AI The gate had been locked when she arrived. Rory tugged the rusted chain again, fingertips grazing the jagged edge of the crescent scar on her wrist. The pendant in her palm throbbed , a heat that seeped through her skin and into her bones, as if something buried beneath the stones knew she was here and was *amused *. She stepped back and pressed her heel against the base of the nearest oak, giving the chain a sharp yank. It snapped loose with a sound like a jaw clicking shut.
The clearing ahead didn’t smell like autumn. No smoke from chimneys or damp leaves—just copper and rot, the same stink that clung to Silas’s bar after three bottles of whiskey and a body found beneath the floorboards. Wildflowers curled over her boots, petals the violet of bruises but blooming fresh as if some god had pressed them into the soil last Tuesday. She reached for the lantern strap on her belt, then stopped. Light would draw attention. The kind of attention that left scars not even Yu-Fei’s chicken tikka masala could soothe.
A whisper skittered through the trees. Not wind, not animal—*lips parting, teeth clicking *. She spun. Nothing under the lattice of branches. Only the standing stones, their carvings leeching into her vision. She blinked. The runes had shifted. *Now. Now. Now.* They hissed in her head, not her ears. Her grip tightened on the pendant. The silver chain dug into her palm, cold cutting against the gem’s fever.
She moved forward. The ground gave under her boots, moss and roots yielding like lung tissue. Somewhere ahead, a giggle. High, like a child’s, but wet, like something drowning.
"Identify yourself," she said. The syllables hung midair, stretched thin as if the world itself were eavesdropping . Her voice came back from the trees, frayed and too close.
A fox emerged, or something fox-like, though its tail split into fingers and its eyes were polished marbles the same bright blue as hers. It tilted its head. A human shape loomed behind it, too tall for a man, too still for the living. The garment it wore shimmered , but the material—*was it linen? Silk? Something that dissolved and reformed as she watched?*—dripped through itself like liquid fire.
"Looking for a gate." Rory’s words felt wrong in her mouth, as though the roots beneath her were leaching truth out of her tongue. "It’s not locked from this side."
The thing behind the fox laughed. The sound made her teeth ache. "Locked?" The voice was a woman’s, but with the rasp of bark. "No locks here. Only invitations."
Rory stepped back. Her heel caught on a root, and she righted herself before the pendant could hum a warning. The fox crept closer now, its head swivelling to mimic her gaze as she kept her eyes fixed on the tall outline. "You know who I am," she said. It was a guess. The Fae didn’t bargain without knowing what they held.
"Oh, I know you." The thing smiled. The gaps between its teeth were too wide. "Barrister’s daughter. Scar on the wrist. Likes her coffee black and her secrets heavier." A clawed finger flicked towards the restaurant where she worked, though it couldn’t have known her route. "You linger near the gate. Curious about what leaks."
The pendant flared. Crimson swallowed the gemstone whole. Rory yanked her hand back as though burned, but the light clung to her skin, painting her in blood. "I was told this place heals," she said. The lie felt brittle, but the thing only nodded, inviting her to keep lying.
"The Grove gives what it will," it said. "Never what it’s asked." The fox let out a sound halfway between a yawn and a snarl, its teeth elongating.
A flicker . Rory caught it out of her periphery—something *else * moving beyond the trees. A figure in a police coat. Her chest tightened. No London constable would step off the trail that led nowhere, not even Silas’s trail of ale and bad decisions. Unless they were chasing her. She’d avoided the coppers since Evan took a knife to the throat and blamed her.
"Help me, then." She forced the words out too fast. "I need to cross safely. No tricks."
The tall thing bared its teeth. "Rules mean little here." It gestured to the chain in her hand, now dissolving like sugar in rain. "An hour in , days out. That’s your clock. Not mine." It stepped back, roots knitting into its shins like skin. "If the path draws you, walk it. If the path bites, run. You’re good at running."
The fox darted past her, claws sinking into the bark of a tree. It *screamed * at the roots. A face split the trunk—eyes, teeth. More laughs. Rory turned, boots slipping on the moss, and ran.
