AI Aurora Carter reached the line of oaks just after midnight, with London reduced to a damp orange glow behind her and Richmond Park spread black and breathing ahead.
She had told herself all the sensible things on the bus over. That she was tired. That strange messages pushed under doors at two in the morning were not, as a rule, worth obeying. That no sane person went walking alone through a deer park in the middle of the night because a piece of cheap cream paper said, in neat slanted handwriting, If the Heartstone warms, bring it to the Grove before dawn.
The trouble was the Heartstone had warmed.
It had started during her late delivery run from the Golden Empress, the little crimson stone beneath her shirt waking against her breastbone like an ember coaxed in ash. By the time she had pedalled back through the wet streets, it had been pulsing—soft, steady, alive. The note had waited on the mat outside her flat above Silas’ bar, dry despite the rain in the stairwell, her name written on it in ink so dark it looked almost blue.
Aurora had considered taking it to Silas. Or Eva. Or the police, which had seemed so absurd she had laughed once, flatly, in her empty kitchen .
Then the pendant had grown hot enough to sting.
Now she stood before the ancient oaks that marked the boundary of Isolde’s grove, her breath pale in the cold, one hand closed around the pendant through the wool of her jumper. The trees were not standing stones, not really, but they had always looked like them to her —old trunks grown straight and broad, bark ridged like weathered rock, their crowns knitting together above the narrow gap between them. In daylight, the place had been strange but beautiful. Wildflowers in winter. Sunlight where there should have been shade. A silence that made her feel she had stepped behind the world’s curtain and found the backstage dust.
At night, it looked like a mouth .
“Brilliant,” Rory whispered. Her voice went nowhere. The open park behind her swallowed it whole.
The path between the oaks waited.
She had a torch in her coat pocket, a little metal one with fresh batteries because she was not entirely an idiot. She took it out, clicked it on, and shone the beam through the gap. The light struck long grass silvered with dew, then vanished as if swallowed by mist. No eyeshine. No movement. No obvious portal to Hel, assuming portals to Hel were the kind of thing that ever announced themselves with a sign and a queue.
The Heartstone pulsed again. Warm. Warmer.
Aurora touched the crescent scar on her left wrist with her thumb, an old habit from childhood when she needed to steady herself. “In, check, out,” she said under her breath . “No wandering. No touching anything. No accepting food from fairy weirdos.”
The oaks creaked.
There was no wind.
She stepped between them.
The change came at once, subtle enough that a worse kind of mind might have dismissed it. The air thickened. The distant hiss of traffic cut off mid-breath. London disappeared not by sight, but by implication ; the world behind her no longer felt reachable. The beam of her torch dimmed, though she had checked it twice at home, and the damp cold turned soft, almost springlike.
Wildflowers brushed her boots.
They grew everywhere, crowding the narrow path in white and yellow and violet clusters, their petals open to the dark. Bluebells drooped beside foxgloves. Primroses shone pale as skin. A rosebush tangled around the root of an oak, blooming red in the middle of winter, each flower glossy with dew.
Rory kept moving.
The Grove opened around her by degrees. The trees formed a ring too regular to be natural, their trunks black against a sky without stars. Above, the canopy shifted and overlapped in layers, but no moon showed through. The clearing itself held a faint grey light, enough to reveal the long grass, the flowers, the old root-knuckles rising from the earth. It reminded her of a room where someone had turned on a lamp in the corner and covered it with cloth.
The pendant warmed until she had to pull it out from under her collar. It lay in her palm, thumbnail-sized and deep crimson, its silver chain pooling between her fingers. A faint glow moved inside the stone, slow and liquid, like something turning in its sleep.
“Right,” she murmured. “You wanted me here. Here I am.”
Nothing answered.
That was the first wrong thing.
Not the silence —silence had weight here. She remembered that. But this was not the old, watchful hush of the Grove. That had felt like being examined by a stern librarian. This felt like the pause after a question no one wanted repeated.
She walked toward the centre of the clearing.
Her boots sank into moss she did not remember being there. Pale moss, almost white, spread in patches between the flowers. It gave underfoot with a soft, wet compression that made her think of sponge cake left in rain. She angled the torch down. The beam flickered over tiny red filaments threaded through the moss, branching and re-branching like veins.
Rory stopped.
The filaments moved.
Not a lot. Not enough that she could say, with any confidence, yes, that is alive and horrible, leave immediately. They tightened, perhaps. Or the light shook in her hand. The red threads seemed to draw inward beneath the pressure of her attention, sinking deeper into the pale.
She lifted her foot and placed it carefully on bare earth.
Somewhere to her left, a twig snapped.
Rory turned the torch.
