AI Aurora caught the silver chain before the pendant seared a red line into her collarbone.
“Christ.”
She yanked the Heartstone Pendant out from beneath her jumper and held it away from her skin. The deep crimson gemstone, no larger than her thumbnail, pulsed in her fist as if it had swallowed a heartbeat and kept it alive.
That had not happened in the cab.
It had warmed when she passed through Richmond Park’s locked service gate, hummed when she crossed the grass beyond the deer paths, and burned when she reached the ancient oak standing stones. Now it throbbed against her palm, hot enough to make her fingers twitch.
Aurora Carter stood between two upright slabs of old oak, each one taller than a man and darker than bone should ever look. Their surfaces had no bark. No grain. Someone, or something, had stripped them smooth and carved them with thin, twisting lines that refused to stay in place when she looked straight at them.
Behind her, the park stretched away in a black mass of trees and fenced lawns. London sat somewhere beyond it, all buses, sirens, drunk laughter, chip wrappers, and people who did not believe in hidden groves. Ahead lay a gap between the stones.
A clearing waited there.
Wildflowers crowded the entrance, though no sensible flower bloomed like that in the cold dark. Bluebells, foxgloves, poppies, marigolds. A little white blossom brushed her boot and curled towards her ankle like a finger.
Aurora stepped back.
The flower dropped limp.
“Not cute.”
Her voice came out too flat, swallowed at once by the trees.
She had come because of the note.
Not the first note. The first had arrived three weeks earlier in a plain envelope with no stamp, tucked under the door of her flat above Silas’ bar. Inside had been the pendant, its silver chain coiled around the crimson gem, and a scrap of paper with one line.
Keep it close when the dead places open.
She had binned the paper, kept the necklace, and told herself London had stranger forms of flirting.
The second note had come tucked into an unpaid order at Golden Empress, inside a carton meant for sesame prawn toast. Yu-Fei had sworn blind he had not packed it. The paper smelled of ash and roses.
Richmond. The oak stones. Come alone, Laila, if you want your name back.
No one in London called her Laila. No one alive, anyway. It had been a game from university, one Eva made up during a dreadful house party in Cardiff, back when Rory had still believed nicknames could keep a person safe from the life attached to their birth certificate.
She had almost phoned Eva.
Then the pendant had pulsed once against her chest, like a warning.
So she had come alone, with her black hair tucked into her hood, a torch in one pocket, a little folding knife in the other, and a tub of coarse salt stolen from the restaurant kitchen because Yu-Fei’s grandmother believed in practical solutions to spiritual problems.
The clearing breathed.
Aurora stopped with one foot over the threshold.
Not wind. Not leaves.
Breath.
A long, patient inhale slid through the flowers. Stems bent towards the centre of the clearing. Petals tightened. The oak stones creaked, a deep wooden sound, like an old ship taking on water.
Then everything released.
The flowers straightened.
The pendant cooled.
“That’s your welcome?”
No answer.
Aurora took out her phone. The screen flickered , then showed 01:13. She checked the message again, though she had read it so many times that the words had dug a channel into her skull.
Richmond. The oak stones. Come alone, Laila, if you want your name back.
Below it, in smaller letters she had not noticed before, another line glowed faint grey.
Do not answer anything that speaks in your voice.
Aurora’s thumb froze above the screen.
The phone died.
Not dimmed. Not low battery. Dead, a black rectangle reflecting her bright blue eyes and the pale oval of her face beneath the hood.
Something clicked behind the nearest standing stone.
Aurora turned.
A twig lay in the grass, freshly snapped.
She had seen no twig there before. The grass around it had not bent. The flowers around it faced the wrong way, their heads turned towards the sound like an audience.
“Show yourself or sod off.”
Silence pressed close.
The park beyond the stones had changed while her back had been turned . The path she had used, a narrow dark slit between brambles, no longer lined up with the service gate. Instead, a corridor of trees ran away into a depth that Richmond Park did not have. Trunks leaned over it, interlaced like ribs.
Aurora swallowed the iron taste rising in her mouth.
“Right. That’s illegal.”
