AI The grove had gone quiet in that particular way it did when the world held its breath around Isolde.
Rory stood just inside the ring of ancient oak stones, with damp grass brushing her boots and wildflowers bending in a breeze she couldn’t feel on her face. The place always looked half-impossible to her, like someone had spilled a brighter, older version of spring over Richmond Park and forgotten to clean it up. Flowers bloomed in every crack and hollow. Pale petals shivered against black bark. The air smelled of green stems, damp earth, and something faintly sweet beneath it, as if honey had been warmed somewhere out of sight.
She tightened her grip on the strap of her bag and felt the Heartstone Pendant stir against her chest.
Not move, exactly. Pulse.
A small, warm beat of crimson through the fabric of her shirt, as though a second heart had woken and was listening .
Rory glanced down at the pendant’s chain. The silver caught what little light there was and flashed once. The gemstone, thumb-sized and deep red as a drop of fresh blood, glowed with that faint inner fire she had learned not to stare at for too long. It only ever did this near the edges of things. Near trouble. Near doors no one had any business opening.
“Is it doing that again?” she asked quietly .
Isolde stood a few steps ahead of her, silver hair spilling down her back in a sheet that seemed to drink in the last of the dusk . She wore no coat despite the chill . Of course she didn’t. The fae never seemed to agree with ordinary weather. Her pale lavender eyes were half-lidded, unreadable . She turned one hand over, palm up, as if waiting for the dark to gather there .
“The river remembers the sea,” she said.
That was not an answer, which meant it was probably the best answer Rory was going to get.
Beside her, Nyx had taken the shape of a tall, solid silhouette, long limbs and a hood of darkness where a face ought to be. Their faint violet eyes glimmered like foxfire caught in smoke. Even standing still, they did not look fixed in place so much as briefly persuaded to remain. The shadows beneath the stones leaned toward them.
“This place feels hungry,” Nyx murmured, their voice a whisper dragged across dry leaves .
Rory snorted under her breath. “You say that about everything.”
“Everything here has teeth eventually.”
“That’s encouraging.”
Isolde moved to the center of the ring. She didn’t leave footprints in the grass. Rory had seen that enough times to still find it unsettling when she forgot and noticed it all over again. The wildflowers around her ankles trembled , not from any wind Rory could feel , but from some other pressure, as if the grove knew what was coming and had decided to be attentive.
Isolde looked up at the sky. “One door closes its mouth. Another opens.”
Rory swallowed. Her fingers slid to the hilt tucked at her waist, the Fae-Forged Blade hidden under her coat. Even through the leather, it felt cold, a clean moonlit cold that seemed to sip warmth from her palm when she touched it. The knife had a slim leaf-shaped blade of moonsilver, elegant enough to belong in a glass case, dangerous enough to make her think twice every time she drew it. It had cut through wards before. She had not needed much convincing to trust that fact .
She drew it now.
The blade looked pale and wrong in the dim grove, its edge catching the last silver of evening. Rory’s left wrist flexed, and the small crescent scar there stung under the cuff of her sleeve, a sharp little memory of some childhood fall that suddenly felt very far away.
“On your mark,” she said.
Isolde’s mouth curved, almost a smile. “The mark is already made.”
Then she lifted two fingers and traced them through the air.
Rory felt it before she saw it: a thin distortion, a pressure against the skin like stepping close to a hot oven. The space between the standing stones shimmered . Not much. Just enough to catch at the eye. Just enough to suggest that what looked like air had a skin stretched over it.
Nyx’s shape blurred at the edges. “There it is.”
Rory took one breath, then another. The heartstone burned warm against her sternum, as if eager. She stepped forward and raised the blade.
The first cut made no sound at all.
The second sliced through with a faint crackle like ice splitting on a winter pond.
The air tore open.
For one wild instant Rory smelled flowers, smoke, and something richer underneath—a thick, dark sweetness like overripe fruit left too long in the sun. Then the seam yawned wide enough for her to see through, and the grove vanished.
Heat struck her in the face.
Not the dry British sort. This was warm, living heat, scented with herbs and cooked sugar and something savory enough to make her stomach clench. She stumbled one step forward onto black soil that felt springy underfoot, and the world beyond the tear expanded around her in a rush of amber light.
Dymas.