Trees. Flowers. A leaning branch.
The beam caught nothing, but her skin prickled all the same. The sound had come from inside the ring, not beyond it. She was sure of that. A small, dry crack, as deliberate as someone shifting their weight .
“Isolde?” she called.
Her own voice returned to her too quickly .
Isolde?
Not an echo . Not quite. It had the shape of her word but not her tone. Higher. Fainter. A child at the far end of a hall.
Aurora’s mouth dried.
She had not meant to say the name. She did not even know if the Fae woman who claimed the Grove would answer, or whether speaking her name at night counted as rude, suicidal, or both. The note had said the Grove. It had not said come alone, but it had not said don’t, either, which now seemed an unforgivable omission.
She tucked the pendant back against her palm, letting its heat bite into her skin. Pain was useful. Pain made things simple.
The clearing’s centre lay ahead, marked by a flat stone she had seen before in daylight. Then it had been half-hidden under thyme and clover, a natural table where sunlight pooled. Tonight it stood bare, washed clean of green. Black marks crossed its surface. At first Rory took them for scratches. As she came closer, she saw they were letters.
Not English. Not Welsh, not Irish, not anything she could pretend to recognise. The marks curled and hooked into one another, all angles at first glance, then all curves if she looked too long. The torchlight slipped off them. Her eyes tried to follow one line and ended up elsewhere, as if the stone had politely redirected her.
The pendant throbbed .
Once.
The marks on the stone answered with a dim red shimmer.
Rory swore softly .
From the far side of the clearing came the sound of water dripping.
One drop.
Then another.
Then a slow, steady patter, like rain falling from leaves after a storm.
Except the trees were dry. The air was dry. The wildflowers gleamed only with dew.
The dripping continued.
Rory moved the torch across the clearing, left to right, methodical despite the pressure building behind her ribs. Her father had always said panic was wasted breath. Brendan Carter, barrister and king of the calm question, would have told her to identify facts. Separate them from speculation. Fact: she was alone in the Grove at night. Fact: the pendant reacted to something here. Fact: the dripping had no visible source. Speculation: everything was about to become extremely bad.
The beam touched an oak on the far side.
Something pale hung from one of the lower branches.
Rory held still.
It was long and narrow, swaying slightly though the air remained dead. Cloth, perhaps. A strip of white fabric snagged on bark. The dripping came from beneath it. Dark drops fell one by one into the grass.
She did not go closer.
The cloth turned.
Not much. A slow rotation, as though whatever held it had twisted by its own weight . The torchlight revealed a row of small dark holes along the lower edge. Too regular for tears. Too round.
Rory’s grip tightened on the torch until the metal dug into her fingers.
Behind her, very near, someone breathed in.
She spun.
Nothing.
The clearing lay open and empty. The path she had taken had vanished.
For a moment, her mind refused the sight. There should have been the gap between the two oaks, the narrow corridor back to the park, the ordinary dark beyond. Instead, there were more trees. More trunks. More wildflowers massed at their bases. No opening. No London. No way out.
“Fine,” she said. It came out too sharp, too loud. “That’s not ideal.”
The Grove listened.
A sound began at the edge of hearing.
At first Rory thought it was leaves rubbing together, but the trees did not move. Then she thought it was insects, some impossible summer swarm hidden in the grass. But the sound rose and fell with too much intention. A murmur. A crowd whispering behind closed doors.
She could not make out words.
She did not try.
The Heartstone’s glow strengthened, red leaking between her fingers. Heat climbed through her hand into her wrist, toward the little crescent scar. The scar tingled as if pressed against ice.
Rory looked down.
The red filaments in the moss had surfaced.
They spread outward from the central stone in hair-thin lines, threading through grass, curling around flower stems, reaching. Not toward the stone.
Toward her.
“Absolutely not.”
She stepped back.
The filaments shifted faster, still silent, still delicate. They parted around her boot prints, then slid into them. The moss puckered where they passed. The flowers nearest her began to bow, not wilting but turning their faces down, petals closing one by one as if night had finally remembered them.
The whispering at the trees grew louder.
Rory lifted the pendant. “Is this what you wanted?” she said. “Because if you’re expecting me to intuit the ancient magical procedure, I’m going to disappoint everyone.”
The whispering stopped.
Every flower in the clearing faced her.
Not bent by wind. Not drooping. Turned.
Their pale centres gleamed in the faint light like small watching eyes.
Rory’s throat tightened. She took another step back, and the ground behind her was no longer level. Her heel struck something hard. She stumbled, caught herself, and swung the torch down.
A root crossed the grass where there had been none a second before. Thick, black, glossy as wet rope. It curved behind her boots.
