AI The veil opened like a wound in glass.
One moment Rory stood ankle-deep in the wet grass of Richmond Park, the cold of London clinging to her coat and the night full of damp earth and distant traffic. The next, Isolde’s pale hand had brushed the air before them, and the world had folded inward with a soft, impossible sigh. Nyx went first, their shape thinning to a ribbon of shadow and sliding between the standing stones as if the dark itself had chosen a direction. Isolde stepped after them without a sound, silver hair moving around her like water caught in a breeze that did not touch Rory’s skin. Rory hesitated only long enough to feel the Heartstone pendant against her chest begin to warm.
Then she went through.
The cold of England vanished at once.
Heat met her like an open oven door, dry and fragrant and astonishing. Rory drew in a sharp breath and tasted salt, smoke, ripe fruit, and something sweet enough to make her tongue ache. The air was warm amber, not gold, not orange, but the color of old honey held up to the sun . She blinked hard, once, twice, and the strange light resolved into a sky that seemed less like weather and more like a great luminous ceiling, high above a landscape that looked too lush to be real.
Her boots sank a fraction into dark soil so rich it seemed almost black, threaded with roots that glimmered faintly like veins of copper. Around her, vineyards climbed in perfect rows over low hills and terraces, each vine heavy with grapes the size of plums, their skins translucent as polished garnet. Orchards stretched beyond them, trees heavy with fruit she couldn’t name—pears the color of moonlight, peaches with blushed gold flesh visible through their thin skins, round crimson things that hung in pairs like earrings from silver branches.
The portal behind them had already begun to close, a shimmer in the air like a heat haze, and with it went the smell of rain. Rory turned back on instinct, but there was only a narrow seam of distortion where the Veil had been, trembling for an instant before it sealed and disappeared. The world was suddenly enormous and cut off. No London. No park. No path home except the one that would have to be found again.
Nyx stood a few paces away, solid now, a tall silhouette edged in faint violet light. Their form was all angles and shadow, and yet they were very present against the amber sky, a darkness cut out of the brightness. Isolde stood beside them, pale as a carved moonstone, her bare feet pressed to the soil. Rory glanced down involuntarily, expecting to see prints in the dirt. There were none. Only the faint disturbance of grass bending where she had passed.
“It is,” Isolde murmured, as if answering a question nobody had asked, “what hunger makes of a garden.”
Rory looked at her. “That’s reassuring.”
Isolde’s mouth curved, not quite a smile . “I did not say it should be.”
Nyx’s voice came as a whisper tugged by wind. “We are being watched.”
Rory’s hand went automatically to the moonsilver dagger at her belt. The Fae-forged blade was colder than the air around it, a clean chill that ran through her fingertips when she touched the hilt. The Heartstone pendant gave a low pulse of heat against her sternum, as though it had recognized something nearby. She swallowed and let her eyes adjust.
There were people on the nearest terrace.
At first she thought they were statues, because they stood so still along the vine rows, hands folded over baskets, heads bent beneath broad woven hats. Then one of them lifted his face. His skin was gray, almost ash-colored, and his eyes held the glazed, far-off focus of someone running on memory instead of sleep. A strip of copper marked his throat like a collar. He looked at Rory with the wary resignation of a man who had been surprised by nothing good in a long time, then turned back to his vines.
More figures moved between the rows. Some wore aprons darkened with juice and steam. Some carried trays piled high with fruit and herbs and glistening cuts of meat wrapped in leaves. They moved with brisk precision, their hands sure and economical, but there was something strained in the set of their shoulders, a relentless, practiced exhaustion. Rory’s throat tightened. Not because they were mistreated , exactly—there was no lash, no chain in sight—but because the whole place felt built on appetite, and appetite never paid what it owed.
A path curved downhill from the portal into the vineyards. It was paved with pale stone polished smooth by centuries of passing feet. Rory could see worn grooves in it, not from carts but from constant traffic, as if thousands upon thousands had come and gone with full hands and empty stomachs. The path was bordered by flowering herbs she didn’t recognize: purple spikes that gave off a scent like anise, white blossoms that released a faint hiss when the wind touched them, and low creeping vines bearing tiny lantern-shaped pods that glowed from within.