The sky hung over it like molten honey, a vast warm dome without a visible sun. Everything beneath it glowed in a soft, relentless gold. Rory stood at the edge of terraces carved into a broad slope, each one planted with rows upon rows of vines heavy with clusters of purple-black grapes. Orchard trees bent low under impossible fruit: pears with skin the color of old brass, figs split open to show ruby flesh, pomegranates that seemed to hold embers in their ribs. Thin channels ran between the beds, carrying water so clear it flashed gold where the sky touched it.
She stared.
Her first thought was absurdly domestic: it smells like a kitchen.
Her second thought was that the kitchen belonged to a god.
The air buzzed with life. Somewhere to the left, metal clanged against metal in a rhythm that might have been a thousand knives striking chopping boards. A laugh rolled over the fields, deep and bright and entirely unlike any human laughter she had heard before. From farther off came the hiss of flame and the crackle of something being glazed , basted, or burnt on purpose.
The place was old. Not in the way a ruin was old, but in the way a ritual was old . Every path, every trellis, every stone edge seemed worn by long use . The black paving under their feet shone with a polish no mortal hand could make. Inlays of red and gold threaded through the ground in curling patterns that looked almost like vines until Rory realized they were mouths. Open mouths. Smiling mouths. Some were biting into fruit. Some were full of teeth.
She drew in a breath too quickly and the rich scent hit her harder. Wine. Smoke. Spices she didn’t know. Cinnamon, maybe, but darker, heavier. Nutmeg and clove and something like charred oranges .
Nyx had already melted into a patch of shadow cast by a vine trellis, then re-formed at her shoulder, their edges less distinct in the amber light. “Well,” they whispered. “That’s excessive.”
Rory let out a breath that might have been a laugh if her nerves weren’t pulled so tight. “You think ?”
Ahead of them, Isolde stepped across the threshold without hesitation. The grass there gave way to stone. She did not glance back. “Walk softly ,” she said. “The feast hears feet.”
Rory looked at her. “That supposed to mean something?”
“The hungry hear everything,” Isolde replied, which was somehow worse.
They moved downhill along a path bordered by fruit trees loaded so heavily their branches bowed almost to the ground. The fruits were larger than Rory expected, some the size of her head, and they pulsed faintly from within as if each held its own little trapped sunset. When the breeze stirred, the leaves flashed silver on their undersides, catching the amber sky and breaking it into shards.
The path opened onto a wide terrace where long tables had been set up beneath arched trellises woven with living vines. Platters gleamed. Bowls steamed. Carafes of dark liquid stood beside crystal glasses that caught the light like cut gems. There was enough food for a hundred feasts and then a hundred more: braided loaves lacquered with honey, wheels of cheese veined blue and green, roasted birds with crackling skin, bowls piled high with berries, roots, petals, and things Rory could not name because her mind snagged on them every time she tried.
A pair of figures in white aprons moved among the tables with practiced speed. One was broad-shouldered and horned, skin the color of polished walnut, his forearms shining with oil. The other was slight and bent at the waist, face hidden beneath a linen wrap. Both carried themselves with the rigid concentration of people who had learned long ago not to waste motion. Rory saw a brand on the smaller one’s wrist as they reached for a tray: a mark burned into skin, neat and deliberate.
Her stomach twisted.
The sounds of the place came into sharper focus. Not just the clatter of the kitchen, but a constant low murmur beneath it all —a murmur of appetite. Laughter. Praise. The scrape of chairs. The wet, satisfying sound of knives cutting meat. Somewhere, someone sang in a language Rory didn’t know, the notes rising and falling like steam.
And threaded through it all was the smell of hunger.
Not her hunger. The place’s.
Rory became aware, suddenly and uncomfortably, of how empty her own stomach was. She had eaten before they left, she was sure of it, but the scent of roasted fat and sugar made that memory feel thin and unreliable. She clenched her jaw and kept walking.
“Don’t look at the tables too long,” Nyx murmured. “You’ll start wanting what shouldn’t be wanted.”
Rory shot them a glance. “That sounds dangerously like personal advice.”
“Most advice is dangerous. That’s why it matters.”
Isolde turned a corner between two grape arbors and led them toward a structure half-buried in the hillside. Rory had expected a palace or a hall. Instead, she found a vaulted opening cut into black stone, its arch carved with clusters of fruit, curling vines, and tiny faces with their mouths open wide enough to swallow the stems above them. The doorway breathed out a wash of cooler air that smelled of yeast, iron, and earth.