No. Not behind. Around.
The root lay in a wide arc, marking a circle with her inside it and the stone at her back. As she watched, another root shouldered up through the earth with the slow force of something surfacing from deep water. Soil split without sound. Flowers lifted and settled. The root uncoiled toward the first, completing the ring.
Rory stepped over it before it could close.
The root snapped upward.
It missed her ankle by an inch.
She lurched forward, heart slamming, torch beam skidding across trees and grass and the hanging white strip. For an instant the light passed over something standing between two oaks.
Tall. Too thin. Head tilted.
Then it was a tree.
Rory froze with one foot in the moss.
There was a trick to surviving men like Evan, though she hated that she knew it. Do not bolt too early. Do not show the fear in the shape they expect. Watch the hands, the shoulders, the exits. If there are no exits, make one. Panic later. Vomit later. Get out first.
Her bright blue eyes searched the ring of trees.
The Grove had rearranged itself, but places lied less well than people. There would be a seam. A mistake. Even nightmares had architecture.
The whispering resumed, this time from behind her right ear.
Rory.
She did not turn.
Rory Carter.
The voice was soft and familiar enough to hurt. Welsh vowels, warm with fatigue. Her mother calling from downstairs when Rory had studied too late at the kitchen table. Jennifer Carter née Ellis, who had never used Aurora unless very angry or very afraid.
Rory closed her eyes for half a second. “No.”
Laila.
That name came from the left. She had not heard it spoken aloud in months. Not since the first mess of impossible things, since strangers with too much knowledge and too many secrets had decided she was easier to move around a board if they gave her another name.
Aurora.
This from the trees ahead.
Carter.
Behind.
Malphora.
The last name rolled through the clearing like rot under a door.
The pendant flared hot enough to burn. Rory gasped and nearly dropped it. The crimson stone pulsed in her palm, not steady now but frantic, an animal heart caught in a fist . The glow spilled over her fingers and painted the pale moss red.
The black marks on the central stone ignited.
The clearing changed.
Only for a blink. Less than a blink. But she saw it: not grass and flowers, but a black shore under a sky the colour of old bone . Not oaks, but pillars of something charred and immense. The flat stone became a threshold, its surface split down the middle, and through the crack came a breath of cold so deep it felt intelligent.
Then the Grove returned, green and grey and blooming.
Rory staggered.
So the note had been true. A Hel portal. Or the beginning of one. Or something wearing the idea of one like a mask.
The dripping stopped.
In the silence that followed, a footstep sounded from the far side of the clearing.
Dry grass crushed under weight .
Another.
Rory raised the torch.
The beam shook once before she steadied it.
At first there was only darkness between the oaks. Then a shape leaned out from behind one trunk, impossibly gradual. A shoulder. A narrow arm. A head with hair hanging forward, black and wet-looking, though the night was dry.
It was the wrong height for Isolde. Wrong shape for any deer. Too human to dismiss, too still to trust.
“Stay there,” Rory said.
The figure stopped.
For a wild instant, she thought it had obeyed.
Then it lifted one hand and placed something against the bark of the oak beside it.
Fingers, Rory realised. Long fingers. More than five.
The torch flickered .
When the light steadied, the space between the oaks was empty.
A sound came from above her.
Not a branch. Not a bird.
A soft, careful scrape.
Rory did not look up. Every foolish part of her wanted to, which was exactly why she didn’t. She backed toward the central stone instead, because the pendant pulled that way now. Its heat had become directional, tugging against her chain, angling toward the glowing marks.
Another scrape above.
Then another, circling.
Something moved in the canopy with patience.
Rory reached the flat stone. The symbols burned red but gave off no heat. Cold pooled around it, sinking through her jeans into her knees though she had not touched it. The pendant jerked in her hand.
“All right,” she whispered. “Think.”
The note had said bring it. Not use it. Not wear it. Bring it to the Grove before dawn.
Maybe the Heartstone was a key. Maybe a seal. Maybe bait.
That last thought settled unpleasantly.
A thin voice spoke from the darkness above. “Give.”
Rory stopped breathing.
The voice did not belong to any person she knew. It was high and dry, the sound of paper rubbed over bone.
“Give,” it said again.
The pendant chain slid across her knuckles, pulled toward the stone.
Rory let it move half an inch, watching. The red filaments in the moss rose higher, quivering. The flowers opened wider. From the trees came that collective whisper , excited now, hungry.
Not a seal, then.
Bait.
She closed her fist around the pendant.
The whispering curdled.
The thing above her shifted fast. Leaves thrashed without wind. A branch dipped low over her head, heavy with something she refused to see. The torch sputtered, died, came back weaker. In that strobing dark, shadows jumped from trunk to trunk where no bodies moved.
