AI The pendant went warm against Rory’s chest before she saw the tear in the air.
It hung there between two black yews at the edge of Richmond Park, no bigger than a ragged curtain, the night around it bending wrong. The Veil shimmered in a way that made her eyes ache if she stared too long, a faint distortion like heat off a road in summer, except the air was cold enough to sting her lungs. The Heartstone rested beneath her jumper, its pulse steady and insistent, each beat a small red throb through the silver chain.
“Don’t touch the edge,” Isolde said softly .
Rory glanced at her. The seer stood as if she’d grown there, silver hair spilling down her back, lavender eyes fixed on the fracture in the dark. Bare feet on wet grass, no print beneath them. “That sounds like advice given from experience.”
Isolde’s mouth curved, almost a smile, almost not. “Experience is the oldest coin.”
Nyx stood a pace behind Rory, a tall shape of living shadow gathered into humanoid form, their edges feathering into the night. Their eyes glowed faint violet, small and strange as foxfire. “The other side smells hungry,” they whispered, voice like wind moving through dead leaves.
“That’s reassuring,” Rory muttered.
She tightened her grip on the strap of her bag and looked down at the moonsilver blade Isolde had given her. It hung at her belt, slender and leaf-shaped, cold enough through the leather sheath to raise the hairs on her wrist. She had not yet grown used to the weight of it, or to the fact that one of the few things in her life that had ever been truly magical was also sharp enough to cut wards and demons and whatever else the world had decided to hide from ordinary people.
The Heartstone pulsed again. Warm. Warmer.
The tear in the air widened with a sound Rory felt more than heard, a thin, awful sigh, and the darkness beyond it deepened into a color she had no name for. Not black. Not exactly. A bruised, metallic red that made the inside of her head prickle.
Isolde lifted a hand. “The path opens because it is asked. Not because it is safe.”
“That’s a very Fae way of saying we might die,” Rory said.
“Only if you are careless.”
Nyx gave a low, dry sound that might have been amusement. “Then we shall be careful together.”
Rory drew in a breath, then stepped forward.
The Veil gave way like skin under water.
There was no sensation of crossing so much as falling through a held breath. The world folded and slipped, and for one disorienting heartbeat Rory felt every direction at once. Cold rushed over her face. Heat followed, dry and heavy as oven air. The smell hit next: sweet rot, crushed grapes, smoke, and something animal underneath, musky and metallic. Her stomach lurched .
Then her boots struck ground.
Not grass. Not earth.
Stone, warm beneath the soles, rough with age and traced in shallow grooves that glowed faintly amber in the dark. Rory stumbled and caught herself with one hand against a low wall of black rock. The stone felt strange under her palm, smooth in some places as glass and pitted in others like bone worn by weather. A sound rolled around her, slow and low, like distant bells submerged under honey.
She straightened and looked up.
The sky stopped her cold.
It wasn’t a sky the way London had a sky. It stretched vast and low and amber-bright, as though dusk had been stretched thin and lit from beneath by a furnace. No stars pricked through it. No moon hung there. Instead, the entire dome of heaven glowed in warm gradations of gold and copper and burnt orange, casting everything below in the color of old fire. The light made shadows long and lush and inky, and every edge in the landscape seemed sharpened by it .
Rory turned in a slow circle.
They stood on a rise above an immense valley. Terraced vineyards spread away in neat, impossible rows, their vines heavy with grapes the size of marbles and others the size of plums, clusters of deep purple, green veined with gold, and a translucent pink that shone as if lit from within. Between the vineyards rose orchards and gardens arranged in lavish geometry, all of it too abundant to be natural. Trees bowed under fruit in jewel tones: pearly white, blood-red, silver-flecked. Vines curled around trellises shaped like antlers and spirals. Between the beds, canals of clear water caught the amber light and flashed like liquid copper.
Far below, lanterns burned in strings along paths that wound toward a city Rory could barely make out in the haze. Its towers curved like the stems of flowers. Its walls glittered. Somewhere beyond them, music drifted up in a lazy, luxurious swell—strings and drums and a laughing chorus that made her think of parties gone on too long and too late, with the smell of spiced wine and rich food and bad decisions.
“Christ,” she breathed before she could stop herself.
Isolde came to stand beside her, her bare feet silent on the stone. “Dymas.”
The name was enough to make the place feel more real, more dangerous. Rory had heard it in scraps and hints, in warnings and half-jokes, in the way people said certain names lower than others. A realm of gluttony. Of feasts. Of indulgence with teeth in it.