She followed Isolde and Nyx down the path, and the realm deepened around them.
The further they went, the more impossible it became.
The vineyards gave way to orchards arranged in concentric circles around a shallow basin where a canal ran with something dark and glossy. Wine, Rory thought at first, until she saw the way it reflected the sky in slow-moving strips of amber and realized it was too thick, too rich, almost like syrup. Stone bridges arched over it in elegant curves. Their railings were carved with scenes of feasting: hands reaching, cups raised, mouths open in laughter, faces turned upward in ecstasy or hunger or both. Every figure looked ancient and new at once, as if the same scene had been carved and re-carved over centuries by different generations of artists obsessed with the same desire .
She heard music then, faint at first.
A lute? No. Too deep for that. Strings plucked in a pattern that sounded like laughter slowed to something deliberate. It drifted from somewhere beyond the orchards, joined by the clatter of metal, the hiss of hot oil, and the clean rhythmic chop of knives on boards. The sounds rose and fell as they walked, each one sharpened by the heat. Somewhere ahead, a crowd cheered. Somewhere else, someone shouted an order in a language Rory did not know but somehow understood as urgency.
Her chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the sheer scale of it. She had expected Hel to be fire and torment and screaming. That was what stories gave you. This was worse, in a way. This was beauty tuned to appetite. It was the sort of place that could make you want to stay before you realized it was swallowing you.
A breeze moved through the orchard, and the fruit trees shivered. The leaves were not leaves, not exactly; each one was thin and glossy, veined with silver, shaped like feathers folded closed. When the wind stirred them, they rattled softly , like a thousand tiny spoons.
Rory rubbed her thumb over the scar on her left wrist without thinking. The motion steadied her. She glanced at the Heartstone pendant, half expecting it to blaze, but it only gave off a faint inner glow, warm and patient. The warmth pulsed once, twice, in time with her steps, as though it were leading her deeper.
“Do you feel that?” she asked quietly .
Nyx’s head tilted. Their outline seemed to sharpen in the glare of the sky. “The pull.”
“Yes.”
“Then the pendant knows the way.” Isolde’s tone was mild, but Rory caught the thread of warning underneath it. “Or wishes you to think so.”
That was reassuring in the way a blade was reassuring if it was in your hand instead of someone else’s. Rory closed her fingers over the pendant through her shirt and kept moving.
The terraces opened into a broad avenue lined with cypress-like trees whose branches had been trained into archways overhead. The path beneath them was strewn with crushed petals in shades of deep red and gold. Between the trunks stood stone plinths holding bowls of perpetual flame. The flames burned not orange but a rich, buttery yellow that gave off no smoke, only heat and the scent of caramelized sugar. Each bowl was carved with a different emblem: a fork crossed with a thorn, a cup overflowing, an open mouth ringed by laurels.
At the far end of the avenue, Rory caught her first real glimpse of the city proper.
It rose from the landscape in layered terraces and domes, all warm stone and copper roofs and balconies heavy with trailing vines. But it did not sit still. The whole place seemed in subtle motion, alive to the smallest current of air. Curtains rippled in windows that had no glass. Fountains arched and fell in glittering strands. Ropes of dried herbs swayed from eaves. And everywhere, everywhere, people moved with purpose between kitchens and gardens and long open halls where tables stretched out beneath vaulted ceilings.
The smell thickened as they approached: roasting meat, baked bread, saffron, cloves, wine, onions softened almost to sweetness, fat crackling in a pan. Rory’s stomach turned in immediate, traitorous response. She hadn’t eaten enough before they left. She knew that now with a sharp, irritated clarity. Her body had always been honest in the worst possible moments.
Ahead, a broad square opened before an immense hall whose doors stood open to the heat. The hall itself was old, older than any building Rory had ever seen, its columns worn smooth where hands had touched them and tongues had licked from them and centuries had passed. Reliefs on the walls showed banquets arranged like battles, platters heaped high beneath banners, servers running with wine skins, revelers reclining on couches while others played for their amusement. The whole façade looked less like architecture than like a hymn to excess carved in stone.
The square was crowded.
