AI The air inside The Fae Grove tasted of damp earth and something else, something sweet and rotten like overripe fruit left in the sun. Aurora Carter—Rory to those who knew her—stood at the edge of the ancient oak stones, the silver chain of the Heartstone pendant cool against her throat. It hadn’t pulsed once during the bus ride to Richmond, nor during her walk through the park’s winding paths. But now, as she stepped over the threshold marked by the gnarled, grey sentinels , a faint, warm throb emanated from the deep crimson gem resting just below her collarbone. A single, soft beat against her skin. Then nothing.
She glanced back. The path she’d followed was gone, swallowed by a mist that hadn’t been there moments before, thick and pale as milk. The oaks stood sentinel, their bark etched with patterns that seemed, if she stared too long, to shift into angular, unreadable script. That was the first wrong thing.
Eva had said to come at midnight. *You’ll see it then,* her friend’s text had read, the words glowing unnaturally bright on her phone screen. *The door opens for the desperate.* Eva, who spoke in riddles now, who’d pulled Rory from Evan’s fists and into a world that smelled of gunpowder and magic, believed this place held an answer. Something about a lost sister, a deal gone sour. Rory had come for Eva. Because Eva had asked. Because the rent was due and the only other option was another shift at the Golden Empress, smelling of soy sauce and despair.
But Eva was not here.
The grove itself was a perfect circle, but not of this world. Wildflowers carpeted the ground in impossible riot—poppies and foxglove and bluebells that glowed with a faint, internal luminescence. They were beautiful. They were all wrong. The blooms faced upward not toward the sky, but toward the center of the clearing, as if watching something there . The sky above the ring of oaks was not the star-dusted black of a London night, but a swirling, bruised purple, like a two-day-old wound . No moon. No stars. Just that deep, aching violet.
Time moves differently here, Eva had warned. An hour inside can be minutes or days outside. The thought sent a cold trickle down Rory’s spine. She had work tomorrow. She had a life, mundane and heavy, to get back to.
“Eva?” Her voice sounded flat, absorbed by the thick air. It didn’t echo . It just stopped.
Silence followed. Not a true silence, but a heavy, listening quiet . Then, from the periphery, came the first sound: a dry, papery rustle, like a snake shedding its skin in dead leaves. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Rory spun, her trainer scuffing on the soft, unnaturally green grass. Nothing moved. The wildflowers swayed gently , though there was no breeze.
She took a step toward the center, where a low, flat stone sat like a natural altar. The Heartstone pulsed again, a quicker double-beat this time. *Thud-thud.* Warm against her chest. A warning? An invitation?
“Eva, this isn’t funny.” Her voice was firmer this time, the cool-headed, analytical part of her mind asserting itself. Assess the situation. Isolated location. Missing contact. Unverifiable claims. Possible psychological suggestion. But the warmth on her skin was real. The scent of wrongness was real. The pulsing flowers were *very * real.
Another sound. A giggle. High, crystalline , and utterly devoid of joy. It skittered at the edge of hearing, then vanished. Rory’s hand went to her left wrist, fingers instinctively tracing the small crescent scar there. A childhood accident, her mother always said. A fall from a tree. The memory was fuzzy, edged with a panic she’d never understood.
She stopped ten feet from the central stone. A dampness was spreading through the soles of her trainers. She looked down. Dark, reddish-brown water, like weak tea, was seeping up from the ground, forming a slow, creeping circle around her feet. It didn’t feel wet. It felt cold, and it stained the grass as it came.
At the very edge of her vision, to the left, something tall and spindly darted behind one of the oaks. It was there and gone in the space of a blink. Too fast for a person. Too thin for a stag. Rory’s breath hitched. She didn’t turn her head. She stood perfectly still, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against the pendant’s slow, warm thrum.
*You are not alone.*
The thought wasn’t hers. It was a cold certainty that settled in her bones. The sweet-rotten smell intensified, mixed now with the coppery tang of old blood. The wildflowers at the perimeter of the grove began to turn, their luminous faces swiveling like a thousand small, pale heads, not toward her, but toward a point in the circle directly opposite her .
A shape began to coalesce from the purple darkness there. Not a form, but an *absence *. A patch of air that was darker than the rest, that seemed to drink the faint light from the flowers . It was vaguely man-shaped, but too tall, its limbs jointed in too many places. It made no sound, but Rory felt its attention like a physical pressure against her chest.
The pendant burned hot, a searing point of focus.
She wanted to run. Every nerve screamed to turn and bolt for the oaks, for the mist, for the vanished path. But Eva was somewhere in this. Eva, who’d saved her from a brute with fists, was now lost in a place with… things that watched from the edges. Rory’s mind, the mind that had navigated law textbooks and abusive relationships, kicked into gear. Panic is a luxury. Observe. Analyze. Survive.
The shape didn’t move. It merely existed, a blot of deeper shadow in a world of unnatural color. The giggling returned, closer now, coming from the canopy of an oak just above and to her right. She risked a glance up. The branches were bare, skeletal against the bruised sky. But caught on one thick limb was a skein of what looked like old, yellowed silk, billowing in a wind that didn’t touch the ground.
“Eva!” she shouted, the name raw in her throat. “If you’re here, give me a sign!”
The response was immediate. A stone, no bigger than her fist, dropped from nowhere and landed with a soft *thump * at her feet. It was smooth and black, and carved with the same shifting symbols as the oak bark. As she stared at it, the carving on its surface resolved into a clear, terrifying image for just a second: a crescent moon, identical to the scar on her wrist.
Before she could process this, a new smell cut through the others. Fresh, bright, and completely out of place: lemon zest. It was the smell of the all-purpose cleaner her mother used in their Cardiff kitchen. A smell of safety, of home. Its sudden, vivid appearance here was the most terrifying thing yet.
The dark shape across the clearing took a step forward. It didn’t walk; it *folded * through space, appearing three feet closer without traversing the distance between. The wildflowers in its path drooped instantly, their luminous petals browning and curling as if aged years in a second.
Rory’s hand closed around the black stone. It was ice-cold. The Heartstone’s heat was a counterpoint, burning through her shirt. A decision crystallized , sharp and clear. She was not the hunter here. She was not the seeker. She was the prey that had wandered into the trap.
She didn’t know what Eva had found here. She only knew she needed to leave.
Taking a slow, deliberate breath, Rory Carter fixed her gaze on the nearest standing oak. She did not run. She took one careful step backward, then another, her eyes never leaving the shifting darkness that was now watching her retreat. The ground squelched under her, the reddish water welling around her steps. The lemon-zest smell faded, replaced by the overpowering sweetness of decay.
As she passed the line of oaks, stepping over the unseen threshold, the world snapped. The purple sky vanished, replaced by a low, London fog. The smell was of wet leaves and exhaust fumes. The distant rumble of traffic on the A3 filled the air. Richmond Park, dark and ordinary, surrounded her.
She was out.
But the cold weight of the black stone was still in her hand. And on her left wrist, over the old, crescent-shaped scar, the skin was tingling , cold and wet, as if something had just pressed its lips there to whisper a secret. The Heartstone pendant lay silent and cool against her skin, as if nothing at all had happened.
But in her pocket, her phone buzzed. She pulled it out. A text from Eva. Two words.
*RUN.*