Nyx’s form rippled as they looked over the valley. “It is larger than your stories.”
“Stories tend to be lazy,” Isolde said.
Rory swallowed and fought the urge to touch the pendant again. It was hotter now, a steady pulse against her sternum, almost a warning in its warmth . She followed the sensation with her eyes instead. There—down the slope to the left—the glow strengthened in brief, uncertain beats, as if the Heartstone were breathing toward something unseen.
“Hel portal?” she asked.
“Near,” Isolde said. “Or once near. The old places linger.”
That did not help.
Rory looked back at the valley and felt the first tendril of unease coil under her ribs. The beauty was too abundant, too composed, as if every vine and stone had been placed by a hand that never knew restraint. Even the light felt indulgent. It spilled over everything with a thick, syrupy richness that made her skin feel too dry and too mortal.
A breeze moved through the terrace, carrying the scent of baked sugar and bruised herbs. It should have been pleasant. Instead it made her think of a kitchen left too long unattended, of sweetness past its peak, of fruit beginning to ferment beneath its own perfection.
“We should move,” she said.
Nyx inclined their shadowed head. “You lead, then. Your feet are firmer than mine.”
Rory shot them a look. “That’s not comforting .”
“It was not meant to be.”
They started down the stone steps carved into the terrace. The steps were broad and shallow, each one etched with circular marks that reminded Rory of old coins or eyes. They glowed faintly underfoot and dimmed when she passed, as if the path itself noticed her. She kept her hand near the dagger, the other close to her side, shoulders tight.
The air changed as they descended. It grew warmer, richer, and thicker, as though she were walking through the breath of a great beast. Every inhale tasted faintly of cinnamon and charred wood. Rory could hear the soft rustle of leaves, the trickle of water, the distant murmur of voices. Somewhere out in the orchards, something laughed with a bright, human sound that didn’t belong in a place like this.
It made her skin crawl.
They reached the first vineyard rows and Rory had to stop.
The grapes hanging overhead were not merely large; some of them were as big as her fist, their skins taut and luminous. Tiny motes of light drifted inside a few, like fireflies trapped in fruit. A bird perched on the vine had feathers the color of hammered bronze and a beak curved like a hook. It cocked its head at her, one eye dark and intelligent, then snapped at a grape and swallowed it whole.
The vine shivered. A bead of red juice, thick as wine, slid down the stem and vanished into the earth.
Rory stared. “That bird just ate a glowing grape.”
Nyx leaned in slightly , their presence dimming and brightening with the shifting light. “It seems content.”
“I don’t know why that’s the part I’m struggling with.”
She reached out, then hesitated. She had never been one for touching things blindly, not if there was a chance they could bite back, and in Dymas every beautiful thing looked capable of it. Still, curiosity pushed her. She brushed a fingertip against the nearest cluster.
The grape was warm. Not lukewarm. Warm as fresh bread.
A pulse ran through it under her skin, and with it came a flash of sensation so vivid Rory jerked her hand back with a gasp. For an instant she had felt sunlight, heavy and sweet on the tongue, and the sting of wine on a split lip, and the impossible fullness of appetite sated to the point of pain.
Isolde’s gaze sharpened. “Do not take what is offered lightly .”
“I wasn’t going to eat it.”
“Dymas doesn’t distinguish between the thought and the act as cleanly as your world does.”
Rory drew her hand back as though the vine might have been watching. “Great. That’s great.”
They moved on.
The path wound between orchards where fruit hung from branches heavy enough to bow them into arches, and flowerbeds where blossoms opened and closed with slow, breathing precision. Some flowers had petals like silk . Others looked almost carnivorous, their centers lined with thin gold filaments that trembled as Rory passed. The ground underfoot was not dirt but a dark, fertile loam that gave softly beneath each step, steaming slightly in the warm air.
Every so often they passed a figure.
At first Rory thought they were statues—tall, still forms among the trees or half-hidden in arbors—but then one turned its head and she saw the sheen of skin, the track of a real breath, the flicker of eyes too hungry and too tired to be ordinary. Some wore stained aprons. Some carried baskets heavy with fruit. A few were dressed in fine, decadent garments too bright for work. There was something about all of them that made Rory’s chest tighten: a draggedness in the shoulders, a brightness in the stare, as if each had been tuned to desire and denied the ability to stop reaching for it.
Helbound souls, she realized, though the thought came more from the way the place felt than from any spoken explanation.
One woman with black hair braided to her waist paused at a fountain and dipped her hands into the water. She lifted them to her mouth and drank with closed eyes, tears shining on her cheeks as if the water were the first kind she had ever tasted. Rory couldn’t tell whether she was being fed or punished.
