AI The standing stones appeared between one blink and the next.
Rory stumbled. Her trainer caught on a root that hadn't been there a heartbeat before, and she pitched forward, catching herself against the nearest stone. It was warm. Not sun-warmed, not residual heat, but the kind of warmth that suggested something alive pulsed beneath the surface.
"Steady." Nyx materialised beside her, their violet gaze sweeping the boundary. The shade moved through the transition as though stepping through a curtain . Effortless. Annoyingly so.
"I had it." Rory straightened and examined the stone beneath her palm. Ancient oak, she'd been told , though it looked more like petrified bone, the grain spiralling inward in patterns that hurt the eye when followed too long. Twelve stones stood in a rough circle, each twice her height, and between them the air shimmered like heat haze off summer tarmac. But this wasn't heat. This was something else entirely.
The Veil. Or rather, where it thinned enough to peel back.
Beyond the stones, Richmond Park continued as it always had. Deer grazed in the middle distance. Dog walkers traced the familiar paths. None of them glanced this way. Rory had noticed that before, how people's eyes slid past the grove as though the brain refused to register what stood here. She'd walked past it herself a dozen times before Nyx pointed it out.
"We go through?"
"Already through." Nyx's whisper carried on a breeze that didn't exist. "You felt the crossing."
She had. The tugging sensation behind her sternum, like a fishhook lodged in something vital, pulling her forward into the circle of stones. The Heartstone pendant at her collarbone pulsed once, a quick throb of warmth , then settled.
Rory stepped past the boundary line.
The world shifted.
Colour first. The muted greens and browns of an English winter fell away like a coat shed at a door. In their place, wildflowers erupted from the ground in waves of violet, gold, and deepest indigo. They carpeted the clearing in impossible density, each bloom larger than it had any right to be, their petals translucent enough to glow from within. The light was different here too. No sun hung overhead, yet the air carried a luminance as though filtered through stained glass, casting everything in hues that didn't have names in English.
"Christ," Rory breathed.
She turned a slow circle. The standing stones framed the clearing from this side, but the view beyond them had changed. Where the park had been, she now saw only a dense wall of silver birch trees, their bark gleaming like polished pewter, their leaves a shade of green so pale it bordered on white. The trees stood in perfect rows, extending in every direction, impossibly straight, impossibly tall. The canopy disappeared into a mist that wasn't quite mist, more like the air itself had thickened into something half-solid .
"What happened to Richmond Park?"
"It's still there." Nyx drifted past her, their shadow-form flickering as they moved through different intensities of light. "This exists alongside it. You're standing in both places at once."
"That's not how geography works."
A sound rippled through the clearing. Not quite wind chimes. Not quite laughter. Something between, the kind of sound that made the hair on Rory's arms stand up and her heartbeat quicken for reasons she couldn't articulate.
"I wouldn't speak too loudly," Nyx said. "Or too often. Names carry weight here. Sounds carry further than you'd like."
Rory pressed her lips together and followed the shade deeper into the grove.
The path, if it could be called that, wound between the wildflowers in a pattern that seemed deliberate . Rory's footprints left no marks in the soft earth. She glanced back and saw only undisturbed blooms where she'd walked. Ahead of her, Nyx left no trace at all, their passage marked only by a faint dimming of the light where they passed.
The air tasted different. Sweet, with an undercurrent of something metallic, like the first bite of a copper coin on the tongue. Beneath that, green and growing things, loam and pollen and the electric sharpness before a thunderstorm. Every breath filled her lungs with more sensation than she was prepared for.
An enormous oak dominated the centre of the grove. Not a tree so much as a cathedral, its trunk wider than her flat above Silas' bar, its roots heaving up through the earth in ridges that could have been walls. The bark was deeply furrowed , and in the hollows between the ridges, tiny lights moved. Blue-white, drifting slowly , like bioluminescent creatures in deep water.
"Wisps," Nyx murmured. "Don't touch them."
"Wasn't planning to."
"Good. They take fingers."
Rory tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and studied the great oak. Something about its shape nagged at her, a familiarity she couldn't place. The branches reached outward in patterns that resembled outstretched arms, and the knots in the wood, she realised with a jolt, formed faces. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Some screaming, some laughing, all watching.
"They're not real," she said, more to convince herself than anything.
"Define real." Nyx's voice had taken on that particular quality, the one that suggested amusement, though their features remained an impenetrable void of shadow. "This tree has roots that reach into the Fae Courts themselves. Every person who's ever entered the grove left a mark."
"So those faces are people?"
"Memories of people. Impressions. The tree drank them in." A pause. "Try not to think too loudly near it."
Rory took a careful step to the side, putting distance between herself and the watching wood. The path curled around the base of the oak, and as she followed it, the quality of the light shifted again. Softer now. Duskier. The luminescent flowers here glowed in shades of amber and rose, and between their stems, the ground fell away to reveal what looked like water . Black, still water, perfectly reflective, pooling in depressions between the roots.
