AI The brambles caught at the cuffs of Rory’s leather jacket as she pushed through them, her breath pluming in the sharp November cold of Richmond Park. Her bike was locked to a gate half a mile back, the helmet slung over her arm still scraped from the night Evan had chased her through Cardiff’s city centre, screaming her name until his voice cracked. She’d run three hundred miles, changed her number, moved flats twice, and he’d still found her last week, left her favorite chipped coffee mug shattered on the step of the flat above Silas’ bar, the crescent moon she’d drawn on its side ground to dust under his boot. Eva had said this was the only way, that Isolde, the woman who tended the hidden grove, could weave a ward that would stick, that even Evan’s obsessed, rotten luck couldn’t pierce. Eva had drawn her a map, marked the three ancient oak standing stones half-hidden in a patch of brambles, the only threshold to the Grove. You only see them if you’re meant to, she’d said, and Rory had seen them immediately, their trunks gnarled and black, twisted like old knuckles, rising out of the dead brown ferns.
She slung her Golden Empress delivery backpack higher on her shoulders, the sticker Yu-Fei had given her for her 25th birthday, a little red dragon holding a pot of dumplings, peeling at the corner. Under her sweater, the Heartstone Pendant rested against her sternum, the silver chain cool against her skin, the thumbnail-sized crimson gem tucked against her ribs. She didn’t know who’d left it on her fire escape two weeks prior, just that it had glowed the first time Evan had come within a block of her flat, so she’d never taken it off. She stepped through the gap between the first and second oak stone, and the world cut out.
The distant hum of London’s M25, the faint rustle of wind through bare park branches, even the cold, all of it vanished in a single breath. The air that hit her face was mild, thick with the scent of jasmine and cut clover, wrong for November, wrong for any London winter. She fumbled for her phone, thumb swiping the screen awake, and the numbers glowed back at her: 11:07 PM. One bar of service, faint but there. She typed I found the stones, heading in to Eva, hit send, and the little spinning clock icon hung under the message, never resolving . She shrugged, Eva had warned her service was spotty in the Grove, that the place existed half-out of the world, and it would take what it wanted from your devices. She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and stepped forward, boots sinking into soft earth that was thick with wildflowers, poppies and bluebells and daisies, all of them blooming bright as mid-May, none of them wilting, none of them out of place except that they should have been under six inches of frost and dead leaves.
She called out, “Isolde? Eva sent me, my name’s Rory.” Her voice carried, but there was no echo , no rustle of birds or squirrels or even a distant owl to answer her. The trees around her were too still, their leaves not moving even as she exhaled, as if the air itself had frozen. She rubbed at the small crescent scar on her left wrist, the childhood accident scar that always itched when she was nervous , and kept walking. Ten minutes in, she thought, maybe fifteen, she’d covered enough ground that she should have come to the clearing Eva had described, the little cottage with the thatched roof where Isolde lived, but the trees just stretched on, identical oaks, identical carpets of wildflowers, no end in sight. She pulled her phone out again, to check the time, and her breath caught. It was still 11:07 PM. The timer she’d set before she locked her bike, the 30 minute timer to remind her to be out of the park by midnight, still read 28 minutes remaining, same as it had when she’d stepped through the stones.
Under her sweater, the Heartstone warmed, a faint thrum against her chest, like a second heartbeat. She pulled it out, the silver chain slipping over her head, and the crimson gem glowed with that faint inner light she’d only seen when she held it up to the dark, warm enough to seep into her palms even through the thin wool gloves she’d pulled off ten minutes prior. It pulsed, once, twice, slow and steady, and she remembered the way it had glowed the night Evan had showed up at her work, yelling through the takeout window of Golden Empress, that same faint thrum, as if it had known he was coming before she had.
A laugh, soft and feminine, right behind her ear.
Rory spun, fumbling for the flashlight on her phone, the beam cutting through the dark, and there was nothing there, just an oak trunk, a cluster of bluebells swaying even though there was no wind. “Who’s there?” Her voice cracked, and she fumbled in her jacket pocket for the pepper spray Eva had pressed into her hand the day they’d moved to London, her fingers closing around the plastic canister, clutching it so tight her knuckles whitened. The laugh didn’t come again, but a voice did, soft and warm, Eva’s voice, calling from deeper in the trees, “Rory? C’mon, I’ve been waiting, Isolde’s got the ward ready.”