A low sound traveled through the air, and several workers in the orchard bowed their heads at once. Rory followed the direction of their attention toward a ridge in the distance where a long banquet hall rose above the vines, its roof made of red tile and gold leaf that glimmered like wet scales. Through open arches she could glimpse tables set in endless rows, each loaded with platters of meat, towers of sugared fruit, breads braided with herbs, dishes steaming in the amber light. The smell of it rolled over her, rich and dizzying, and for a split second her own stomach clenched with sudden, aching hunger.
She hated that most of all.
Her hand went to the pendant again. It was nearly hot now. Not painful, but insistent, like a warning pressing from the inside out .
“There,” she said, and her voice sounded small in the vastness of the valley. “It’s stronger.”
Isolde looked where Rory pointed, then beyond, into a narrow cut between two slopes where the stone had turned black and slick, as if scorched by ancient fire. “The old mouth lies beneath the feast.”
“The mouth of what?”
“The thing that opens,” Isolde said. “And closes. And opens again when it is hungry enough.”
Rory gave her a flat look. “You really do this on purpose, don’t you?”
Nyx’s whisper brushed the back of her neck. “The seer’s answers are doors. You are expected to find the hinges.”
“That’s very poetic for someone who lives in shadow.”
“I was old before poetry became fashionable.”
Despite herself, Rory huffed a laugh. It broke some of the tightness in her chest, enough for her to breathe more fully. Then the air shifted.
She felt it first in her teeth: a pressure, faint and metallic. The pendant flared hot against her skin. Nyx’s form went suddenly flatter, edges dimming as though the surrounding shadows had deepened in answer. Isolde stilled, chin lifting.
Rory turned.
At the far end of the nearest terrace, between two rows of vines, the light had changed. One patch of ground seemed darker than the rest, not shadow but absence, a place where the amber glow thinned and shivered. It expanded for a heartbeat into a vertical seam, barely visible, and Rory caught the briefest glimpse of somewhere else behind it—stone and darkness and a sliver of cold blue light so alien against Dymas’s warmth that she shivered.
Then it closed.
Rory’s pulse jumped. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” Isolde said.
Nyx was already staring at the spot with eerie focus. “A breach.”
The word went through Rory like a chill . “Here?”
“Close enough to matter,” Isolde said.
The vineyard around the seam rustled. Leaves trembled without wind. One of the bronze-feathered birds burst into flight, beating toward the hall in a frantic blur. Somewhere below, the music faltered and resumed as if no one wished to acknowledge the interruption.
Rory’s fingers curled around the dagger’s hilt. The cold of the moonsilver settled against her palm, grounding her a little. The valley beyond looked different now, not less beautiful but less trustworthy, the abundance suddenly feeling like a veil itself—something draped over rot, or hunger, or both.
The pendant warmed in a steady, urgent pulse .
She knew, with the peculiar certainty that sometimes arrived in the middle of fear, that they had stepped into the right place and at the wrong time.
“This way,” she said, and started toward the scorched cut in the earth.
Behind her, Nyx moved like a spill of darkness unmoored from the ground. Isolde glided along without sound, silver hair streaming behind her like a banner. The three of them crossed between the vines and toward the dark seam in the landscape, while the amber light pressed in from all sides, lovely and unnatural and watchful.
As Rory neared the cut, the air turned colder. Not cold like a winter night in Cardiff, wet and biting. This was a dry cold, the sort that lived in tombs and old wells, in places where something had been sealed away too long. The warm smell of fruit thinned. Beneath it came another scent: ash, iron, and something faintly sulfurous.
Her skin prickled.
The seam opened again for the space of a breath.
This time she saw enough to know the world behind it was not empty. Something moved in the blue-black dark, massive and slow, too large to fit the space it occupied. A shape with edges like antlers or spines. A glimmer of red. Then the crack snapped shut with a soft, obscene click.
Rory stopped dead.
Nyx’s whisper was very quiet. “That is not native to Dymas.”
“No,” Isolde said, and for once her riddling cadence thinned to something sharper. “No. It is wearing a borrowed door.”
Rory swallowed hard, feeling the pendant throb like a second heart. Above them the amber sky glowed on, indifferent and beautiful. Around them the vineyards ripened in impossible abundance. Somewhere in the feast-halls, someone laughed.
And beneath the sweetness, beneath the warmth and gold and ripe-lipped luxury of Dymas, something old and wrong had begun to open its eye.