AI The map Eva had stolen was useless after the deer gate.
Rory folded it twice, then once more for spite, and shoved it into the pocket of her jacket. The paper had promised a path. Richmond Park had offered six, all of them muddy, all of them vanishing into bracken and winter-bare trees. Behind her, London breathed in its ordinary way—distant traffic, a dog barking, the low mechanical sigh of a bus changing gears somewhere beyond the dark line of the road.
Ahead, the trees stood too still.
“That’s it, then,” she said.
Nyx gathered beside her from the shadow of an oak, tall and narrow and almost human until the light touched them. Then the edges of them frayed like smoke. Their violet eyes glowed faintly in the hollow where a face should have been.
“The grove does not enjoy being found,” they whispered. Their voice moved through the grass before it reached her ear. “It prefers invitation.”
“Wonderful. Should I have brought flowers? Wine? My CV?”
“Blood is traditional.”
Rory looked at them.
Nyx’s silhouette tilted. It might have been amusement. “A joke, Aurora Carter.”
“Work on your timing.”
She turned back to the trees, hand slipping beneath her collar. The Heartstone pendant rested against her skin, warm as breath. It had been doing that for the last ten minutes, pulsing faintly on its silver chain—one slow beat, then another. Deep crimson light leaked between her fingers when she closed them around it.
Near a Hel portal, she’d been told .
Not comforting , given that she was standing in a royal park where joggers wore neon trainers and complained about council tax.
The path ahead bent between two ancient oaks. Their trunks had grown close enough to make an arch, branches interlaced overhead like old knuckles. Beyond them, darkness thickened—not the ordinary absence of light, but something layered, gauzy . Rory could almost see it if she didn’t look straight at it. A shimmer in the air. Heat over tarmac. A breath caught behind glass.
“The Veil?” she asked quietly .
Nyx’s eyes narrowed . “A seam.”
Rory let out a slow breath. Her fingers brushed the small crescent scar on her left wrist, an old habit from childhood pain and adult nerves. “Right. Seams can be opened.”
“Or pulled apart.”
“That was less helpful.”
She stepped forward before she could think better of it.
Cold passed through her first. Not wind—there was no wind—but a silvery chill that slid between her ribs and under her tongue. Her teeth ached. The pendant flashed once, hot enough to sting, and then the world folded.
Sound went wrong.
London did not fade; it dropped. The dog bark cut off mid-note. Traffic became a memory. Rory staggered, boots sinking into moss that had not been there a second before, and caught herself on one of the oaks.
Only it was not an oak anymore.
It rose beside her in the shape of a standing stone, tall and rough and dark, but its surface held the grain of bark. Fossilised wood. Petrified tree. Runes had been carved into it so long ago that moss had filled the cuts, glowing faint green from within. More of them circled the clearing ahead, each a blackened oak-stone rooted deep in the earth, forming a boundary that felt less like a fence than a warning.
Nyx emerged beside her without stumbling. Show-off.
Rory straightened, heart punching at her ribs.
The grove breathed.
That was her first and least helpful thought. The place inhaled around her, leaves lifting though there was no breeze, wildflowers turning their bright faces in one slow movement as if they had heard her arrive. Snowdrops, bluebells, foxgloves, primroses, poppies—impossible companions—bloomed together in thick drifts across the moss. Some were colours she had no names for: blue that tasted sharp at the back of her throat, gold that made her eyes water, red so deep it seemed to hum.
Above, the canopy should have been winter-bare. Instead, branches interwove in a vast green roof, leaves glossy and dark, each one edged in pale light. Between them hung not sky but a dusk-coloured expanse pricked with unfamiliar stars . No clouds. No moon. The air smelled of wet bark, honey, iron, and something sweetly rotten underneath, like fruit left too long in a bowl.
Rory’s skin prickled.
“Okay,” she said, because if she didn’t say something, she might start laughing and not stop. “That’s new.”
Nyx drifted forward, their lower half dissolving over the moss. “The Fae-touched places remember older shapes of the world.”
“Does this one remember where the exit is?”
“The exit may not remember us.”
“Again with the timing.”
A sound came from the flowers.
Rory froze.
It began as a chime, delicate and high. Then another answered from across the clearing. Then another, until the air filled with tiny bell-notes. The bluebells were ringing . Not swaying. Ringing. Their petals trembled, and each tremor released a note so pure Rory felt it behind her eyes.
Nyx turned their head toward the sound. “Do not answer if they speak.”
“They’re flowers.”
“All the more reason.”
Rory swallowed whatever reply she had ready. The grove had made her feel like an intruder in a cathedral and a fox in a trap at the same time. Her trainers left shallow prints in the moss. When she looked back, the marks had already filled with tiny white flowers.