She backed into the clearing rather than take her eyes off the altered path. The air changed at once. It touched her face with indoor warmth , the kind that clung to old houses when fires had burned in them for generations. Under it sat another smell. Damp soil. Crushed green stems. And beneath both, faint but clear, the copper bite of blood scrubbed from stone.
The Fae Grove opened around her in a circle of impossible growth. Wildflowers grew in thick rings around a central patch of moss. More oak standing stones marked the boundary, each one set at a careful angle, though she had counted six from outside and now saw nine. Their carved lines glimmered with sap, or something darker, catching the faint inner glow from the pendant.
No moonlight reached the clearing, yet she could see.
That bothered her more than the dark would have.
At the far side, someone had tied a red ribbon around a stone. It fluttered without wind.
Aurora crossed to it, keeping to the moss where her boots made less sound. The Heartstone warmed with every step. Not burning now. Alert. A small animal waking in her palm.
The ribbon had not been tied . It had been threaded through the wood itself. The strip vanished into one side of the standing stone and came out the other, as though the oak had grown around it.
A scrap of paper hung from the ribbon.
LAILA CARTER, it read.
Wrong.
Her surname was Carter, yes. Aurora Carter. Rory to friends. Laila to one friend, once, after too much cheap rosé and a joke about running away to a warmer country. But the two names had never belonged beside each other.
She did not touch the paper.
Instead, she crouched and pulled the tub of salt from her bag. The plastic lid clicked too loudly in the hush. She poured a thin line across the moss between herself and the stone.
The salt hissed.
Each grain blackened.
Aurora held still.
The hiss became a whisper , not outside her, but close to her left ear .
“Wasteful girl.”
She snapped the folding knife open and slashed the empty air behind her.
Nothing.
The whisper laughed with her mother’s voice.
“Always making a mess before you understand the room.”
Aurora’s grip tightened on the knife. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist tugged as her fingers flexed, a tiny pale moon in the red glow of the pendant.
“Nice trick. Poor choice.”
The flowers shivered.
“You used to cry when she said that.”
Aurora looked around the clearing. The stones stood still. The ribbon stirred. The path behind her remained wrong.
“Use Evan’s voice next and I’ll know you’ve run out of imagination.”
A pause.
Then, from the trees beyond the boundary, a man chuckled.
“Rory.”
Her skin went tight.
Not because the voice sounded like Evan . It did not.
It sounded like Brendan Carter, her father, full barrister polish and weary patience. The voice he used when she had disappointed him in public.
“Rory, sweetheart, you’re in deep water.”
Aurora shut her eyes for one count, then opened them. The clearing had shifted by half a breath. The ribbon stone stood closer. The salt line now curved at her feet, though she had poured it straight.
“Dad’s alive.”
“For now.”
A shape moved between two stones.
Aurora raised the knife.
Only a foxglove, tall and pale, nodding at the edge of her sight. When she looked at it, it became three foxgloves. When she looked away, the single shape leaned closer.
She forced herself to study the ground instead.
Tracks crossed the moss. Small hoof prints. Bare human feet. The long drag of something that had no legs at all. Among them lay a fresh mark, deep and narrow, as if someone had pressed a walking stick into the earth. It pointed towards the centre of the clearing.
There, half hidden by flowers, sat a low stone basin.
Aurora had missed it before. Impossible, since it stood knee-high and wide as a pub table. Its rim wore a lace of carved symbols. The hollow inside held black water so still it looked solid.
The pendant beat once.
The water answered.
A ripple spread from the centre though nothing had touched it.
Aurora did not move closer.
The second note had promised a name. The pendant had warned of dead places. The stone basin sat in a Fae-touched grove with the manners of a trap and the smell of old blood.
She had enough evidence for a verdict.
“Not drinking that.”
The water rippled again.
This time it showed a room.
Not a reflection. A room beneath the surface, seen from above. White tiles. Fluorescent lights. A metal drain in the floor. A woman sat tied to a chair, head slumped, straight shoulder-length black hair hiding her face.
Aurora’s breath caught.
The woman lifted her head.
