AI The stones stood half-buried in moss and root, a ring of grey oak so old the bark had gone smooth as bone in places. Rory stopped just before the threshold and looked back once at Richmond Park, the winter light dulling the grass outside the circle into a flat, ordinary green.
Inside, the air shifted.
Not colder. Not warmer. Just different, as if someone had turned the world by a notch and left them standing in the seam.
“Feels wrong,” Rory muttered.
Nyx hovered at her shoulder in a tall spill of shadow, their edges wavering against the pale trunks beyond the grove. “Wrong?” Their voice slid along the breeze. “It feels hungry.”
Isolde stood at the centre of the ring with her silver hair falling straight down her back. She had not left a mark in the leaf litter, not one crease or footprint, though the ground around her held the print of no other feet either. She tilted her head toward the trees that did not belong to any wood Rory had ever seen.
“Hungry places open their mouths,” Isolde murmured. “Wise ones do not shout in them.”
“Brilliant,” Rory said. “That’s calming.”
Isolde’s pale eyes moved to her, unreadable and cool as rainwater. “You came. That was the first good choice.”
Rory looked down at the blade in her hand. The moonsilver caught what little light there was and gave it back in a faint white sheen. Isolde had pressed it into her palm with no more ceremony than passing over a loaf of bread. The weapon sat light and keen there, cold enough to bite through the leather of her glove. Her other hand brushed the pendant beneath her shirt. The Heartstone rested warm against her skin, a steady pulse that answered the pulse in her wrist.
Nyx drifted to the standing stone nearest the grove’s edge and laid a shadowed hand against it. “This boundary feels stitched,” they whispered. “Not built. Stitched.”
Rory stepped through the ring.
The world did not change with a flash or a crack. It went quiet.
The sounds of London, the distant hiss of tyres on road, the dog barking somewhere beyond the trees, all of it thinned and fell away until only the breathing of the grove remained. Leaves rustled without wind. Wildflowers crowded the ground in a quilt of white and purple and gold despite the season, their petals open to a sky that should have held no colour at all.
Above them, the light hung silver-blue, not from sun or moon but from a wash that seemed to come through the air itself. The trees rose impossibly high, their trunks pale and straight, their branches threaded with ribbons of living vine that shimmered when Rory looked too long. Somewhere deeper in the grove, water sang over stone with a sound like glass being tapped by a fingernail.
“Time moved odd here,” Isolde said behind her. “Do not trust your watch, your hunger, or the ache in your knees.”
Rory snorted once, quiet. “That last one’s just rude.”
A smile touched the corner of Isolde’s mouth and vanished. “Truth can be rude.”
They moved together along a narrow path that had not existed a moment before and now ran between the standing oaks like it had always waited for them. The ground gave beneath Rory’s boots in a soft spring, thick with roots and dark soil that smelled of rain, fresh bark, and something sweet enough to turn her stomach . The scent kept shifting each time she drew breath. Honey. Sap. Smoke. Bruised pears. Clean iron.
Nyx slipped ahead, their form thinning at the edges as they passed through a patch of shadow beneath a wide fern. “The dark here tastes different.”
“Can shadows taste?” Rory asked.
“They can do many things.” A pause. “You mortal folk only notice when they bite.”
Rory glanced up at the canopy. The leaves above were not leaves in the way she knew them. Some looked like polished green glass; others like feathered hands; others like thin coins hammered out of moon-metal, each catching the light and tossing it back in cold flickers. A flock of tiny birds with translucent wings darted between the branches, their bodies lit from within by a soft amber glow. When they passed overhead, Rory heard the faint chime of their wingbeats, like silver spoons brushed together.
She stopped.
“What now?” Nyx asked, already turning.
Rory pointed upward. “Those aren’t birds.”
Isolde followed her gaze. “No.”
“They’re not?” Rory frowned. “Then what are they?”
“Hungry,” Isolde said again, and when Rory shot her a flat look, the seer’s expression barely shifted. “Some things wear feather shapes when they wish to be left alone.”
One of the winged lights dipped low enough for Rory to see its face. It had no beak, no eyes. Just a smooth oval of pearl flesh with a narrow slit that opened and closed where a mouth might have been. It drifted past her ear, leaving a trail of cold fragrance, then rose into the boughs and vanished.
Rory let out a breath . “Right. Great. Love that.”
They came to a pool before they had expected any water at all. It lay in a hollow ringed by white stones veined with gold. The surface held no ripple, no reflection of the sky above, only a depthless black that made Rory’s stomach clench. Yet around its edge, lilies bloomed in colours she had no name for, their petals layered in fine translucent folds. A few opened and closed with slow, deliberate patience.
“Don’t look too long,” Nyx said.
Rory had already looked too long.
Something moved beneath the surface.
She stepped back. The pendant under her shirt heated against her chest, a quick bright pulse that made her draw in a sharp breath.
Nyx snapped their head toward her. “What is that?”
Rory caught the chain and yanked the Heartstone free. The crimson gem glowed from within, faint but clear, its warmth heavy in her palm. It had never done that before, not at Yu-Fei’s restaurant, not in Silas’ bar, not in the flat above it when the pipes rattled and the neighbours argued through the walls. Here, it beat like a small trapped heart.
Isolde’s gaze sharpened. “The grove knows it.”
“The thing knows my pendant?” Rory asked.
“Not your pendant.” Isolde’s fingers brushed the air just above the gem, careful not to touch. “What it came from.”
Rory looked from the pendant to the pool. The water beneath had begun to glow in the same deep crimson, a pulse answering pulse . The black surface folded open into a narrow swirl, and for one wild second she saw not the water’s depth but a red-lit hall, tall as a cathedral and lined with vines heavy with fruit the colour of blood.
Heat rolled off the vision. Rory jerked back, heart knocking hard.
