsh cakes tasted, still warm from the griddle, dusted with sugar. She’d almost not noticed when they stepped into a small clearing, a long oak table set with exactly those things, steaming and perfect , right in the middle of the orchard. The Welsh cakes sat stacked on a chipped blue plate that was exactly the one her mum had used for Sunday teas, the soda bread sliced and slathered with butter, the fried chicken in a cardboard takeaway box from the chicken shop she and Eva had gone to a hundred times. It was so perfect it made her eyes burn, and she took a step toward it before the dagger at her hip blazed ice-cold, so cold it burned through her coat, yanking her back to herself.
She froze, her heart hammering, and watched as a rat scurried out from under the table, took a bite of a Welsh cake, and collapsed mid-chew, turning to a fine black dust that blew away in the soft wind. The feast was a trap. Isolde’s riddles were never wrong, not when her Fae compulsion kept her from lying, only from spelling things out plain. Rory stumbled back from the table, pressing her back to an obsidian tree, its bark cold against her shoulders, and looked up to see a flock of birds flying overhead, their wings made of crystallized sugar, glinting like diamonds in the amber sky. They dropped crumbs as they flew, crumbs that melted before they hit the moss, and for a second it was so beautiful she forgot the trap, forgot the rat that had turned to dust, forgot Eva was somewhere in this realm, trapped. It was wondrous, this place, even with its teeth.
They kept moving, and a mile further on they found a stream that bubbled over smooth stones that were actually polished rubies and sapphires, the water within it spiced cider that smelled of cinnamon and cloves. Rory leaned down, curious, and the cider rose up to meet her, a tendril of liquid wrapping around her wrist, cold and sharp, trying to drag her into the stream. Nyx moved faster than she could blink, their shadowy hand wrapping around her upper arm and yanking her back hard enough that she fell into the moss, the tendril of cider snapping back into the stream with a soft splash. “Told you,” Nyx whispered, their violet eyes glowing bright with anger, “everything here consumes. The stream doesn’t just flow, it drags mortals in, dissolves them to add their essence to the cider, make it sweeter for the court.” Rory lay there for a minute, gasping, rubbing her left wrist where the cider had touched her, the crescent scar stinging. The Heartstone at her throat pulsed faster, as if warning her of something worse up ahead, and she looked up to see the spires of a palace rising above the vineyards that stretched beyond the orchard, its domes gilded, the sound of feasting and laughter rolling toward them, loud enough to drown out the whispers of the fruit trees.
Isolde stepped to her side, still leaving no trace on the moss, and held out a hand to pull her up. “The prince’s home,” she said, her pale lavender eyes fixed on the palace, “where the one you seek is held. The road is full of feasts that bite, but you are sharper than their hunger. You have been running from your own monsters for long enough to catch this one.” Rory took her hand, the Fae’s skin cold as the dagger at her hip, and pushed herself to her feet. She tightened her grip on the hilt of the moonsilver blade, the Heartstone thrumming against her chest, and stepped forward, toward the palace, toward Eva, toward the demon who’d thought he could trap everyone he’d ever hurt in this land of excess. The amber sky stretched above her, the whispers of the orchard fading behind her, and for the first time since Evan had dragged Eva away, Rory felt like she might win.