The pavement outside the restaurant had been warm with traffic fumes and steam from drains, but the grove’s air thickened around her, each breath like wading through honey. She slammed a hand into the nearest stone, searching for purchase. No carvings. No runes. Just bark that crumbled like sugar cubes in her palm.
"Oi." A gravelly voice.
She froze. Not Fae. A man, his silhouette half-blurred by the glow of her pendant. He leaned against another stone, this one whole. His face was familiar, but the angle was wrong, the skin too smooth. Too alive.
"Looking for the way out?" He nodded to the path behind her. "Not that way. The trees close quick. You’re not..." He hesitated. "...usually here this late. Silas keep you?"
Rory’s pulse stuttered. He wore a scarf she’d never seen, but the outline of his body—*too hunched, too thin *—matched the man who lived under her flat. The man who always asked for extra-strength painkillers and never paid in cash.
"Silas sent me to deliver a message." Her own voice startled her. A lie. Evan’s face flashed in her mind—*the way he’d flinch when she touched him, as if her hands were spiders *. She shoved the thought down. "Where’s your flat?"
The man’s jaw twitched. "Not this game. You’ve played enough."
The pendant flared hotter. Its glow splintered the air between them, and for a heartbeat, the man’s scarf slithered, scales glinting beneath the wool. Rory’s fingers closed around the knife in her boot, a steak knife Silas’d given her for "protection."
"Message for you, then." She let the blade bite her thumb, enough to bleed. Evan had loved the control of that. "Tell the others the delivery’s delayed."
The man snorted. "Others? You think they all wait for you?" He stepped side, and the roots beneath him *twisted *. "Try again, human."
She sprinted, ignoring the throb of her wrist. The knife’s point dug into the scar, and pain burned clean through Evan’s ghost.
Twigs snapped ahead. Not her. Not the man.
She rounded a tree and stumbled onto a path she didn’t remember. The stones here were smooth, worn by more than wind. A trail of footprints led forward—her own, except they were too deep, too fresh. The one at the end of the trail turned slowly , mirror-glass eyes catching the light of her pendant.
"Rory, Rory, Rory." The figure wore her jacket—*bright red, with the collar turned down *—but the buttons were wrong, pressed not for warmth but to trap something inside . "You should’ve stayed upstairs."
Evan. Not Evan. His face was there, but pulled tight over bone like a mask. His fingers grazed her arm as she passed, and she shivered. Not touch. *Pressure *. A memory surfaced: Evan’s breath hot against her ear, his hand crushing her wrist until she bled.
The pendant cracked.
She spun, knife raised. "You’re not real."
He smiled. The mouth moved too slowly . "None of this is." The wind caught his scarf, which had returned. Inside it, something writhed. The scarf’s edge dissolved again, revealing a pattern of scars across his neck, all the same crescent shape.
"You took my scar." The words were low, not sharp.
"Takes what takes me." He gestured through the trees. "They like the taste of your kind."
The giggling started, rising from all directions. Rory slashed at the figure, but the blade passed through his side as if cutting smoke . The fox’s face appeared in the moss beneath his feet, wide-eyed and grinning.
A new sound. A creak.
She turned. The trees had fused, branches knitting overhead into a dome. And somewhere beneath them, a door. Oak and iron, but no lock.
"You can’t—"
Evan—*not Evan *—grabbed her wrist. His hand was heavy, warm, *scented like spearmint and blood *. She drove the steak knife up, but it bent against his thumb.
"Rules again." He leaned close, breath cool. "The Grove gives what it wants. You’ll owe."
The door swung open.
Inside, the air smelled like crushed strawberries and wet earth. A chandelier of thorns and bone dangled overhead, dripping something that glittered like sugar. The floor was carpeted in moss, and in its centre, a woman sat with her back to the door.
Rory didn’t need to see the face to know. The silver chain around the woman’s neck was the same as her pendant, but the gemstone was absent. A jagged slit stared up at her instead.