They moved deeper.
There was no path until Rory chose a direction. Then the moss darkened beneath her feet, forming a narrow ribbon between the wild growth. Ferns unfolded as she passed. Thorns drew back from her sleeves. Once, a branch lowered in front of her, heavy with fruit shaped like small glass pears. Inside each pear, something flickered —miniature scenes, perhaps, or trapped sparks. Rory saw a kitchen table, a child’s hand, rain on a window, a red door closing.
She stopped despite herself.
One pear held the Golden Empress.
Not as it looked from the street, with steamed-up windows and Yu-Fei’s handwritten sign taped crookedly beside the door. This was the kitchen after closing: steel counters wiped clean, stockpots stacked, the fryer silent. A delivery bag hung from its peg. Rory’s own black hair was visible in the reflection of the fridge door, shoulder-length and straight, though she was not there.
Her stomach tightened.
“Nyx.”
They looked back.
“Are these memories?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps lures.”
The pear warmed where it hung inches from her face. A smell drifted out—not fruit, but ginger, star anise, hot oil . Home, or the closest London had given her.
Then the reflection in the fridge door turned its head.
Rory stepped back so sharply she crushed a cluster of violet flowers. They released a sigh like disappointed children.
“Not touching the magic pears,” she said.
“Wise.”
“You could have led with ‘don’t look at the magic pears’.”
“I wished to see if you would.”
Rory glared at the living shadow. “One day, I’m going to put a bell on you.”
“One day, I may let you.”
The path sloped downward. That made no sense; Richmond Park was not hiding a valley beneath it, but the grove ignored geography as easily as it ignored seasons. The trees grew larger as they descended. Their roots arched from the earth in ribbed walls, forming tunnels wide enough for three people abreast. Pale moths clung to the bark. They had faces patterned on their wings—beautiful, sleeping faces with closed eyes and faint smiles.
Rory kept her hands in her pockets.
The pendant pulsed again.
Heat bloomed against her sternum. Stronger now. A steady thud, thud, thud. She pulled it out. The deep crimson gemstone glowed from within, no brighter than a coal but twice as alive. Its silver chain glinted cold in the greenish light.
Nyx stilled.
“What?” Rory asked.
“A door has opened recently.”
“To Hel?”
The question scraped her throat. She had seen enough in the past weeks to stop disbelieving out of self-respect, but Hel still sounded like the kind of thing engraved over a nightclub by someone with too much eyeliner. Dymas, Belphegor, contracts, souls who cooked for demons under an amber sky—those words did not fit easily beside bus schedules and rent arrears.
Nyx moved close enough that their shadow fell over the pendant. “Not open. Breathing.”
Rory hated how much worse that sounded.
A low sound rolled through the roots ahead.
Not thunder. A stomach growl.
The moss beneath her feet shivered.
Rory reached for the knife she didn’t have, because Isolde had not yet given it to her and her life had become a sequence of needing impossible things five minutes too early. Her fingers found only her keys. She pulled them out anyway, jagged between her knuckles, ridiculous and human.
Nyx’s form lengthened. The shadows beneath the roots answered them, sliding upward like ink in water.
“Stay behind me,” they said.
“I’m very good at running beside people.”
“Aurora.”
Something in their voice stopped her. Not fear. Warning.
Ahead, the root tunnel widened into a hollow.
Rory stepped into it and forgot, for one clean second, to be afraid.
The chamber was enormous, far larger than the grove above could possibly contain. Roots twisted overhead in a dome, their tips vanishing into darkness. Between them hung thousands of lanterns—not made by hands, but grown from pods, translucent and amber. They shed a warm, honeyed glow over a circular pool at the centre of the hollow.
The pool was not water.
It was sky.
An amber sky churned under the surface, warm and bright, filled with drifting motes like pollen. Beyond it, upside down, stretched orchards heavy with fruit and vineyards marching over golden hills. Rory saw white tables set beneath flowering trees, laden with towers of bread, glazed meats, bowls of jeweled berries, silver fish with scales like coins. Figures moved among them—some human, some too tall, some with horns, some with smiles that made her step back.
The smell hit a heartbeat later.
Roast garlic. Wine. Butter. Caramelising sugar. Fresh bread cracked open. Ripe peaches. Smoke. Salt.
Rory’s mouth flooded. Her stomach cramped so hard she nearly doubled over. She had eaten half a packet of crisps for lunch and called it efficiency; now hunger opened in her like a trapdoor.
Nyx caught her elbow. Their grip was cold and startlingly solid.
“Do not breathe deeply.”
“Bit late,” she managed.
The amber sky in the pool rippled. A banquet table rose closer, or the pool sank toward it. A silver platter sat at the centre, piled with fruit the colour of rubies. One split open. Juice ran down its skin, thick and shining.
