AI The standing stones had looked like dead oaks from a distance, grey trunks split by centuries and weather, but up close they held a pulse under their bark, a slow shiver that ran through the grain when Rory laid her palm against one.
Cold met her skin. Not winter cold. Older. A cold that had waited.
She drew her hand back, rubbing her fingers together. The crescent scar on her left wrist caught the pale light as the pendant at her throat gave a small, insistent throb . The crimson stone warmed against her sternum, then warmed again, each beat stronger than the last.
Nyx slipped from one shadow to the next at the edge of the grove, a tall smear of darkness shaped like a person only when the branches opened enough to let moonlight through.
“That glow’s getting bold.”
Their voice came soft and wind-worn, like it had travelled a long lane before it reached her.
Rory held the Heartstone through her shirt.
“It’s never done that before.”
Isolde stood between the stones with her silver hair falling over her shoulders in one bright sheet. The wildflowers around her ankles bent but left no mark. She tilted her head, pale eyes fixed on the gap between the uprights where the air quivered like hot glass.
“Doors dislike delay,” she murmured. “This one has been waiting with a dry mouth.”
Rory watched the seam in the air. It looked wrong, even for the grove. The clearing always carried its own rules, its own hush, but now the space between the stones warped and flexed, a narrow rip in the world with a shimmer like oil on water. Beyond it, something amber moved. Light, maybe. Sky. Something neither.
She adjusted the Fae blade at her belt. The moonsilver stayed cold through the leather sheath, a bite against her hip.
“Please tell me that’s the place and not another trick of yours.”
Isolde’s mouth curved in a small, knowing line.
“Every place is another trick. This one simply has better scenery.”
Nyx drifted closer, the edges of their shape blurring when they crossed a patch of shadow from a leaning oak.
“You step through, and the air changes first. Don’t be startled by the taste.”
Rory looked at them. “You’ve been in there.”
Their faint violet eyes flicked toward the seam.
“Once, long ago enough to feel like a borrowed memory.”
“That was not a no.”
The shadow-like tilt of Nyx’s head counted as a shrug.
“I have survived worse tastes.”
A line of unease threaded through Rory’s ribs. She rolled her shoulders, breathed in the smell of wet earth and crushed leaves, and took one last look at the Richmond grove behind her. The standing stones ringed the clearing like old teeth. Wildflowers glimmered in the moonlight. The park beyond them had gone silent, every distant London sound snuffed out, as if the world had pressed its ear to the grove and gone still.
Isolde lifted one hand. Her fingers traced the air without touching it.
“Walk as if you belong to the path,” she said. “The place hates uncertainty.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said tonight that makes sense.”
“It will be the last.”
Rory snorted despite herself and stepped forward.
The seam took her like a breath.
One second she stood in the grove with damp grass under her boots. The next, the ground vanished and the air turned thick and sweet, full of ripe fruit and smoke and something that made her think of pastry left too long in a warm room. Heat wrapped around her face. She blinked against a wash of amber light and nearly staggered when the world reassembled itself.
Dymas spread before her in tiers and terraces, vast as a kingdom and shaped by appetite.
Vineyards climbed hills that curved too neatly to be natural. Orchard trees rose in long rows, their branches burdened with heavy, lacquered fruit that flashed gold, copper, and blood-red where the light struck them. Broad channels of dark liquid threaded between the fields, carrying reflections of a sky the colour of old honey. Above it all hung an endless amber glow, as if sunset had been caught and stretched across the heavens.
Rory turned in place.
The standing stones remained behind them, but the grove had gone. In its place stretched a paved terrace of pale stone veined with green, warm beneath her boots. Steps descended into a valley lined with gardens so orderly they looked sculpted rather than grown. Farther down, a cluster of buildings rose from the earth in white arches and domes, each roof edged with copper that caught the amber light and threw it back in molten streaks.
The place sounded alive.
Water ran somewhere beneath the stone, clear and quick. Bells chimed at a distance, each note separated by a breath. Leaves rubbed together in a thousand trees, but the rustle carried a pattern, almost like speech. Then another sound reached her, faint but distinct: laughter, deep and bright, from somewhere beyond the first orchard.
Rory swallowed.
“The sky’s wrong.”
Nyx stepped out beside her, solid for the moment, the shadow of them stretching long over the terrace. In the strange light, their outline sharpened, then softened again.
“It is a realm of Hel,” they whispered. “Wrong is the native tongue.”
The Heartstone at her throat burned warm enough to sting. Rory pressed her fingers over it and felt a pulse answer her touch, the stone beating like a second heart that had just remembered where it belonged.
“It’s pointing.”
She looked down the terraces. The pendant tugged faintly toward the valley and the domed buildings beyond the gardens.
Isolde walked past her, silent as falling ash despite the stone underfoot. No footprints followed her silver slippers.
“Of course it points,” she said. “The thing you carry has manners in the presence of a mouth.”
Rory frowned at her back. “You speak in circles on purpose.”
“I speak around things that would bite if named too plainly.”
Nyx’s gaze moved over the orchard, alert and unreadable .
“Biting things usually had teeth.”
Rory started down the first set of steps. The stone held heat from the amber sky, and a fine scent drifted up from below—figs split open in the sun, honey poured over crust, herbs crushed under a mortar. She glanced into the nearest orchard as she passed and stopped.
The fruit hung too heavy for the branches. Pears the size of her head. Plums with skins like polished garnets. Oranges striped with violet. Some of the trees had limbs twisted into arches that met overhead, forming tunnels through the groves. Tiny lights moved among the leaves, flickering in and out as if the trees breathed them out.
She reached toward a low branch.