Rory took one step forward, then froze. Eva was back in their Camden flat, curled up on the couch with Rory’s tabby cat, Mochi, waiting for her to come home. She’d dropped Rory off at the park gate, had promised not to leave until Rory texted her she was safe. There was no way Eva was in the Grove. The voice called again, “Rory, what’re you waiting for? It’s cold out here, c’mon.” It was off, now, Eva’s bright, sharp lilt flattened, lower, almost masculine, as if whoever was wearing it was stretching it to fit. She tightened her grip on the pepper spray, and that was when she saw it, the movement out of the corner of her eye, a shape leaning against an oak thirty feet to her left, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a black leather jacket with a tear in the left elbow. Evan’s jacket. The one he’d had for their entire three-year relationship, the one he’d refused to replace even after the tear had gotten so big his elbow poked through.
She shone the flashlight at it, and the shape vanished, leaving only a knot in the oak’s trunk that looked like a shoulder, a strand of ivy hanging down that looked just like the torn sleeve of his jacket. She laughed, shaky, disbelieving, telling herself she was tired , she was paranoid, Evan was hundreds of miles away, he couldn’t get into the Grove, Eva had said the Grove kept out people who meant harm. Then she smelled it, the cheap pine body spray he’d bought from the corner shop in Cardiff, the one that gave her migraines, that he’d sprayed all over their shared apartment even after she’d begged him to stop. The smell was thick, right behind her, as if he was standing a foot away, breathing down her neck.
She spun, the flashlight beam cutting through the empty air, nothing there, and the Heartstone pulsed harder, burning hot against her chest, so hot it felt like it was branding her through her sweater. The voices started then, all of them at once, circling her, never getting closer, never moving. Her dad’s voice, soft and warm, the only person who called her Laila, the childhood nickname he’d given her after she’d snuck into his office and written Laila the Barrister on all his legal briefs, “Laila, what are you doing out in the dark? Come home, it’s safe.” Her mom’s voice, next, Welsh lilt thick, “Aurora, Evan’s here, he’s waiting for you, he just wants to talk, come out.” Then Evan’s voice, low and rough, the way it sounded when he was angry , when he’d slam her against the wall and scream that she was his, that she couldn’t leave, “Rory, you can’t run forever. I’ll always find you. You’re mine.” The names hit her, all the names she’d ever used, all the aliases she’d hidden behind to try to outrun him, Laila, Aurora, Rory, even the weird one Malphora she’d used for her college fanfiction account, tossed around by the voices as if they knew every part of her, every secret she’d ever had.
She backed up, her boots slipping on the soft earth, the flashlight beam shaking so bad the light danced off the tree trunks, and at the edge of the beam she saw them, small shapes skittering, too fast to make out, their eyes glowing red as embers, reflecting the light. They circled her, getting closer, inch by inch, and she screamed, lifting the pepper spray, and her foot caught on a root, sending her falling backward, the wind knocked out of her, her phone skittering away across the earth, the flashlight cutting out. The dark swallowed her, the voices screaming louder, the smell of pine so thick she choked on it, and then the Heartstone flew out from under her sweater, the silver chain snapping, and it blazed, bright crimson light cutting through the dark like a knife, and the voices cut off, mid-scream. The skittering shapes froze, then retreated, vanishing into the trees, the smell of pine vanishing, leaving only the scent of jasmine and wildflowers.
She lay there, gasping, staring up at the sky above the Grove, the stars moving too fast, spinning across the black like a film sped up, then slowing, then speeding again, time twisting in the way Eva had tried to explain, an hour inside could be minutes or days outside. Her phone’s screen glowed a few feet away, and when she dragged her eyes to it, the time had jumped, all at once, to 11:42 PM, the timer ticking down again, as if the lock had broken. A soft old woman’s voice came from the trees, warm and rough, like weathered bark, “You brought the Heartstone. Good. I was worried the wraiths would gnaw you down to nothing before you made it. They feed on the thing you’re most afraid of, you know. Wear the shape of the voice you dread most. They won’t bother you now.” A figure stepped out of the trees, small, silver-haired, holding a lantern that glowed soft gold, and Rory pushed herself up, her legs shaking, as Isolde stepped closer, bending to pick up the Heartstone from the earth where it lay still glowing. Behind her, in the shadow of an oak, Rory caught a flash of a face, Evan’s face, eyes black, mouth twisted in a snarl, before it vanished, and she knew the wraiths weren’t gone. They were just waiting , for the next time she was alone, for the next time she ran.