AI The portal spat Aurora out over a banquet table, and she hit the roasted peacock hard enough to crack its sugared ribs.
Hot fat slicked her palms. Grapes burst under her shoulder. A silver platter spun away with a shriek that carried through the vast hall and came back wrong, as if the room had chewed the sound before returning it.
“Elegant entrance,” Nyx whispered from somewhere beneath the table.
Aurora rolled off the bird and landed knee-first in a pool of plum sauce. The Heartstone Pendant at her throat burned through her shirt, a small deep crimson coal on its silver chain. She clutched it with one hand and reached for the Fae-Forged Blade with the other.
“Isolde?”
A pale hand rose from behind a pyramid of honeyed figs. Isolde Varga unfolded herself from the wreckage without a stain on her long silver hair. Her lavender eyes tracked the hall’s vaulted ceiling, then the impossible feast stretching into distance.
“The mouth opens,” she said, “and fools admire the teeth.”
“That’s a yes, then. We’re alive.”
“For now.”
Nyx flowed from beneath the table like spilled ink gathering itself. In solid form they stood taller than either woman, a humanoid silhouette cut from living shadow. Violet eyes glowed faintly where a face should have been.
“Alive is a local term,” they murmured. “This realm keeps poor account books.”
Aurora wiped sauce from her cheek with the back of her sleeve and took in the hall.
It should not have fitted inside any doorway on Earth. Black columns, each as wide as an old oak, climbed into amber-lit heights where carved demons leaned from balconies with open mouths. Wine ran through channels in the floor, not water but dark red wine, thick and fragrant, carrying petals, orange peel, and small pale bones. The air tasted of cinnamon, smoke, salt, and copper. Tables stood in ranks like armies, heaped with food that steamed, pulsed , shimmered , or moved when watched too long.
A roasted boar lifted its head and blinked at her.
Aurora pointed the dagger at it.
“Absolutely not.”
The boar’s apple dropped from its mouth. It yawned, showing human teeth, then lowered its head back into its garnish.
“Dymas,” Nyx breathed. “Prince Belphegor’s appetite given walls.”
“I thought you said Hel would look like fire and screaming.”
“I said some of it does. Mortals lack range when imagining damnation.”
Isolde moved to the edge of the table. Her feet touched a carpet of woven gold thread and left no mark. She tilted her head, listening to something Aurora could not hear.
“No servants,” Aurora said.
“No diners,” Nyx replied.
“No mercy,” Isolde added.
“Brilliant. Good chat.”
Aurora climbed down, boots sliding on fruit skins and broken pastry. The floor beneath the carpet gave a soft, slow thud. Not stone. Not wood. Something beneath them beat like a buried heart.
The Veil shimmered behind them in the shape of a torn arch, faint and silver at the edges. On the other side lay the hidden grove in Richmond Park, oak standing stones, year-round wildflowers, and a London world that now seemed indecently sensible . The rift trembled , thinning.
“Tell me that stays open.”
Nyx reached one shadow hand toward the tear. Their fingers dissolved where the light touched them.
“It stays open if nothing notices it.”
A bell rang.
Not from any tower. Not from above. The sound rolled through the hall from every plate, every cup, every polished knife. Crystal goblets chimed. Bone china trembled . The wine channels rippled.
Aurora looked at Nyx.
“You had to say it.”
“I prefer accuracy to comfort.”
“Try silence . It may broaden you.”
The far end of the hall answered with a grinding groan. Enormous doors opened inward, revealing not a corridor but a garden under a warm amber sky .
Aurora had seen painted skies in chapels, cheap skies in theatre sets, and London skies that looked like bruised dishwater . This one hung low and rich, the colour of burnt sugar held over flame. It glowed without sun. Beyond the doors, orchards rolled across hills, vines looped between marble arches, and flowers the size of serving bowls opened and shut with wet little sighs.
Fragrance poured in.
Ripe peaches. Cut basil. Fresh bread. Wet soil. Meat seared over coals. Sweetness thick enough to choke on.
