AI The vine tried to drink Aurora’s blood before she had both feet through the portal.
She jerked back with a hiss, the delivery bag strap cutting into her shoulder as a curl of glossy green lashed around her wrist. Thorns kissed the small crescent scar there and opened three neat beads of red. The Heartstone Pendant flared against her chest, hot enough to make her gasp.
“Rory!”
Nyx poured through the tear in the Veil like ink through water. Their shadow-hand clamped around the vine and turned solid at the last instant. The plant shrivelled where they touched it, not dead, not burned, but suddenly shy .
Aurora stumbled forward onto soft earth the colour of dark chocolate.
Behind her, Isolde stepped from the portal without disturbing a single leaf. Silver hair drifted around her waist, though no breeze moved. Her pale lavender eyes fixed on the retreating vine with a mildness that made Aurora want to shake her.
“The table greets the knife,” Isolde said.
Aurora pressed two fingers to her bleeding wrist.
“That better not mean I’m dinner.”
“It means the realm knows you have entered with hunger in your pocket.”
“I’ve got three containers of chow mein, two duck pancakes, and a bag of prawn crackers.” Aurora lifted the Golden Empress delivery bag. “If Hel wants to mug me for a takeaway, it can queue like everyone else.”
Nyx tilted their head. Violet light pulsed faintly where their eyes should have been.
“This place will not queue.”
The portal snapped shut behind them with a sound like teeth meeting.
For one tight breath, none of them moved.
The world ahead of them spilled open in impossible abundance. Vines climbed pillars carved from red-veined bone. Orchards floated in stacked terraces, their roots dangling in the air like pale nerves. Fruit swelled on branches thicker than church beams, round and gleaming , some gold, some bruised purple, some translucent enough to show tiny black shapes swimming inside. Far below the terrace where they stood, rivers of wine flowed through channels of polished black stone, foaming rose-pink where they struck silver wheels. The air smelled of roasting meat, crushed mint, hot sugar, and something under it all, a sour, fatty rot that sat at the back of Aurora’s throat.
A warm amber sky arched over everything, too close and too smooth. No sun. No clouds. Just a honeyed glow that made the world look glazed.
Aurora swallowed.
“Okay. Dymas?”
“Gluttony,” Nyx whispered. The word seemed to sink into the soil. “Prince Belphegor’s garden-mouth.”
“Garden-mouth. Fantastic. Hate that.”
Isolde moved past them, bare feet soundless on the dark ground. Wildflowers, small and white as milk teeth, opened beneath her steps and closed again after she passed.
“Do not eat what begs. Do not drink what remembers. Do not thank a cook with your true name.”
Aurora stared at her.
“Can we get the version for people who didn’t spend three hundred years being cryptic at trees?”
“No.”
“Worth asking.”
The Heartstone cooled from pain to a steady pulse . It beat once, twice, in time with something beneath the ground. Aurora tucked it back under her shirt, though the deep crimson gemstone glowed through the fabric like an ember hidden under skin.
They had come for the rift’s source, not sightseeing. That had been the plan in Richmond Park before the ancient oak standing stones of Isolde’s grove had bent inward and shown them a tear in the Veil, trembling over a root like heat above tarmac. The Wardens should have sealed it. No Wardens had come. Only the pendant had woken, burning bright enough to paint Aurora’s bones red.
Now the path before them forked into three.
One way led between silver-latticed vineyards where grapes pulsed like hearts. One dropped towards the wine rivers and the distant clang of knives. The last climbed through an orchard of black-leafed trees hung with lantern-shaped fruit, each one glowing with a tiny scene inside, a cottage kitchen, a hospital bed, a banquet hall, a school lunch table.
Aurora looked down at the takeaway bag.
“Please tell me the evil portal compass points better than ‘somewhere peckish’.”
Nyx’s shoulders rippled, not quite a shrug . Their edges frayed in the amber light.
“The wound in the Veil lies deeper. Near something old enough to have roots in Earth.”
“Helpful.”
“The orchard,” Isolde said.
Aurora eyed the lantern-fruit.
“Of course it’s the creepy one.”
They took the climbing path.
The ground yielded under Aurora’s trainers with each step, too soft to trust. It felt less like soil and more like the surface of a living tongue. She kept one hand near the Fae-Forged Blade tucked beneath her jacket. Isolde’s gift had felt cold since she first took it, a slender, leaf-shaped moonsilver dagger that never warmed, no matter how long Aurora held it. Here, the cold pressed harder, a small sane thing against her ribs.
