AI The first thing Rory noticed was the light.
It spilled over the ancient standing stones in a wash of gold that shouldn’t have existed under the gray belly of a London sky. Not sunlight exactly. Warmer than that. Thicker. It caught on the moss threaded through the oak roots and turned the dew on the wildflowers into little sparks, as if the ground itself had decided to glitter out of spite.
Rory stood just inside the ring of trees, one hand curled tight around the strap of her satchel, the other hanging loose at her side where the weight of the Fae-forged blade rested against her thigh under her coat. She could feel it even through the fabric, cold as river stones despite the warmth that breathed from the grove ahead. The contrast made her skin prickle.
Behind her, the park was still ordinary enough to be cruel about it. Richmond Park. Bare branches. Mud. A distant dog bark. The faint hiss of traffic somewhere beyond the trees. Ahead, though, the world had folded itself inside out.
Isolde glanced back at her over one shoulder. Silver hair spilled down her back like moonlit water, and the wind did not seem to touch it. “If you stare too hard,” she said, voice soft as ash, “the door may decide you are rude.”
Rory snorted under her breath despite herself. “Good to know.”
The Seer’s pale lavender eyes slid to her with that impossible calm that made Rory feel like she was always missing half the conversation. “Know only this: the grove does not welcome those who come hungry for answers. It prefers those who can bear wonder without trying to pin it down.”
“Sounds inconvenient,” Rory muttered.
Nyx’s shape shifted in the shadow of a tree trunk beside her, the dark there deepening, gathering, until a humanoid silhouette stood where no one had been a moment before. Their faintly glowing violet eyes tilted toward the grove. “Inconvenience is a small price for survival.”
Their voice came like a whisper dragged over wind-scraped stone. Rory glanced at them and then at the space between the trees where their edges already seemed to fray, blending with the dusk-shadow under the oak limbs. Nyx looked more solid here, but only just, as if the grove was deciding whether to accept them.
“Brilliant,” Rory said. “Comforting, too.”
They did not answer, which usually meant they were either being annoyingly cryptic or paying attention in a way that made their silence feel heavier than speech.
She drew a breath and stepped forward.
The boundary was not a wall. It was a sensation, a skin-prickle, a momentary resistance like walking through a curtain of cool water. Rory felt it over the small crescent scar on her left wrist first, a tiny pulse of awareness that flashed up her arm. Then the air changed. It smelled of wet earth and crushed leaves, sweet wildflowers, and something older under it all, the faint metallic tang of rain on stone.
Behind her, the ordinary sounds of the park fell away as if someone had shut a door.
Ahead, the grove opened.
Ancient oak standing stones rose from the earth in a wide circle, their bark furrowed and dark, their roots disappearing into moss and roots and flowers that should not have been blooming in January. Wildflowers crowded the ground in reckless abundance—bluebells, pale anemones, and blossoms Rory couldn’t name, all of them leaning toward a light source she still couldn’t quite see . The clearing itself seemed larger than it should have been . Not dramatically so, not enough to be impossible at first glance, but enough to make her uneasy in the same way a slightly off-kilter painting did when she realized the horizon line didn’t match.
Time, she remembered Isolde saying, moved strangely here.
The thought made her stomach tighten. Minutes could stretch into hours. Hours could vanish. No wonder the Seer lived here like some elegant, patient spider at the center of a net.
“Keep moving,” Isolde murmured, though she had already begun to glide ahead, her bare feet leaving no footprints in the soft earth. “Standing too long invites the grove to notice you.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Rory said, but her voice came out quieter than she intended .
The ground underfoot was springy, soaked in impossible moisture yet not muddy. When Rory’s boot pressed down, the moss yielded and then eased back, as if the earth was breathing beneath her. The sensation was so intimate it made her shoulders tighten. She tried not to think too hard about what might be under her feet.
Nyx drifted to her left, their body thinning as they passed through a patch of shade cast by one of the standing stones. For a heartbeat their torso went translucent, edges unraveling into smoke-dark strands, then reformed as they stepped back into the amber glow.
Rory caught the movement and frowned. “You’re doing that on purpose.”
Nyx’s head angled. “Doing what?”
“Acting like a dramatic curtain in a haunted house.”
The corner of their mouth barely shifted. “Perhaps the grove encourages honesty.”
“Then it’s a terrible influence.”
Isolde’s lips curved faintly, but she did not turn. “It is only terrible to those who prefer the comfort of their own certainty.”
Rory would have answered, but the words died in her throat as the grove widened around them.
At the center of the clearing stood a shallow pool of water no larger than a dining table. Or perhaps it had only just now become visible. Its surface was perfectly still, reflecting not the sky above but a deep amber expanse filled with slow-moving lights . Not stars. Fruit, maybe. Lanterns. Glints of gold hanging in a sky that belonged somewhere else. Rory stared, trying to make sense of it, and the water rippled once as if something had brushed beneath it.