Aurora’s stomach clenched. She had eaten two bites of toast that morning before sprinting across Richmond Park after a half-Fae seer and a shade. Now hunger rose in her with a violence that felt borrowed.
She stepped back from the doorway.
“Food’s enchanted.”
“Everything here is enchanted,” Isolde said. “Some enchantments are simply more polite.”
Nyx turned their violet gaze down the hall. Shadows clung to them, stretching in the wrong direction. “The Heartstone brought us to the threshold, not the thing we need.”
“And what do we need?”
“The source of its pulse . The one who sent it, or the one who wants it found.”
The pendant warmed again, a steady throb against Aurora’s chest. Once. Twice. Then it tugged.
Not hard. Worse than hard. Intimate. Like a hook slipped beneath the breastbone.
Aurora gritted her teeth and followed the pull towards the garden doors.
“Rory.” Nyx’s voice brushed her ear though they stood several feet away. “Do not obey anything in Dymas without bargaining first.”
“I’m not obeying it. I’m investigating aggressively.”
“Your barrister father would admire that sentence.”
“My barrister father would invoice the pendant.”
They crossed the threshold.
The banquet hall vanished behind them.
Aurora stopped so sharply Isolde drifted past her.
The doors had not closed. They had ceased. No hall. No table. No tear in the Veil. Behind them stretched a long avenue of trees heavy with glass fruit, each clear orb filled with a tiny moving scene. A child blowing candles out. A woman signing a contract. A man raising a pistol to his own reflection. Lives, trapped in fruit.
Aurora’s hand tightened on the Fae blade. Its moonsilver hilt numbed her fingers.
“That wasn’t there.”
“Dymas dislikes straight lines,” Nyx said. “And exits.”
“Of course it does.”
A path of crushed pearl wound between the trees. With each step, the ground crackled like teeth underfoot. The air hummed with insect wings, but the insects had small gold masks instead of heads. They hovered near Aurora’s face, whispering in voices that sounded like people speaking from under water.
“Hungry?”
“Thirsty?”
“Empty?”
“Loved?”
Aurora swatted one away. It burst into sugar dust.
“Don’t answer them,” Isolde said.
“I wasn’t planning to confess to a fly.”
“Many do. The small mouths hear the largest sins.”
The orchard deepened around them. Branches bent low under fruits that resembled pomegranates, pears, hearts, tongues, stars. Some gave off heat. Some wept milk. One split as Aurora passed, showing rows of black seeds that turned in unison to face her.
The pendant pulsed faster.
At a bend in the path, they found a fountain.
It rose from a basin carved in the shape of a sleeping giant’s open hands. Golden broth spilled from a spout made of antler and filled the palms, steaming. Around the rim, letters shifted through languages Aurora almost knew. Welsh for a blink. Latin. Something that stung to look at.
Isolde leaned over the basin but did not touch it. “A kindness with a hook.”
Nyx crouched near the inscription. Their shadow fingers traced the air above the letters.
“Those who drink remember every meal they ever loved.”
Aurora swallowed. Her mouth filled with the phantom taste of her mother’s cawl, leeks and lamb and pepper, served in the old blue bowls Jennifer Carter used only when someone needed care and denied it. Then came Golden Empress chilli oil, sharp and fragrant. Yu-Fei’s dumplings after late deliveries. Eva’s burnt popcorn. Cheap coffee outside Cardiff lecture halls. Toast eaten standing up in a kitchen where Evan had not yet learned to slam cupboards.
She stepped away so fast her heel skidded on pearl grit.
Nyx watched her.
“The realm found a seam.”
“It can get in line.”
A sound drifted through the trees.
Singing.
Not a choir. Not one voice. Many mouths kept the same slow tune, soft and wordless, rising and falling with the rhythm of knives on chopping boards. Chop. Chop. Chop. A pause. Then chop-chop.
Aurora turned towards it.
“No,” Nyx said.
“Yes,” Isolde said.