“Don’t.”
Nyx’s voice came sharp enough to cut.
Rory froze, then looked up.
A bird perched between two branches, all bone-white feathers and a long tail like a ribbon of glass. Its eyes reflected the amber sky without blinking. Another bird sat beside it, then another, each one still as carved ivory, each one watching her hand.
Rory pulled back.
The nearest fruit shifted on its stem. Not from wind. From attention.
“Right,” she muttered. “No grabbing the shiny food.”
The birds clicked their beaks once and turned as one, facing deeper into the orchard. The branches parted, and the path ahead opened again.
Isolde descended without hurry, her hands folded into the sleeves of her pale robe. “The land notices desire here. Keep yours tidy.”
Rory gave her a look over her shoulder. “That’s a full-time job.”
A breath of something hot touched her neck. Not air. Not wind. She spun, one hand flying to the blade at her belt.
A figure stood under the arching branches beside the path, half-hidden by shadow and leaves. At first she thought it wore a hood, but then the light slid over its face, and she saw a mask of hammered gold covering the eyes and mouth. Its body draped in layers of dark cloth that hung like wet velvet . A wooden tray rested in its hands, loaded with pears split open and glistening with syrup.
Rory took a step back.
The figure bowed. The movement made the tray tremble.
Its voice came from behind the mask, muffled and rough with age. “Fresh guests. The kitchens will spit their knives in joy.”
Nyx shifted toward the shadow behind the figure, their shape thinning at the edges.
“That one smells human.”
The masked figure lifted one hand and tapped the gold at its throat. A chain of small spoons hung there, each engraved with symbols Rory didn’t recognise.
“Contracted,” it rasped. “As are many. All appetites serve, one way or another.”
Rory felt the pendant thrum hard against her chest. The warmth had turned hot now, a clear pull toward the valley. She glanced at the figure’s tray, at the syrup gleaming on the split fruit, and another smell rose beneath the sweetness: spice, iron, smoke, the sharp tang of something that had been seared over open flame.
“You work here?”
The figure inclined its head.
“In the orchards. In the press rooms. In the kitchens below the second garden. Today, I carry dessert.”
Rory eyed the pears. “And if we take one?”
The masked face tilted. “Then the orchard remembers your hand.”
She let out a short breath and kept moving. Behind her, the figure’s silence stretched, then broke.
“The feast hall opens at dusk,” it called. “If dusk exists in your mouths.”
Nyx looked back once as they passed under the branches.
“Does that happen often?”
“The mouths?” the figure replied. “Constantly.”
The path widened as they descended into the lower gardens. Water threaded through carved channels lined with pale shells that chimed when the current hit them. The beds on either side held herbs with silver leaves and blue flowers that turned their heads as Rory passed, following her with slow, deliberate patience. Somewhere beneath the soil, a deeper hum vibrated through the ground, low enough to feel in her bones.
She crouched by a shallow pool where orange blossoms floated on the surface. The water held her reflection for a second, then changed it. For one strange blink she saw a woman in dark robes with a crown of thorns made of gold. Then the pool shivered and gave her own face back, bright blue eyes wide, black hair falling across her cheek.
Rory straightened too fast. “That was not normal.”
Isolde’s pale gaze rested on the pool. “Normal is a thin soup. You have stepped into a feast.”
Nyx crouched beside the pool and lifted their hand just above the surface. The water darkened under their fingers, then cleared. “Something watches from below.”
Rory looked down. The pool had no bottom she could see, only a dimness that seemed to open farther and farther away, as if the water sat atop a tunnel into the belly of the realm . A pale shape moved there once, just under the surface, long and narrow, before vanishing into the dark.
She backed away.
A bell rang somewhere close this time, deep and resonant. Another answered it. Then another. The sound rolled over the gardens and made the leaves tremble on their stems.
“Kitchen signal,” the masked worker had said. “Dinner bell,” Rory muttered.
Nyx’s eyes stayed on the path ahead. “Not for us, I think .”
They reached the first of the domed buildings at the edge of the valley. It stood on a broad platform of white stone with steps wide enough for a procession. Copper ribs curved over its roof, and narrow windows glowed from within, each one carrying moving light that flashed like knives in a pan. The air around the entrance smelled stronger here, rich with roasted meat, steeped wine, and herbs crushed underfoot.
Rory slowed at the top step.
The door stood open.
Inside, heat and light spilled out in a thick wave. She could see tables beyond the threshold, endless rows of them, laden with bowls and platters and towers of bread dusted with sugar. Steam curled over silver lids. Gilded chandeliers hung from the ceiling like inverted roots, each branch hung with candles that burned without smoke. Figures moved between the tables, some in masks, some with bare faces she could not fully make out from the entrance. Their hands flashed as they carried dishes and knives, and every surface gleamed as if polished by constant use.
A sound rose from inside, half song and half clatter, a crowded music of plates, laughter, and argument.
Rory stood at the threshold and stared.
The Heartstone warmed against her chest until she felt it through her ribs, a steady pull toward the centre of the hall. The Fae blade at her hip gave off a thin, cold line against her skin, as if it had sensed the place and braced itself.
Behind her, the gardens rustled. Ahead, the feast hall breathed.
She rested her hand on the doorframe. The stone felt smooth, almost slick, and a faint vibration ran through it beneath her palm, like a giant machine purring far below the earth.
A voice floated from somewhere inside, bright with amusement and too distant to pin down.
“Guests at the door. Bring extra knives.”
Rory glanced at Nyx, then at Isolde.
“Well,” she breathed. “This is a bit much.”
Isolde’s eyes gleamed faintly in the amber light.
“Only the first course.”