Aurora looked into her own bright blue eyes.
A wet tap-tap sounded from the basin, as if fingernails knocked beneath the water.
The bound woman opened her mouth.
“Do not answer anything that speaks in your voice.”
Aurora stepped back.
The version in the basin smiled. Its teeth had too many shadows between them.
“Good girl.”
The voice came from the water and from behind Aurora at the same time.
She spun, knife up.
A figure stood at the entrance to the clearing.
At first glance, it wore her shape. Same height. Same black hair. Same dark jeans and hooded jacket. But it had arranged itself from memory rather than flesh. The shoulders sat a fraction too high. The arms hung with borrowed weight . Its face carried her features in the wrong order of life, skin smooth as wax, mouth curved like it had practised smiling on corpses.
The crescent scar on its left wrist opened and closed like a tiny mouth.
Aurora’s pulse hammered in her throat, but her hand stayed steady.
“Malphora.”
The name left the thing’s lips in a loving sigh.
The pendant flared hot.
Aurora clenched her fist around it and felt the gem bite into her palm.
“That’s not mine.”
“Not yet.”
The thing stepped over the dead salt line. The blackened grains crawled away from its boot.
Aurora retreated towards the basin, then cursed herself and cut left instead. Keep distance. Keep stone between them. Do not let it herd you where it wants you. Panic could queue like everyone else.
The thing tilted its head.
“I came alone, just as asked.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Aurora flicked her gaze to the trees.
Something moved there. Not one shape. Several.
The spaces between the standing stones filled with thin, vertical darkness. Figures stood beyond the boundary, half hidden behind oak and flower. Their heads wore crowns of branch and horn. Their eyes did not shine. They drank light.
The grove had an audience.
Aurora lifted the pendant.
The crimson gemstone glowed brighter, and the watching figures drew back by inches. Not fear. Dislike.
Useful.
The false Aurora watched the movement with interest.
“Someone armed you.”
“People do that. I’m charming.”
“You deliver food above a failing bar and sleep beneath men who spill beer into the carpet. No one arms girls like that unless they expect collection.”
That landed too close to the flat above Silas’ bar, the sticky stairwell, the nightly roar through floorboards. Aurora gave it no space on her face.
“Then collect.”
The false Aurora smiled wider.
The basin behind her began to bubble.
Not boiling. Breathing.
Each swell of black water pushed a smell into the grove, ash, damp wool, hospital bleach, and a cold mineral stink like underground stations after the last train. The Heartstone Pendant pulsed against Aurora’s palm in a quickening rhythm. Warm near a Hel portal, the first note had implied. Warm. Not burning like a coal gripped in bare flesh.
The basin water rose above the rim.
It did not spill.
It climbed in a smooth black column, thick as oil, and spread into an upright oval. Through it came the sound of distant knocking.
Hundreds of hands, all tapping from the other side.
The watching figures bowed their horned heads.
Aurora edged backwards, counting distances. Three strides to the ribbon stone. Two to the nearest gap. No path beyond it she trusted. Knife useless against whatever wore her face. Salt worse than useless. Pendant useful, painful, unknown.
The false Aurora noticed her glance.
“Run and the grove keeps what falls from you. A shoe. A tooth. A year.”
“Generous.”
“Stay and you get the truth.”
The black oval stretched taller. Its surface thinned. Shapes pressed against it from within, palms, cheeks, mouths opened in silent need. The knocking became a soft thunder.
Aurora’s phone buzzed in her pocket.
Every figure in the grove turned towards the sound.
The false Aurora’s smile vanished.
Aurora did not look away from it as she drew out the dead phone. The screen glowed with an incoming call.
EVA.
The name pulsed once, twice, three times.
The false Aurora’s voice sharpened.
“Do not answer.”
Aurora’s thumb hovered over the screen.
From the black oval, something pressed a face against the membrane. It had no skin. Only a suggestion of features beneath a slick veil, and a mouth full of square human teeth.
The call kept buzzing.
The pendant burned.
The false Aurora lunged.
Aurora answered the call and hurled the phone into the portal.