They looked at the seer.
Isolde’s pale face revealed nothing, but the flowers nearest her curled shut. “The road that repels is often honest. The road that invites wears perfume.”
Aurora looked between them. “That sounded like a vote for the creepy singing.”
“Regrettably.”
Nyx’s form thinned, edges feathering into smoke. “I will scout ahead.”
“You’ll vanish, and I’ll get left with riddles and carnivorous pears.”
“I heard that,” Isolde said.
“It was for you.”
Nyx slipped into the shadow of a tree and reappeared beneath another farther down the path. The movement made Aurora’s eyes ache. She followed with the blade low at her side, keeping her other hand over the pendant. Its warmth sank into her palm like a living pulse .
The orchard opened into terraces.
Aurora forgot to breathe.
Vineyards climbed in spirals up floating hills. Roots dangled beneath them, dark and wet, trailing into nothing. Waterfalls poured upward from copper pools into clouds of steam. Kitchens without walls stretched along the terraces, each one staffed by figures in white aprons and iron collars. Human figures. Some chopped vegetables that bled blue. Some stirred cauldrons with oars. Some turned spits over green flame, their faces slack with the focus of sleepwalkers.
A man near the closest stove lifted a cleaver and brought it down on his own forearm.
Aurora lunged.
Nyx caught her around the waist, solid as cold marble .
“Look again.”
The cleaver struck. The arm became a side of pork. The man did not bleed. He hummed with the others, carved slices from what had been his flesh, and laid them on a silver tray. As he worked, a new hand grew from his wrist, pink and soft as a newborn mouse.
Aurora’s throat tightened.
“Helbound souls,” Nyx whispered. “Contracted chefs. Gluttony wastes nothing.”
“That’s a person.”
“That is the contract’s opinion of a person.”
A woman at a sugar station glanced up. Her eyes focused on Aurora. They widened.
The humming faltered.
The woman pressed one flour-white finger to her lips, then pointed with her knife.
Not at the group.
Behind them.
Aurora spun.
The trees had rearranged themselves into an archway. Beneath it stood a narrow little stall with a striped awning of red silk and cream lace. It had not been there a breath earlier. Copper pans hung from hooks. A bell sat on the counter. Behind it, shelves held jars of preserved eyes, candied violets, black salt, and small folded contracts tied in butcher’s twine.
A sign swung overhead.
TASTINGS FOR TRAVELLERS.
Letters rearranged.
TRAVELLERS FOR TASTINGS.
“Subtle,” Aurora said.
The stallholder rose from behind the counter.
He looked almost human in the way a knife looked almost like a mirror. Tall, neat, with slick black hair and a waistcoat patterned in tiny golden grapes. His skin shone like polished walnut. Two short horns curled back from his temples, lacquered and tipped with gold. His smile showed too many molars.
“Guests,” he said. His voice carried the warmth of a restaurant owner who had already added things to your bill. “Unannounced, unlicensed, and unseasoned.”
Nyx’s shadows climbed their arms. “We seek passage, not service.”
The stallholder glanced at them and clicked his tongue. “An old spill with old manners. Nightwhisper, is it? We heard you curdled.”
“We heard Dymas developed standards.”
The demon’s smile twitched.
Aurora stepped half a pace forward, blade still low. “We’re not here to eat.”
“No one ever is at first.” His gaze dropped to the pendant. The warmth at Aurora’s throat flared into pain. “Ah. There’s my missing amuse-bouche.”
“Yours?”
“Possession has layers. Legal, sentimental, digestive.” He leaned on the counter. “May I?”
“No.”
“I admire a woman who begins with the correct answer.” He sniffed the air. “Human. Cardiff, London, fear, soy sauce, old bruises, and a barrister’s stubborn little aftertaste.”
Aurora’s fingers tightened round the dagger.
Nyx shifted. “Careful.”
The demon’s eyes gleamed. “With what? Her secrets? They season themselves.”