The orchard closed around them.
Leaves whispered above, black on top and crimson beneath. They clicked together, dry and precise, like cutlery set for invisible guests. The lantern-fruit swayed as the group passed. Inside one, a child licked jam from a spoon in a sunlit kitchen. Inside another, a thin man tore bread with shaking hands. Another showed a woman at a wedding table, smiling while tears ran into the icing of a cake.
Aurora slowed despite herself.
“That’s not fruit.”
“No,” Nyx said.
The nearest lantern bobbed towards her. Its skin stretched thin as blown glass. Inside, a girl with shoulder-length black hair sat at a Cardiff kitchen table, elbows tucked in, while a man in a barrister’s shirt read from a letter. A university acceptance letter. Pre-Law. Her mother stood by the sink, hands tight around a mug, hope and worry doing a quiet little war across her face.
Aurora’s breath snagged.
The lantern split along its seam. Warm pastry scent poured out, butter and apple and home.
“Absolutely not.”
She stepped back.
The fruit followed.
A whisper came from inside it, in her father’s voice.
“Just one bite, cariad. You worked hard.”
Aurora’s fingers closed around the dagger hilt.
Nyx moved between her and the fruit.
“It feeds on wanted moments.”
“Does it give them back?”
“No. It keeps the part of you that still wants them.”
Aurora drew the moonsilver blade. The dagger slid free without a sound, a sliver of cold moon in an amber hell. The lantern recoiled so fast its branch cracked.
“Smart fruit.”
Isolde watched the scene in the lantern until its glow dimmed.
“A hunger denied grows teeth elsewhere.”
Aurora shot her a look .
“I’m putting that on your gravestone.”
“Fae do not favour stones.”
“Then a coaster.”
A laugh rose from the trees.
Not Nyx. Not Isolde.
It came from everywhere at once, low and wet and pleased. Branches shivered. Lantern-fruit swung in widening arcs, their tiny scenes changing as they moved. London alleys. Hospital wards. Banquet tables. A flat above a bar, narrow and safe, with old floorboards and the smell of beer soaked into the walls.
Then the path vanished behind them.
Aurora turned. The dark track they had followed now ended in a wall of vines braided so tightly they looked woven. Pale grapes studded the leaves. Each grape held an eye.
Every eye blinked at once.
“Not loving the audience.”
Nyx lifted a hand. Shadows gathered at their fingertips, thin here, strained under Dymas’s constant amber glow. They pushed the darkness into the vine wall. For a moment it sank in, smoke into cloth.
The vines drank it.
Nyx recoiled. Their solid form flickered, their tall silhouette thinning until Aurora saw the glowing fruit through them.
“Nyx?”
“This realm fattens on substance.” Their voice frayed at the edges. “Even mine.”
“Then don’t feed it.”
A grape-eye rolled towards her. Its pupil widened. Aurora saw her own face reflected in it, bright blue eyes too sharp, blood on her wrist, mouth set in the stubborn line Eva had once called her courtroom face.
The ground lurched .
Something vast moved beneath the orchard.
The lantern-fruit rang softly , glass bells struck one by one. Roots rose from the earth in slow coils, thick as pythons, slick with syrup. They crossed the path ahead and formed steps.
A staircase.
“Invitation,” Isolde said.
“Trap,” Aurora said.
“The sweetest doors are both.”
Nyx’s head turned towards the newly formed steps.
“I hear knives below.”
Aurora listened. Beneath the chiming fruit, beneath the leaf-cutlery chatter, came a rhythmic sound. Chop. Scrape. Chop. Scrape. Metal against wood. Then a roar of voices, distant but swelling.
A kitchen.
The path down curved between the roots and descended into the orchard floor. Warm air breathed up from the opening, thick with cinnamon, charred bone, pepper, blood, and baked bread. Aurora’s stomach tightened in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
She shifted the delivery bag higher on her shoulder.
“If some demon chef critiques Yu-Fei’s spring rolls, I’m starting a diplomatic incident.”
“Yu-Fei’s spring rolls would survive judgement,” Nyx whispered.
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Do not mistake accuracy for comfort.”
They descended.
The root-stairs flexed underfoot. Sap clung to Aurora’s soles, stretching in sticky threads before snapping free with soft pops. As the orchard closed above them, the amber light thinned. The world turned redder, darker, lit by glows that moved behind the walls. Roots tangled around them, not dead wood, but living tunnels . Veins pulsed inside them. Silver hooks hung from the ceiling at intervals, empty except for scraps of ribbon, locks of hair, and once, a wedding ring still threaded through a strip of finger bone.