"Malphora’s here," the woman hissed without turning. Her fingers twitched, and a spool of thread uncoiled from her sleeve. The thread was red, thick as arteries.
"Malphora’s not a Fae name." Rory’s boots sank into the moss. Evan’s figure had melted into shadow behind her, but the door had vanished. "It’s a—"
"Alias." The woman cut her off. The thread now curled around her ankle. "The gatekeeper gives you names like that. To soften the edge." She laughed. A wet sound. "The true ones are more... precise."
Rory’s blade trembled . "What do you want?"
The chair the woman sat in creaked. It groaned. "You’ve been borrowing." A flick of her wrist sent the thread slithering up Rory’s leg. "Taking time. Taking keys." The thread found her ankle, and her scar pulsed . "I’ll take back what’s mine."
The door slammed shut. Rory lunged for the wall, but the thread yanked her leg, snapping her to the ground. The woman turned. Her face was a mosaic of shifting skin, but Rory glimpsed her own features beneath—*until the eyes emerged, black with slit pupils *.
"Malphora." Rory spat the name. "Who are you really ?"
The woman’s laugh became a gurgle. "You think you know?" A thorn from the chandelier pierced Rory’s shoulder, pain sudden and clean. Blood bloomed beneath her collar, the scent sharp. The woman leaned forward. "You were the one who found the pendant in the river. The one who wore it. The one who—"
A roar split the air. The steak knife in Rory’s hand *shrieked * as it dissolved into liquid metal, pooling onto the floor around her fingers. The woman stood now, thread retreating.
"Your turn." Rory pressed herself into the corner. "You’ve given me enough."
The Fae figure Evan-was-but-wasn’t stepped through the door. His scarf flowed freely now, and the scars beneath it had multiplied. Malphora hissed something in a language that tasted like copper on Rory’s tongue . The woman’s throat moved, swallowing the thread.
The chair creaked. Then the floor beneath Rory gave.
The fall wasn’t downward.
It was *in *.
Roots peeled apart into tunnels, her scream catching on the jagged bark. She hit stone, hard. A hand grabbed her wrist. Malphora’s. Or someone’s. The scar on this hand was glowing .
"You brought her." Evan’s voice echoed down the passage.
"And you let her in ." Malphora’s eyes sharpened. "Rules are broken both ways."
The tunnel narrowed. Rory’s fingers found something—*a door, again *. Smaller. The kind that might fit a child. Or a heart.
"Stop." Malphora’s voice dropped. "She’s not theirs yet."
"Too late," Evan said. The tunnel darkened.
Rory kicked herself loose, her boot splintering against the walls. The silver chain around Malphora’s neck was *moving *. The slit where the gemstone should’ve been oozed black liquid.
"Who are you?" Rory’s voice sounded small.
Malphora touched her chest. "The one who walks the line." A pause. "The one who wears the name you carry."
The pendant in Rory’s palm *screamed *.
The door cracked open. Light spilled out, not from the world above but something else . A voice beyond it—Silas’s, but higher, brittle.
"Rory." His word was a hiss. "Don’t."
She stepped back.
Malphora’s hand closed around her throat.
The door slammed shut.
A heartbeat later, it was gone .
Her hands flew to the pendant, the metal now slick with黏液. It pulsed faintly, no longer warm. The thread around her ankle was gone , replaced by something *pulsing beneath the skin *, a stitch that hadn’t been there before.
The tunnel walls closed in . A breath of Evan’s cologne—*spearmint and copper *—brushed past her.
"Time’s up," he said.
A snap.
A tear.
The ground beneath her split again.
This time, she didn’t fall.
Her foot met the edge of the standing stone. The one outside.
The one with the gate locked by a chain now whole.
The one with the fox watching from a tree.
Rory stood on the threshold, her breath fogged and sharp with fear. The pendant dangled lifeless, and behind her, the tunnel mouth had sealed. Only a heartbeat in the moss, only a stain on her shirt.
She turned to run.
The fox’s giggle followed her.