Nyx went still. “That wasn’t here.”
“No,” Isolde said. “But it was.”
The water stilled at once. The red glow sank back into black.
Rory swallowed and shoved the pendant back under her shirt, though the warmth stayed pressed to her skin. “That’s not the sort of thing you mention after you say come into the woods with me.”
“I said no such thing.” Isolde turned and continued along the path. “You came because the question already found you.”
Rory stared at the back of her silver head, then followed with Nyx drifting low beside her like a smudge on the air.
The path narrowed, and the grove shifted around them. Roots arched overhead, weaving a living tunnel through which the silver light filtered in thin bands. The air grew thick with the scent of flowers and wet stone. Somewhere to the left, a chime sounded once. Then again. Not a bell. A branch knocking against another branch, maybe, except the note carried too much shape and lingered too long in the skin.
Rory ran her thumb along the flat of the Fae blade. Cold. Cleaner than any knife she owned, cleaner than the scalpels she’d seen in hospital trays when Eva had dragged her to visits after late-night scrapes in London. The weapon felt wrong in the best possible way, like it knew exactly what it had been made to cut.
A hush spread through the grove.
The birds stopped. The leaves held still. Even Nyx’s whisper faded.
Rory glanced over her shoulder. “You hear that?”
“Nobody speaks,” Nyx murmured.
A shape stood between two trees ahead.
Rory froze. The thing had not walked into view. It had simply been there once her eyes caught it, tall and pale and draped in something that flowed like watered silk . At first she thought it another of the grove’s tricks. Then it moved, and she saw the slow, deliberate angle of a head, the sweep of antler-like branches crowned with blossoms, the long fingers resting against a staff made from twisted root and silver thread.
A fae, Rory thought, with a sharp drop in her stomach .
Isolde did not stop. “Peace,” she called softly .
The figure inclined its head. Its face remained half-hidden beneath a veil of hanging petals. When it spoke, the voice came from nowhere Rory could place, as though the grove itself had decided to answer.
“Seer.”
“Visitor,” Isolde replied.
The figure’s head turned a fraction toward Rory and Nyx. The petals stirred. Beneath them, eyes glimmered like dew caught in the first light of dawn.
“Three steps and a blade,” it said. “One shadow, one mortal, one door that has not yet chosen to open.”
Rory’s grip tightened on the dagger. “I’m not a door.”
Nyx gave a low sound that might have been amusement. “The grove disagrees.”
The fae figure lifted its staff and tapped the root at its feet. The ground shimmered , and Rory saw, for one heartbeat, a field of white stone steps leading down into darkness, each stair lined with bowls of fire. She blinked, and the image vanished.
Isolde’s face remained calm. “We seek passage.”
“Passage is for those with maps.”
“We brought none.”
“Then you brought need.” The fae’s tone carried no accusation. “Need costs.”
Rory looked at Isolde. “What’s it want?”
“Something that matters.”
“That narrows it down beautifully.”
Isolde’s gaze flicked to the Heartstone beneath Rory’s shirt. “The grove has an appetite. So do the places beyond it. They will scent that warmth if you let it blaze.”
Rory felt the pendant pulse once more, as if in answer to the warning.
The fae figure stepped aside.
Beyond it, the path widened into a clearing Rory had not seen from the outside. Great stones rose in a broken circle, taller than a bus, their surfaces carved with spirals and tooth-thin runes that glowed faintly under the moss. Between them hung strips of something translucent and pale that fluttered without wind. Not cloth. Not skin. Not anything she could name. The light changed here, falling in bands through the open centre of the circle, and in that light Rory saw dust drifting upward instead of down.
She stared.
“They’re falling,” she whispered.
“Or rising,” Nyx answered.
In the middle of the clearing, on a slab of white rock, lay a cluster of fruit shaped like small glass hearts, each one filled with a dark red core. Bees the size of walnuts crawled over them, their bodies made of black lacquer and gold thread. They hummed with a note that pressed against Rory’s teeth.
One of the hearts split open with a wet click.
Inside was a seed the colour of fire.
Rory took a step forward before she knew she meant to. The air around the stone was sweet and sharp, and the pendant against her chest surged hot enough to sting. She sucked in a breath and pressed her free hand over it.
“Don’t touch anything,” Isolde warned.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Nyx moved past her toward the stones, the edges of their form trailing like smoke. Their head tipped back as they studied the runes. “These marks are old.”
“How old?” Rory asked.
Nyx’s voice softened to a hush. “Before your cities learned to stack stone on stone.”
Rory walked to the edge of the circle and looked down at the carvings. They shifted under her gaze, not changing exactly, but rearranging themselves in subtle ways, like words being reshuffled into a sentence she almost understood. One symbol caught her eye: a spiral pierced by a thorn. Another: a cup with a hole in its base. Another: an open hand with an eye in the palm.
She reached for the nearest stone with her scarred left wrist brushing the cold surface.
The moment skin met rock, the crescent scar burned.
Rory hissed and snatched her hand back. A thin line of crimson light had flashed through the rune, gone before she could track it.
Isolde’s head lifted. “There.”
“What?”
“The circle remembers you.”
Rory stared at her. “I’ve never been here.”
“No,” Isolde said. “But something has been waiting on your shape.”
Nyx turned sharply toward the grove’s edge. Their silhouette tightened. “We are not alone.”
Rory heard it then, faint but clear: a low scrape, like stone dragged across stone, coming from beyond the standing stones at the far side of the clearing. The petals on the fae’s cloak shivered. The bees lifted from the glass fruit in a sudden black cloud.
Isolde’s hand closed around Rory’s wrist, cool and firm, right over the scar. “Stand still.”
Rory opened her mouth to ask what was coming , and the ground answered first, trembling once beneath her boots as the carved stones began to glow.