Aurora kept the dagger out.
No one commented.
The tunnel opened into a chamber so large it stole the scale from her eyes.
A kitchen filled the hollow beneath the orchard, though no mortal kitchen had ever stretched so far or breathed so loudly. Ovens gaped in the walls like furnace mouths. Copper pans the size of bathtubs hung from chains. Long black tables ran in rows across the floor, covered with bowls of jewel-bright sauces, heaps of spices, pale fish that hummed, and cuts of meat marbled with silver light. Chefs moved everywhere, some human, some not. A woman in a blood-stained Savoy apron whisked cream that screamed. A horned thing with four arms folded pastry around wriggling black pearls. A man with no lower jaw basted a roast that wept fat into the flames.
Above it all, a chandelier of bones held hundreds of candles, each flame burning in the shape of a tiny open mouth.
Aurora stopped at the threshold.
“Well. Health and safety would have a stroke.”
A young man at the nearest table looked up.
Human. No horns, no scales, no dripping mandibles. He had curly blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and a burn scar crossing his cheek. His white chef’s jacket bore his name in blue thread, Martin Hale.
His eyes darted to Aurora’s bag.
“Delivery?”
Aurora blinked.
“Sorry?”
“Tell me that’s sesame chicken.”
“It’s mostly chow mein.”
Martin shut his eyes like a man hearing a hymn.
“Cardiff?”
“London.”
“Close enough.”
A bell clanged overhead. Every cook in the chamber flinched.
A voice boomed from beyond the ovens.
“COURSE SIXTEEN. MEMORY BROTH. NO TEARS IN THE STOCK THIS TIME, HALE, OR I’LL PEEL YOUR CHILDHOOD NEXT.”
Martin’s face drained.
Aurora stepped closer.
“You’re contracted?”
He gave a small, ugly laugh.
“Signed in 2019. Pop-up restaurant in Soho. Man said he could make me famous.”
“Let me guess. He didn’t mention the commute.”
“He mentioned everything. I just didn’t read it.” His gaze slid to Isolde. “Fae?”
“Half.”
“Can you break contracts?”
“I can watch them bleed.”
“Poetic. Useless, but poetic.”
Nyx drifted to the edge of the table. The shadows under the bowls curled towards them like cats, then shuddered away.
“We seek a tear in the Veil.”
Martin’s hand tightened on his whisk.
“Lower pantry. Behind the salt vaults. Nobody goes in unless the Prince sends a taster.”
“Why?”
A scream tore through the far side of the kitchen. Not pain alone. Surprise first, then pain, which made it worse.
The cooks did not look up.
Martin leaned close.
“Because something came through from Earth, and Dymas hasn’t decided if it’s ingredient, guest, or god.”
Aurora felt the Heartstone thump hard against her chest.
The pendant’s heat spread down her sternum.
“Describe it.”
“Wrong shape. Wears a woman’s voice. Makes the ovens bow.”
Isolde’s pale eyes narrowed , the first clear sign of alarm Aurora had seen from her.
“The hungry crown has found a throat.”
Aurora pointed the dagger slightly .
“No riddles.”
“Then plain bread.” Isolde looked towards the far end of the kitchen. “The rift has a ruler.”
Another bell rang. Martin cursed and snatched up a silver ladle.
“Leave now or look busy.”
“Why?”
The question barely left Aurora’s mouth before the crowd of cooks split apart.
A demon in a towering sugar-spun crown strode between the tables. It had the heavy body of a man and the stretched neck of a vulture, with a second smiling mouth set in its stomach . Jewels glittered across its apron. Fresh blood varnished its hands up to the wrists.
Its belly-mouth sniffed.
Then smiled wider.
“Earth food.”
Aurora slowly lowered the delivery bag behind her leg.
The demon’s head turned. Its upper mouth showed rows of little square teeth.
“And Fae steel.”
Nyx spread into a dark stain across the floor, shadows sharpening around Aurora’s feet.
Martin whispered through clenched teeth, “That’s Sous-Chef Grindle. Don’t be witty.”
Aurora’s grip tightened on the dagger.
“Bad news, Martin.”
Grindle inhaled, and every candle-mouth in the bone chandelier gasped with it.
“Bring me the girl with the crimson stone,” the demon crooned. “The pantry is hungry, and our guest has requested her by name.”