AI Rory kept one hand on the stone arch as the air changed.
One moment she stood in a damp tunnel under a broken chapel, London rain ticking through cracks overhead. The next, warmth rolled over her skin like a hand laid flat against her face. Not summer warmth . Heavier. Riper. It carried the smell of crushed grapes, singed herbs, and something sweet enough to turn her stomach .
The world beyond the arch opened in a wide amber hush.
Nyx drifted through first, their shape thinning at the shoulders before they drew solid again on the other side. Their shadow body caught the light and held it wrong, all edges and depth where no edges should have been. Pale violet eyes brightened in the glow.
“This place tastes like honey left on a blade.”
Rory stepped after them and stopped dead.
The sky hung low and copper-bright, as if the sun had been filtered through old wine. No sun sat in it that she could see, only a diffuse burn spread across the whole vault above. Rows of vineyards stretched away in perfect lines over hills that rose and folded like sleeping backs. Beyond them, orchards flashed with pale fruit. Gardens ringed in stone terraces climbed toward a palace with towers shaped like spirals of dough, all curves and flourishes and too much beauty to trust.
Everything seemed fed and waiting.
At her throat, the Heartstone Pendant went warm beneath her shirt, a steady pulse against her skin.
Rory's fingers snapped to it.
“Right,” she muttered. “That’s not ominous at all.”
Isolde stood a few paces behind her, silver hair spilling down her back like a river caught in moonlight. She had not made a sound crossing the arch, and Rory had watched her feet go from damp stone to amber soil without leaving a mark. She looked at the sky with a face too calm for the place.
“It hungers where it feeds,” Isolde murmured.
Nyx turned their head, the outline of a mouth almost there, almost a smile. “That explains the smell.”
Rory looked down at the ground.
The earth underfoot glowed faintly through the soil, threaded with gold veins like liquid light trapped beneath a skin of red clay. Tiny white flowers pushed through in clusters, their petals shaped like stars. When the wind moved, they turned their faces after it.
Not wind, really . Breath. The whole realm seemed to inhale and exhale around them.
Rory drew her jacket tighter.
“Tell me we’re not here to pick fruit.”
Isolde’s pale eyes slid to her.
“If the fruit picks you first, run.”
Nyx gave a sound like a laugh dragged through wool.
Rory started walking before she could change her mind. The ground felt soft, almost springy, but the warmth beneath it didn’t fade. Every step sent a faint shimmer through the dust, and her boots left no print. She noticed that only after three more paces, when she stopped and looked back.
“No tracks,” she said.
Isolde tilted her head. “The land watches for those who mean harm.”
“That reassuringly explains nothing.”
“That was the point.”
They moved between the first rows of vines. The leaves were broad and waxy, dark green on top and shot through with purple underneath. Grapes hung in tight clusters, each one larger than Rory’s thumbnail, the skins so dark they nearly swallowed the light. A few looked almost black. Others held a blood-red sheen that made her mouth go dry.
One cluster twitched as she passed.
She jerked her hand back. “Did you see that?”
Nyx’s shadowed fingers hovered near the fruit without touching it.
“It saw you.”
Rory folded her arms. “Fantastic.”
The vines whispered.
Not with words. With the soft rub of leaves and the dry tap of tendrils brushing stone posts, all of it weaving together into something almost like voices just out of reach. She caught fragments in the sound, nothing she could hold onto. The rhythm of it made the hair at the back of her neck lift.
Ahead, a path cut through the vineyard and led toward a basin lined with low walls. Water shimmered there, but the surface did not sit still. It moved in slow sheets, rising and falling in shapes that looked like hands pressed up from below .
Rory slowed.
A horn call rose somewhere far off. Deep. Resonant. It rolled across the hills and returned from the orchards in a layered echo , as if more than one throat had answered.
“Is that a person?” Rory asked.
Isolde looked toward the sound. “A servant. A herald. A beast with manners. The place likes titles.”