She took an involuntary step back.
“Do not fear the well,” Isolde said. “It remembers other places.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Rory said.
“No prophecy ever is.”
As they approached, Rory became aware of sounds she hadn’t noticed before. Not birds, though there were birds somewhere far off in the trees. This was subtler. A murmur like distant voices carried through water. The soft chime of something delicate and hard moving against stone. The occasional rustle overhead as leaves turned toward unseen breezes. And beneath it all, a low harmonic hum that seemed to emanate from the standing stones themselves, deep enough to feel in the sternum .
Her skin prickled again. Not from cold. From awareness.
The Heartstone Pendant, tucked beneath her shirt against her chest, gave a faint warmth . Not much. Just a small pulse, like a heartbeat. Rory froze mid-step and looked down.
Isolde noticed at once. “It wakes.”
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed . “Near what?”
Rory’s fingers slid under the collar of her coat. The silver chain was warm against her skin now, and the crimson gemstone nestled against her palm glowed faintly, deep as a coal. Her throat went dry. “I don’t know.”
She looked up toward the pool, and the pendant pulsed again, stronger this time. Warmth spread through the chain and into her fingers.
“Hel,” Nyx said softly .
Rory’s heart gave a hard, unpleasant thud. “Here?”
“Near,” Isolde said. “Not here. Not yet. But close enough that a thing made in its furnaces can smell the door.”
Rory swallowed. The idea of a portal to Hel lying somewhere near this impossible garden made the air feel thinner. She had seen too much by now to pretend such things were abstract. A heartbeat of crimson warmth in her hand, a blade of moonsilver hidden at her side, a shadow-being beside her, and a Fae oracle walking without touching the earth. The world had been opened , and there was no sealing it again with practical thinking.
The pool shivered. Across its mirrored surface, the amber sky dimmed and brightened, as if something huge had passed over it. Rory leaned closer before she meant to.
Inside the water, the reflection changed.
For one impossible second she saw not amber sky, but a long orchard under a red horizon . Trees bent with fruit heavy enough to drag branches to the ground. Golden leaves. Tables stretching beyond sight, piled with dishes that steamed and gleamed. Figures moving between them in a blur of fine clothes and masked faces. The air in the reflection seemed thick with perfume and roasted sugar and smoke .
Rory jerked back.
The image vanished, leaving only the pool’s still surface and her own pale face looking back at her, blue eyes too wide.
“That’s Dymas,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
Isolde’s gaze rested on the water, unblinking. “A mouth remembers its feast.”
Rory turned slowly to stare at her. “You could have mentioned that there might be windows to a different realm lying around your garden.”
“I did not know this one would open today,” Isolde said. The answer was maddeningly simple. “The Veil is thin in many places, but this grove is older than most and older than caution. It reveals what it chooses.”
The warmth in Rory’s pendant faded to a whisper . She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding . The dread was still there, coiled low in her gut, but wonder had slipped in beside it and refused to leave.
At the far edge of the clearing, one of the oak standing stones creaked.
Rory spun. For a terrible half second she thought something had emerged from the bark. A face, perhaps. An eye. But it was only the tree shifting in the wind—or what passed for wind here. Except the movement did not come from the air. It came from the stone itself, roots tightening under the ground with a sound like an old house settling after centuries of waiting.
Nyx drifted toward it with slow caution, their shadow-form thinning as they neared the trunk. “This place is awake.”
“Of course it is awake,” Rory said, though her voice had gone too high . She cleared her throat and took a few steps after them, keeping a careful distance. “It’s a magic grove. They’re always awake. That’s the point.”
Nyx reached out and, with visible hesitation, let their hand pass into the bark.
The oak did not resist. It accepted them.
Rory watched, mesmerized, as the shadow of Nyx’s fingers slid into the tree and came out dusted with pale, silver-green dust that sparked once in the amber light before vanishing.
“What was that?” she asked.
Nyx withdrew their hand, and the air around them seemed cooler for it . “Memory,” they said.
Rory stared. “Trees have memory?”
Isolde’s expression was unreadable , but her voice softened. “All living things do. Some simply remember better than mortals.”
Rory looked back at the oak, at the twisted roots and ridged bark and the wildflowers clustered around its base. She could almost feel something there—attention, vast and patient, turning on them with the mild curiosity of an old thing finding insects in its roots.
A sudden unease brushed the back of her neck.
She turned in a slow circle.
The grove had not changed, but it felt farther away from the world than before. The amber light had deepened. Shadows under the trees ran black and glossy, like pools of ink. The air was so still that every breath sounded intrusive. Somewhere beyond the standing stones, a bird called once, then cut off abruptly as if it had swallowed its own voice.