Rory took one step forward.
Nyx’s hand tightened. “Rory.”
Her name—not Aurora, not Carter—snapped something awake in her. She dug her heels into the moss, breath shaking. The hunger remained, huge and senseless, but now she could see its edges. It was not hers. Not entirely.
“That’s Dymas,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Gluttony has good catering.”
“It has excellent traps.”
A laugh escaped her, thin and breathless. The pool pulsed with the pendant. Or the pendant pulsed with the pool. Hard to tell which heart was beating first.
On the far side of the chamber, someone spoke.
“The mouth opens where the root remembers hunger.”
Rory spun.
A woman stood between two pillars of root, though Rory would have sworn no one had been there a moment before. She was small, maybe five foot five, but the chamber seemed to arrange itself around her. Silver hair fell to her waist, fine as moonlit water. Her face was ageless in the way statues were ageless, too composed for youth, too unlined for age. Pale lavender eyes regarded Rory with a sorrowful amusement that made her feel twelve years old and already late for something important.
Isolde Varga.
The Seer’s feet rested on the moss.
No—above it. Barely. The blades did not bend. When she moved, she left no footprints at all.
Nyx bowed their head. “Oracle.”
“Shadow-between-shadows.” Isolde’s gaze slid over them. “You wear old failure well.”
Nyx went very still.
Rory, who had enough survival instinct not to comment on that, lowered her keys. “Isolde?”
“The name is a door many have used.” The woman turned her lavender eyes on Rory. “You arrive with a borrowed heart and a question sharpened by fear.”
Rory glanced at the pendant. “If by borrowed heart you mean this, yes. If by question you mean ‘why is there a Hel portal under Richmond Park,’ also yes.”
Isolde smiled faintly. “Not under. Beside. Within. Against. Mortal tongues make flat maps of folded things.”
“Right. Good. Folded hell adjacent to deer park. Perfect.”
The pool shivered again. Laughter drifted up from Dymas, rich and warm and cruelly inviting. A chef in a blood-red apron looked up as if he had heard them. His face was human. Exhausted. Then someone with a crown of curling horns placed a hand on his shoulder, and the man smiled too widely.
Rory’s hunger curdled.
“Can they see us?” she asked.
“When appetite looks back, it always sees,” Isolde said.
“That’s not a no.”
“I cannot give what is not true.”
Rory’s pulse kicked. She appreciated honesty in principle. In practice, she preferred direct answers when standing over a breathing portal to Hel.
The grove murmured above them. Leaves brushed leaves, though still no wind moved. The bluebell chimes had faded. In their place came a deeper rhythm, like distant drums or roots knocking against stone. The standing oaks around the boundary were not just markers, Rory realised. They were teeth. Or ribs. Something ancient had set them here to hold this place closed.
And something had begun to chew through.
The Heartstone burned hotter. Rory hissed and nearly dropped it, but the chain tangled round her fingers. Crimson light spilled over her palm. In that glow, symbols appeared around the pool—scratched into the moss, hidden until now. Not Fae runes. These were darker, rounder, shaped like open mouths and hooked tongues.
Nyx crouched beside one, their hand hovering above it. “A contract mark.”
“Human?” Rory asked.
“Helbound.”
Isolde drifted closer to the pool. Her silver hair did not stir, but its ends floated as if underwater. “A feast sends invitations. Some are written in gold. Some in grief. Some in hunger so old the body mistakes it for love.”
Rory thought of the pear showing her the Golden Empress. The warm kitchen. The place that smelled like safety because safety, she’d learned, was often just somewhere no one shouted your name with a fist behind it.
Her throat tightened. She hated the grove a little for knowing where to press.
“What does it want?” she asked.
Isolde looked at her, and for the first time the riddle left her face. What remained was worse.
“To be fed.”
The pool bulged upward.
Nyx moved fast, becoming a slash of darkness between Rory and the amber light. The surface stretched like skin. Beneath it, a hand pressed from the other side—long-fingered, elegant, each nail lacquered gold. The smell of the feast intensified until Rory’s knees weakened. She heard music now. Lutes, laughter, glasses ringing. Someone called her name from below, not Aurora but Laila, a name she had never used here, soft with promise .
Come down, it said without words. Eat. Rest. No one will ask you to run again.
Rory’s bright, stupid, living heart lurched toward it.
Then Isolde caught her wrist.
The Seer’s fingers were cool as river stones. Her thumb pressed exactly over the crescent scar on Rory’s left wrist, and pain flashed—not fresh, but remembered . A bike wheel skidding on wet pavement. Blood on a kitchen towel. Her mother’s voice going sharp with worry. Real things. Earth things. Hers.
Rory gasped.
The call snapped.