Nyx’s head angled, listening. “And the place likes company.”
Rory followed their gaze.
At the edge of the basin stood a figure draped in saffron cloth, their face hidden beneath a wreath of dried leaves and polished bone. They carried a tray balanced on one hand, and the tray held a dozen pear-shaped things that smoked from their stems. When the figure turned, Rory saw their skin carried the same amber cast as the sky, and their eyes shone gold in the shadows under the wreath.
The figure watched them for a long, silent beat, then inclined their head and moved on, bare feet touching the stone without a sound.
Rory exhaled through her nose. “I hate how normal that looked.”
“In Hel,” Isolde said, “nothing is normal. Only accustomed.”
They reached the basin.
The water did not reflect them. It held a version of the sky that wasn’t above them, a darker one streaked with slow, glowing currents. Rory crouched and put her hand near the surface without touching it.
Heat licked her fingertips.
At once, the water buckled inward, and a shape turned beneath it. Not a fish. Not a face. A hand with too many knuckles pressed up, then slipped away into the moving dark.
Rory snapped upright.
“Tell me that was a trick.”
Nyx leaned over the basin, their edges dissolving where shadow met light.
“It was a greeting.”
Rory stared at them. “From what?”
Nyx looked into the water a little longer.
“From something that knows we crossed over.”
The basin’s surface smoothed. On the far side, past the water and a low terrace of carved stone, a line of figures moved between the vines. Too distant for details. They carried baskets and sickles, but their motions had a strange precision, all their steps falling into the same rhythm. The whole place felt measured , arranged for purposes she couldn’t name.
Something inside the basin clicked softly .
Rory crouched again, slower this time. Beneath the moving surface, a shape gleamed. She squinted. A coin? A scale? It bobbed up for one breath, and she saw it clearly enough to tighten her jaw.
A tooth.
Not human. Long, pale, and carved with a tiny spiral at the root.
She backed away and nearly collided with Isolde.
“You didn’t mention the water had teeth in it.”
Isolde’s mouth twitched once. “It also had patience.”
Rory let out a short laugh that came out strained. “You keep saying things like that like they help.”
“They do. You remain alive.”
“Bit of a bar for success, that.”
Nyx drifted toward a line of stone pillars set along the path. Rory followed more slowly , glad to put the basin behind her. The pillars rose shoulder-high and bent inward at the top, each one carved with fruit, leaves, and bodies in motion so fine it almost hurt to look at them. Not people exactly. Some had deer antlers, some had wings folded tight against their backs, some held long ladles or knives or cups up to their mouths. The carvings changed as she walked past, as if the stone remembered different stories from different angles.
She touched one, just to test the cold.
The surface was warm.
“Bloody hell.”
Nyx glanced at her. “Something wrong?”
“This thing’s alive.”
Isolde came to stand beside the pillar. Her hand hovered an inch from the carving of a woman with a bowl of fire in her palms.
“Not alive. Awake.”
At the far end of the column line, the path opened onto a terrace overlooking the valley. Rory stepped out with the others and forgot, for one long moment, to breathe.
The landscape dropped away in tiers of vineyards, orchards, and gardens spread across the land like a feast laid over a table that never ended. Paths of pale stone wound between them, and every so often a fountain burst up in a glittering arc, not with water but with something that flashed gold and red before falling back into a basin. Birds the colour of ash and flame crossed overhead in twisting ribbons, their wings catching the amber light.
Beyond the gardens sat the palace.
It was no castle. No fortress. It had no hard lines, no grim shoulders. It rose from the hill in layers of balconies and arches, each one draped with hanging vines and glass lamps the size of lanterns. Towers spiralled upward like stems forced into bloom. Windows gleamed with a dim, liquid light, and from somewhere inside came the clang of metal, the crackle of fire, and music so faint Rory couldn’t tell whether it came from strings or voices.
She stared at it, small under the weight of it.