A chill moved over Rory’s arms despite the heat outside.
The Heartstone pendant grew warm enough against her chest to make her skin prickle.
She stopped. “Wait.”
Isolde paused without turning. “You feel it.”
Rory lifted a hand and pressed it to the pendant through her shirt. The gemstone beat once, faint but insistent. Once, twice. Like a knuckle tapping from the other side of a wall.
“Near a portal,” she said softly .
Nyx went still. Even their shadow seemed to sharpen. “Here?”
“Not the kind you crossed,” Isolde said, voice calm as still water . “A mouth made by hands older than memory.”
Rory looked past her into the dark interior beyond the arch. The walls inside were lined with shelves, old stone shelves carved directly into the mountain. On them stood rows of amphorae sealed with wax, jars full of preserved fruit, bundles of herbs tied with red thread, and objects that did not belong in any kitchen she had ever seen: silver hooks, obsidian blades, bowls etched with runes, a cracked crown of gold leaves. At the far end of the chamber, beyond shelves and shadow, a circular stone frame was set into the wall.
The air around it rippled.
Just slightly . Enough to make her eyes water if she stared too hard.
There was a Veil there, or a wound in one, or some older mechanism of crossing she could feel but not name. It shimmered with a pressure that made the back of her teeth ache. The Heartstone was hot now, hot enough that Rory had to suck in a breath and let her hand fall away before it burned her through the cloth.
Something in the chamber answered the pendant. A faint red flicker ran through the carved ring at the far end, deep in the stone like a vein filling with blood.
Rory took one careful step forward.
The floor beneath her boots was etched with a spiral of tiny symbols. Some had been worn smooth by time, but others remained sharp, as if someone had carved them yesterday. She crouched, ignoring the way the heat gathered in the small of her back, and traced one with a fingertip without touching it fully. The symbol was not a word she knew, but it gave her the uncomfortable feeling of a locked door .
Behind her, the feasting terrace echoed with a sudden burst of applause. A cheer rose, then laughter, then the hard, bright crack of something breaking apart. The whole cavern trembled faintly, as if the mountain itself had applauded.
Rory rose slowly . “What is this place?”
Isolde’s silver hair slid over one shoulder as she turned at last. Her expression was almost gentle, which made Rory trust it less. “A throat,” she said. “A pantry. A promise. It depends who is asking.”
“That is not helpful.”
“No,” Isolde said, and the curve of her mouth held a spark of something like pity . “But it is true.”
Nyx drifted closer to the archway, their form thinning at the edges as if the shadows inside had reached to take them. “The ward on that ring is old,” they murmured. “Older than this kitchen. Older than the smell.”
Rory looked back at the doorway, at the rippling circle of stone. She could feel the pull of it now, a tug low in her bones, not toward motion but toward appetite . Toward going deeper. Toward whatever waited behind the shimmer.
The Fae blade in her hand was cold enough to ache. She tightened her grip and felt the flat of the hilt bite into her palm. The Heartstone throbbed once more, urgent as a warning and a summons all at once.
Somewhere beyond the chamber, deeper in Dymas, a voice called out in a language of hard consonants and rolling vowels. Another answered. Then a third. The sounds overlapped with the crackle of fire and the scrape of iron pans. The whole place was alive with labor and indulgence and the constant, luxurious violence of being fed .
Rory exhaled through her nose. Her pulse had steadied. Fear was there, yes, cold and clean as the blade at her hip. But beneath it ran something sharper: wonder. Real wonder. The kind that made the world feel bigger and more dangerous at the same time.
She looked at Nyx, then at Isolde.
“Well,” she said, and surprised herself by sounding almost calm, “if we’re going in, we should probably do it before whatever’s inside decides to come out.”
Nyx’s violet eyes flickered . “There’s the Rory I know.”
Isolde’s gaze drifted to the stone ring, then back to Rory. “The mouth opens for the bold,” she said. “But only the careful return with their names intact.”
“That,” Rory muttered, stepping toward the chamber, “is the least reassuring thing anyone has ever said to me.”
And still she went on, into the cool dark beyond the pantry and the pulse of the waiting ring, with the amber light of Dymas behind her and the taste of its impossible feast already lingering on her tongue.