Rory turned in place, forcing herself to map the clearing again.
No path. Encircling trees. White hanging strip. Central stone. Roots. Moss. Filaments. Portal crack that was not yet open but wanted to be .
The Heartstone warmed near Hel portals. It did not say it liked them. It did not say it opened them.
She looked at the pendant’s glow through her fingers.
It pulsed in rhythm with the symbols.
Or the symbols pulsed in rhythm with it.
Rory’s mind caught on the distinction.
If the stone was being matched, perhaps it could be mismatched.
She slipped the silver chain over her wrist, winding it twice around the crescent scar, and pressed the crimson gem hard against the old mark. Pain lanced up her arm. The pendant’s heat met the scar’s icy tingle and the rhythm faltered.
The symbols on the stone flickered .
The thing above her hissed.
Rory smiled without humour. “There you are.”
A root whipped toward her from the grass. She jumped back, and it struck the stone with a wet crack. The glowing marks flared. The filaments surged, red threads lashing around her boots. One caught her ankle like fishing line. Cold shot up her leg.
She slammed the torch down on it.
The filament snapped.
Not cut—snapped, recoiling into the moss with a sound like a plucked string. The whispering became a shriek, many voices compressed into one narrow note. Rory’s ears rang. She kept the pendant pressed to her scar and dragged the torch beam across the ground, searching.
There. At the edge of the clearing, between two oaks, a gap had appeared.
Small. Crooked. Half-hidden behind a curtain of hanging ivy.
Not the entrance she had used, perhaps. But a seam.
She ran.
The clearing resisted.
Grass tangled around her boots. Wildflowers struck her shins with stems stiff as wire. The ground tilted where it should have stayed flat. Twice she nearly fell. Behind her, the stone cracked with a deep sound, like ice splitting on a lake.
“Give,” the thing shrieked from above.
A branch tore down beside her. She felt the air move as something long and pale swept past her head. Her shoulder clipped an oak hard enough to bruise. Bark scraped her cheek. She did not stop.
The gap narrowed.
Of course it did.
Rory lowered her head and drove toward it, pendant burning against her wrist, torch clenched in her other hand. The ivy writhed, leaves turning to show pale undersides like tongues. Through the gap she saw not the park but a corridor of trees, black and close, leading nowhere she recognised.
Better than here.
Something caught her coat from behind.
She twisted out of it by instinct, one arm first, then the other, letting the old delivery jacket tear at the seam. The weight vanished. Cold air slapped her back. She lunged through the ivy.
For a second the world became branches and wet leaves and the smell of earth too deep to belong to London. Thorns scored her hands. Something whispered her mother’s voice into her hair. Something else laughed with Evan’s mouth.
Then she was out.
She stumbled onto open grass and went down on one knee.
Traffic murmured in the distance.
Real traffic. Ordinary, indifferent, blessed.
Rory lifted her head.
Richmond Park lay under a thin wash of moonlight. The oaks stood behind her, two old trunks with a narrow gap between them. Beyond that gap she could see only darkness and the faint pale scatter of wildflowers. No central stone. No hanging white strip. No red moss.
Her torch was dead.
Her wrist hurt.
She unwrapped the chain with shaking fingers. The Heartstone lay dull in her palm, its crimson depths dark except for one faint ember at the core. The skin around her crescent scar was reddened , but not burned. In the silence after her own ragged breathing, she heard the distant bark of a fox.
Dawn had not come. The sky remained black. She checked her phone with a thumb that barely obeyed.
No signal.
The time read 00:17.
She had been inside, what, twenty minutes? Half an hour? Less, if the phone could be believed. She almost laughed, but the sound would have cracked in the middle.
Behind her, from within the gap between the oaks, came one last drip.
Rory rose.
She did not look back.
She walked fast at first, then faster, across the wet grass toward the nearest road, the pendant clenched so tightly in her fist that the silver chain bit into her skin. Every few steps she expected to hear the whisper again. Her name in her mother’s voice. The dry little command. Give.
But the park remained only a park around her, vast and dark and cold.
At the edge of the path, where the grass thinned into mud, something white lay folded on the ground.
Rory stopped.
A strip of fabric. Damp at one end. Pocked along the hem with small round holes.
It had not been there when she arrived.
She stood over it, breathing through her nose, the sensible part of her mind already offering explanations and discarding them just as quickly . Litter. A torn scarf. Someone else’s problem.
The wet end darkened the mud beneath it.
Drip.
Rory backed away.
The fabric twitched once, as if tugged from very far below.
She turned and ran for the road, the Heartstone beginning again, faintly, horribly, to warm in her hand.