“This is where people live?”
Nyx stood at the railing beside her, their shadow form thinning in the light. “People. Creatures. Judges. Butchers. Bakers. Probably all in the same room.”
Rory looked at them. “You’ve been here before.”
“I’ve passed through.”
“That was a yes.”
Their violet eyes shifted to her. “You hear that music?”
Rory listened. Under the distant noise, under the breeze and the birds and the murmuring vines, another sound threaded through. Laughter. Glass. A cry of delight. Then a hush, broken by applause.
“Feast,” Isolde said.
Rory’s gaze flicked back to the palace. “You get applause in a place like this?”
“When the food pleases them.”
Nyx’s gaze stayed fixed on the terraces. “And when it does not?”
Isolde lifted one shoulder, silver hair sliding over her back. “Then the cooks learn quickly .”
Rory swallowed and rested one hand against the pendant under her shirt. It still pulsed warm, but now the beat seemed to answer the place around them, matching some hidden rhythm under the stone.
She looked along the terrace edge.
Far below, between the orchard rows, she spotted a path that wound toward a set of gates half-hidden in cypress trees. Massive things. Iron or bronze, she couldn’t tell from here, but they caught the light in dull red streaks. People moved near them in lines, carrying crates, sacks, and trays draped in cloth. Some stopped to lift fruit to their mouths. Others broke bread at the roadside and passed pieces to one another without speaking.
Rory narrowed her eyes.
“Those gates open on their own?”
Isolde’s answer came soft. “Sometimes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It was the only one this place gave me.”
Nyx turned their face slightly , as though listening beneath the terrace stones .
“Something moved.”
Rory looked where they looked.
At first she saw only the long curve of the garden wall and the clipped tops of the trees beyond it. Then a shadow passed over the orchard floor, huge enough to blot out a stretch of sunlight. Not a cloud. The shape had edges, wings maybe, or banners. It moved once, low and heavy, and vanished behind the palace tiers.
Rory’s skin prickled.
“What was that?”
Isolde watched the space where it disappeared. “Something with appetite.”
Rory almost answered, but the air shifted before she could.
A scent, sharper now, cut through the sweetness and smoke. Charcoal. Iron. Herbs crushed underfoot. Her pendant warmed again, harder this time, and for one brief instant a pulse of heat shot through the silver chain and into her collarbone.
She hissed and grabbed it through her shirt.
Nyx turned toward her. “It calls.”
Rory’s eyes narrowed . “It can bloody well wait.”
“Nothing here waits,” Isolde murmured.
She crossed to the terrace edge and looked down into the valley, her expression unreadable . The wind lifted her hair and held it for a moment, silver against the amber sky.
Rory came up beside her, still feeling the pendant thrum against her skin.
Below them, the path through the vineyards seemed to twist, not in one direction but several, as if the ground itself had made up its mind to become a maze. At its centre stood a lone tree with branches heavy with fruit like little glass lanterns. The fruits glowed from within, each one a different colour. Blue. Gold. Deep red. A few pulsed faintly, as if breathing .
Something fluttered inside one of them.
Rory blinked hard.
“Please tell me that’s just light.”
Nyx’s whisper brushed her ear. “Not light.”
Isolde’s face tipped toward the tree, and for the first time since they crossed over, something like concern touched her mouth .
“There,” she said, and pointed.
At the base of the tree, half-hidden by roots and grass, lay a ring of black stone marked with runes cut so fine Rory could not read them from here. The surface of the ring shimmered in and out of sight, like a scar that had not fully healed.
Rory felt the hair at her wrist lift, the old crescent scar there tingling under her cuff.
She looked from the ring to the tree, then back to the palace, the orchards, the endless gold sky.
“Tell me that’s a path.”
Isolde did not turn from the valley.
“It was.”
Rory shifted her weight and tightened her jaw, eyes on the ring below. The pendant beat once, warm and insistent, against her chest.