The hand beneath the pool withdrew, slow and reluctant. The amber sky darkened, as if a cloud had passed over Dymas’ sun .
“Thanks,” Rory rasped.
Isolde released her. “A scar is a small door that has already learned to close.”
“I’m starting to understand why people bring notebooks to prophecies.”
The Seer’s mouth curved.
Nyx rose, their shape still bristling with borrowed shadow. “This breach will widen.”
“Yes,” Isolde said.
“When?”
“A winter door opens widest when the sun is weakest.”
“The solstice,” Rory said.
The word settled over the chamber like frost.
Above them, somewhere impossibly far away, a bird sang one clear note and stopped.
Rory stared at the pool. She had come to the grove expecting answers. Maybe a strange woman in a clearing, a few cryptic warnings, a manageable sort of weird. Instead there was a doorway to a realm of amber skies and endless tables, and something on the other side had spoken in the language of her own wanting.
Wonder still pulled at her despite the fear. She hated that too. The upside-down orchards were beautiful. The lantern pods glowed like captured sunsets. The flowers around the chamber had turned their faces toward the pool, petals open, listening. Even Nyx, made of shadow and old tragedy, seemed carved for this place, violet eyes reflecting amber and green .
The world was larger than she had ever imagined.
Larger, and hungrier.
Isolde lifted one hand. Something pale flashed between her fingers. At first Rory thought it was a leaf. Then the Seer turned it, and moonlight ran along a blade.
It was a dagger, slender and leaf-shaped, forged from metal so silver it seemed almost white . Moonsilver, some part of Rory supplied, though she did not know how she knew. The weapon glowed faintly in the lantern light, and when Isolde offered it hilt-first, frost pearled along the grip.
Rory stared. “Is that for me?”
“The thorn does not ask the rose if it is ready.”
“Does the thorn get any basic training?”
“The hand learns by bleeding.”
“Brilliant.”
But she took it.
Cold bit into her palm at once. Not ordinary cold. The kind that had lived under stones before the first fire was lit . It raced up her arm, clean and bright, and for a moment the chamber sharpened. She saw the Veil around the pool—a shimmering distortion, thin as soap film and strained nearly transparent. She saw dark threads hooked into it from the Dymas side. She saw the Fae runes in the roots above, old and weary, holding.
The dagger hummed once.
The contract marks in the moss recoiled.
Nyx looked at the blade, then at Isolde. “A costly gift.”
“All true gifts are knives,” the Seer said. “They cut the giver first.”
Rory closed her fingers around the hilt. “What am I meant to do with it?”
Isolde’s lavender eyes lifted toward the root-dome, toward the hidden stars beyond the leaves, toward time moving strangely around them. “When the feast calls your name, cut the table. When the door grows teeth, cut the hinge. When the prince offers sweetness, remember salt.”
Rory breathed out through her nose. “You couldn’t possibly say ‘stab the demon on the left,’ could you?”
“I could,” Isolde said, serene . “If that were the truth.”
The pool gave one final pulse . The amber sky below shifted, and for a heartbeat Rory saw a figure seated at the head of an endless table, vast and indolent, one hand heavy with rings, face hidden by the flare of golden light. The figure raised a glass.
To her.
Rory’s grip tightened on the Fae blade until the cold hurt.
“Time to go,” Nyx whispered.
Rory did not argue.
They climbed back through the root tunnel with the Seer gliding ahead, leaving no trace that she had passed. The flowers watched them. The moths opened their wing-faces, one by one, revealing eyes instead of patterns, black and glossy and awake. Rory kept her gaze on Isolde’s silver hair and the narrow line of moss underfoot.
By the time they reached the standing oak-stones, the grove had changed. Or maybe it had only stopped pretending. The wildflowers still bloomed, impossible and bright, but now Rory saw the gaps between them where bones of small animals lay wrapped in roots. The sweet smell of honey carried an edge of decay. The bluebells hung silent, waiting.
At the boundary, Isolde turned.
“Do not count the minutes when you return,” she said. “They may count you back.”
“I wasn’t planning to count anything except exits.”
“Then you are wiser than most who enter.”
Rory tucked the dagger carefully inside her jacket, its cold bleeding through the fabric. The Heartstone had settled against her chest again, warm and steady. Fire and ice, Hel and Fae, both hanging off her like she had agreed to any of this.
She looked once more into the grove.
Alien stars burned beyond the leaves. The petrified oaks stood guard in their ancient ring. Somewhere beneath the roots, a feast laughed softly in its sleep.
Fear moved through her. So did wonder.
Neither cancelled the other.
Rory stepped back through the seam into the ordinary dark of Richmond Park, with Nyx at her shoulder and the taste of impossible fruit still haunting her tongue.