Rory’s hand slid toward the dagger at her side. The Fae-forged blade was a cold certainty against her palm when she touched the hilt through her coat. Not comfort exactly. More like the promise that if the world decided to become hostile, she would at least be able to answer back.
Isolde glanced at her hand. “Not yet.”
Rory’s jaw tightened. “You keep saying that.”
“And yet you keep listening.”
That, unfortunately, was true.
They moved deeper between the standing stones, where the ground dipped slightly and the flowers grew denser. The blooms brushed Rory’s knees, cool and damp. Their scent changed there, becoming richer, almost edible, and she had to remind herself not to reach down and touch them. Everything here looked meant to be touched and tasted and remembered. It made her distrust her own senses.
Then she saw the feast.
It was not in the clearing exactly, but it might as well have been . Beyond the farthest stone, where the grove bled into a veil of silver mist, a long table stood beneath the trees. At first Rory thought it another reflection, some trick of the dim light. But when she blinked, it remained. No, more than remained—it sharpened.
A banquet spread under moon-pale lanterns that hung from branches she hadn’t seen a moment before. Platters of fruit, bread steaming in silver bowls, trays of jeweled pastries, and tall glass vessels filled with liquids that caught the light like molten amber and ruby. The scent that reached her was unbearable in its richness: baked cinnamon, sugared citrus, sharp wine, something smoky and savory and delicious enough to make her mouth water despite her fear.
No one sat at the table.
No one visible.
Rory went still. Her pulse thudded once, hard. “Tell me that’s not real.”
Nyx was already staring , head tilted. “It is real enough.”
The silence that followed felt crowded.
One of the lanterns swayed though no wind touched it. Beneath the table, shadows shifted. Rory’s breath caught as something long and delicate moved behind a hanging cloth, just out of sight. She could not tell whether it was an animal, a person, or another trick of the grove.
Isolde did not move at all. “Do not eat what is offered without invitation,” she said. “Do not accept gifts from unseen hands. And if the table calls your name, answer only if you wish to stay longer than you intended.”
Rory looked at her, incredulous despite herself. “That last one was an actual rule?”
Isolde’s pale gaze settled on her. “Everything here is an actual rule.”
A laugh threatened to escape Rory, half hysteria and half disbelief. She swallowed it down. Her heart hammered as she stared at the banquet, at the impossible abundance laid out under trees that did not belong in any park she knew. A place like this was a hunger dressed up as a garden. Every beautiful thing in it seemed to have edges sharp enough to draw blood if handled carelessly.
And still she couldn’t stop looking.
The table was laden with fruits she had never seen: spheres of deep blue with silver stems, translucent pears full of light, clusters of grapes that gleamed like polished garnets. A goblet near the end of the table filled itself slowly from a pitcher held by no one. Wine the color of old blood climbed the glass and stopped an inch from the rim.
Rory’s pendant warmed again, softly this time, and she touched it reflexively. Not Hel this time. Something else. Or perhaps the same warning, only from farther away.
She took a step back from the table.
A voice whispered from the shadows under it.
Not words. Just a sound like silk dragged over stone.
Rory’s whole body went tight. “Did you hear that?”
Nyx had gone perfectly still, their outline sharpening in a way that made them look more dangerous than before. “Yes.”
Isolde turned her head slightly toward the darkness beneath the table. “The grove is watching us consider its offerings.”
Rory’s mouth went dry. “Can it hear us?”
The Seer’s expression, for once, held something like pity . “Everything here can hear what it needs.”
Another whisper . Closer now.
Rory took hold of the dagger’s hilt and drew it partway from its sheath. Moon-cold air kissed her fingers. The blade caught the amber light and answered with a faint, pale luminescence. It was a slender thing, leaf-shaped and elegant enough to belong in a fairy tale, if fairy tales ever admitted blood and terror. The moment it cleared the sheath, the air changed again. The whispers under the table faltered.
Nyx’s eyes flicked to the blade. “That seems to have manners.”
“It has better manners than I do,” Rory said, though she kept the knife low and ready.
Something moved beneath the tablecloth, slow and deliberate. Rory held her breath, every muscle taut. The fabric bulged once, then went still.
Then, with great care, a hand emerged.
It was small, greenish-gold, and too slender to belong to any human. The fingers rested on the edge of the table without crossing it. Rings gleamed on joints that bent a little too far. No face followed, no body stepped out. Only that hand, elegant and patient, as if waiting to see what they would do .
Rory felt the cold settle deep in her spine.
Isolde’s voice was quiet, almost tender. “Now,” she said, “we are being invited.”
Rory stared at the hand, at the banquet, at the living grove and its impossible breath and its ancient, watchful stones. Wonder and unease wrestled in her chest until they became indistinguishable. She tightened her grip on the moonsilver blade and took one cautious step forward.