Not with nobles, if that was what she expected, but with a working din of chefs, servers, carriers , and judges. Some wore aprons stained with blood-red sauce or golden oil. Some had tall hats wrapped with cords of silver thread. A few stood at long tables slicing herbs so fine the leaves looked like dust . In one corner, a pair of cooks in lacquered gloves were tending a spit the size of a horse, turning the beast with slow, deliberate motions as its skin blistered and shone. Nearby, a woman with fire-bright hair was tasting a broth from a spoon longer than Rory’s forearm, her expression so severe it might have been a duel.
And over it all hung a sensation Rory could only describe as pressure. Not from above, not exactly. From within the place itself. The realm seemed to breathe in through the square and out through the hall, inhaling hunger and exhaling satisfaction. Every exhale brought laughter, the clatter of dishes, the sharp cry of triumph when someone plated something perfect .
Then Rory noticed the faces.
Not all of them. Just enough.
A boy—no, a man, she reminded herself, though his face had the hollowed delicacy of someone much younger—carried a stack of copper bowls with a precision that kept them from tipping. His eyes were fixed on the path ahead, but the muscles at his jaw worked as if he were chewing something bitter he could never swallow. On the far side of the square, an older woman in a stained white cap paused with a tray of sugared figs and pressed her fingers briefly to her temple before straightening and walking on. There was no visible cruelty in it, no overseer cracking a whip, no cries of torment. Just labor sharpened to a point so fine it might have drawn blood if you touched it wrong.
Rory felt a chill at odds with the heat.
“This place,” she said before she could stop herself.
Isolde glanced at her, pale eyes unreadable . “Yes.”
Nyx’s whisper brushed the air by Rory’s ear. “A kingdom that worships its own mouth.”
Rory almost smiled at that, despite herself. Then she saw the center of the square and forgot how.
There, in a shallow basin ringed by marble benches, stood a table unlike any she had ever seen. It was long enough to seat an army and set with dishes that glimmered like jewels. A roast glazed dark as lacquer steamed beside a tower of sugared fruit. Platters of oysters shone on beds of crushed ice that refused to melt. Breads of every shape and size were stacked beside cheeses veined blue and green, beside sauces in shallow bowls that caught the light like molten glass. In the center stood a silver fountain pouring something thick and amber into a basin lined with grapes.
Rory’s pulse kicked hard. She could smell everything individually, and the effect was almost violent. The sweetness. The salt. The richness. The char. Her mouth watered so suddenly it was embarrassing. She realized, with a flash of disbelief, that she wanted to sit down and eat until she forgot her own name.
The thought terrified her.
The pendant against her chest gave a brighter pulse , warm enough to be felt through cloth. Rory’s hand clamped over it. The heat seemed to point, not toward the feast, but beyond it, through a carved archway at the back of the square where servants in crimson sashes hurried in and out carrying covered trays.
“There,” she murmured.
Isolde followed her gaze. “You see the mouth of the furnace.”
Rory looked at her. “That is not comforting .”
“No.” Isolde’s expression did not change, but her silver hair lifted in a sudden, unseen breeze. “It is accurate.”
A laugh burst from somewhere overhead, rich and delighted. Rory looked up sharply and saw a balcony crowded with well-dressed figures leaning over the rail to watch the square below. Their faces were beautiful in that unsettling, polished way Hel seemed to prefer, every curve intentional, every smile sharpened by appetite or amusement. One of them raised a goblet, caught Rory staring, and smiled down at her with the lazy curiosity of someone looking at a dish they had not yet decided to taste.
Rory forced herself to keep breathing.
She took one step forward, then another. The stone beneath her boots was warm, almost alive . The air pressed against her skin as though the whole realm were leaning closer to inspect her. Yet beneath the unease, beneath the fear and the strange magnetic pull of the place, awe crept in like light under a door. No matter how wrong it felt, Dymas was magnificent. Ancient. Unapologetically itself.
She had crossed into a world built entirely around desire , and it was more beautiful than she wanted to admit.
The archway at the back of the square waited ahead, dark with shadow and spice and the promise of something deeper inside. Rory tightened her grip on the dagger hilt, felt the cold moonsilver answer her touch, and let the pendant’s warmth guide her forward into the heart of the feast.