She crouched and peered into the nearest pool. Her reflection stared back, but it was wrong. The face was hers, the eyes the same shade of blue, the hair the same straight black curtain, but the expression belonged to someone else. Someone older. Wearier. The reflection's lips moved, forming words she couldn't hear.
Rory jerked back.
"Don't look too long." Nyx's hand, surprisingly solid, closed around her arm and pulled her upright. Their grip was cold, even through her jacket. "The pools show what might be. What was. What you don't want to know."
"What was mine showing?"
"Your business." The shade released her. "Not mine to tell."
They pressed on. The grove narrowed here, the silver birches pressing closer, their branches tangling overhead to form a tunnel. The light dimmed to a soft twilight glow, and the temperature dropped. Rory's breath misted in front of her face. The Heartstone pendant hummed against her chest, a constant low vibration that set her teeth on edge.
Something moved in her peripheral vision.
She stopped. Turned. Nothing there but trees and flowers and the lingering sense of eyes she couldn't locate.
"Keep walking," Nyx whispered. "Whatever you saw, it saw you first."
"Comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be."
The tunnel opened into a second clearing, smaller than the first, enclosed on all sides by those pale birches. In the centre stood a structure that took Rory's breath in a way the rest of the grove hadn't managed.
It was a house, or the idea of one. Walls of woven willow, so tightly plaited they appeared solid, curved inward to form a dome. The roof was made of living moss, thick and green and dotted with tiny white flowers that bloomed and closed in a slow, rhythmic pulse , like breathing. No door interrupted the front wall, but an archway of twisted hawthorn branches framed a gap wide enough to walk through. The hawthorn bore flowers too, despite it being February, despite the cold. Each blossom was the colour of old blood, and they gave off a scent that made Rory think of her mother's kitchen in Cardiff, though she couldn't say why.
"Iolde's home?" she asked.
"Isolde," Nyx corrected, and there was something in the way they said the name. Care. The shade rarely showed it. "She'll know we're here."
"She knew before we crossed the stones."
"Possibly. She sees threads. Webs. The connections between things. She'll have seen us coming weeks ago."
"Then why not meet us at the entrance?"
A sound drifted from within the hawthorn arch. A voice, low and melodic, threading through words in a language Rory didn't recognise. It had the cadence of a lullaby and the weight of a prayer, each syllable resonating in her chest like the Heartstone's pulse .
Nyx stopped at the edge of the clearing. Their form solidified slightly, the shadows thickening into something closer to flesh, though the edges still rippled and blurred. They seemed almost apprehensive. Rory had never seen the shade hesitate.
"Something wrong?"
"Different rules inside her home." Nyx's whisper was softer than usual. "She doesn't invite lightly . Don't eat anything she offers. Don't promise anything. And whatever she tells you, listen to what she doesn't say."
"Any more cryptic warnings?"
"I'm serious, Rory."
The use of her name struck her. Nyx almost never used it.
She squared her shoulders and walked toward the archway. The hawthorn branches bent aside as she approached, though no hand guided them. The scent intensified, sweet and cloying, and beneath it, something sharp and green, like crushed stems. She stepped through.
The interior was larger than the exterior suggested. Much larger. The woven walls opened into a space that could have swallowed her flat three times over, the dome soaring overhead to a point where a single shaft of light pierced downward. It illuminated a central table carved from a single piece of wood, its surface inlaid with patterns that shifted and rearranged themselves as she watched. Shelves lined the walls, crammed with jars and bottles and things Rory couldn't identify. Bones, dried herbs, crystals that emitted a faint hum, books with covers made of materials she refused to speculate about.
A woman stood at the far end of the table, her back to Rory. Silver hair fell to her waist, so fine it moved like water in the draft from the archway. She was small, barely taller than Rory, but something about her presence filled the room. She moved with the fluid precision of someone who never rushed, never stumbled, never wasted a single motion.
She turned.
The face was ageless. Not young, not old, but something else entirely, a quality that resisted categorisation. Her eyes were pale lavender, depthless, and they fixed on Rory with an intensity that made her want to look away. She didn't look away. She met those eyes and held them.
"Rory Carter." The seer's voice was softer than her singing had been, carrying the faintest lilt , something that sounded almost Welsh but not quite . "The girl who ran from Cardiff. The delivery driver who carries a piece of Hel against her skin."
Rory's hand moved to the Heartstone pendant before she could stop it.
"And Nyx." Isolde's gaze shifted past Rory to the archway, where the shade lingered. "Aldric. Still caught between."
"Still." Nyx's whisper was barely audible.
Isolde studied them both for a long moment. Her feet, Rory noticed, left no impressions on the earthen floor. Not a single mark. As though she weighed nothing at all.
"The threads brought you here because the threads require it." The seer moved to one of the shelves and selected a jar. Inside, something small and pale writhed against the glass. "The Veil weakens. The winter solstice draws near. And in Dymas, Prince Belphegor sets a feast."
She turned back, the jar cradled in her hands. Her lavender eyes held a weight that made Rory's chest tighten.
"A feast where the main course hasn't been chosen yet."