Isolde moved beside Aurora, silent as falling ash. “Name your station, horned cupbearer.”
He bowed, shallow and mocking. “Maître Caldus, taster of thresholds, auditor of appetites, humble tongue of Prince Belphegor’s outer kitchens.”
“Humble,” Aurora said.
“Comparatively.”
The chef with the regrown hand dropped a tray. It clattered down the terrace steps, spilling slices of himself into the pearl path. No one moved to clean it. Every collared cook had turned towards Aurora now. Their eyes held hunger, not for food, but for interruption .
Caldus noticed.
His smile cooled.
“You have already disrupted production.”
“Take it out of our service charge.”
“Gladly.” He opened one drawer in the stall and removed a ledger bound in red leather. The cover flexed under his palm. “Three travellers entered Dymas through an unauthorised tear in the Veil. One human carrying a stolen Heartstone. One exiled half-Fae with unpaid prophecies. One shade in breach of several metaphysical decencies.”
Nyx’s voice thinned. “Those laws burned before your horns sprouted.”
“And yet the ash signed nicely.”
Aurora felt the path tremble beneath her boots. The terraces shifted closer, folding space like dough. The cooks stood at their stations, knives poised. Up on the floating vineyards, grapes swelled and split, revealing wet black eyes inside each fruit.
The Heartstone tugged again.
Not towards Caldus.
Beyond him.
Behind the stall, where the pearl path continued into a grove of trees with bark like dark chocolate and leaves like beaten copper. Something waited there. Something old enough to make the pendant’s pulse stutter.
Aurora angled her body, measuring the stall, the demon, the distance.
Caldus opened the ledger. Pages fluttered though no breeze touched them.
“Custom requires each unlicensed guest to offer a taste.”
“A taste of what?”
“Whatever you can afford to lose.” He dipped a quill into a small pot of shining black ink. It smelled of treacle and rot. “A memory. A talent. A name. A finger. A decade. First love tends to pair well with lamb.”
“No.”
“You say that well. Crisp. Bright. It will plate beautifully.”
Isolde raised one hand. The air around her shimmered , thin and sharp. “The girl bears guest-right under older root than your prince’s vine.”
Caldus’s expression did not change, but every knife on the terraces turned point-first towards them.
“Guest-right requires invitation.”
Nyx’s violet eyes brightened. “The Heartstone invited her.”
“The Heartstone is evidence.”
Aurora looked at the demon, then at the ledger, then at the bell on the counter.
The bell looked plain. Small. Brass. A narrow crack ran down one side. Around its base, tiny words crawled like ants.
She could not read them. The Fae blade could.
Cold leapt from the dagger into her palm. The leaf-shaped moonsilver blade shivered, pointing not at Caldus’s heart but at the bell .
Wards.
Aurora smiled without warmth .
Caldus saw the shift. His quill stopped.
“Human.”
“Maître.”
“Do not touch that.”
“Funny. That sounded like an invitation.”
She drove the Fae-Forged Blade through the bell.
The world screamed.
Brass split. The counter buckled. Invisible cords snapped across the terraces with whip-cracks that tore steam apart. Iron collars flashed white around the cooks’ throats. One shattered . Then another. Then a dozen.
Caldus roared, and his polished human shape peeled back.
Too tall. Too many arms. A mouth opening down his chest, lined with silver tasting spoons instead of teeth.
Nyx surged into a wall of shadow between Aurora and the demon’s first strike. The blow hit them with a sound like a door slamming under water. Isolde’s silver hair lifted as she spoke three words that made the copper leaves fall upward.
The cooks began to scream.
Not in pain.
In freedom.
Aurora yanked the blade free from the ruined bell. The Heartstone blazed against her skin, pulling her past Caldus, towards the copper grove. The path ahead split open like a lip.
From the darkness beneath it rose a dining chair made of bone, and seated upon it sat a vast, unseen weight that bent the air into the shape of a crown.
A voice rolled over them, rich as cream poured over a grave .
“Who has rung my supper bell?”