AI The first stone did not look like a stone until Aurora stepped around it and saw the old oak grain trapped beneath a skin of grey.
It rose from the grass taller than Silas, bark turned to rock, roots hooked into the earth like knuckles. Moss furred one side in a green so bright it hurt. A line of blue-black fungus ran through a split in the trunk, pulsing in time with the Heartstone pendant beneath Rory’s shirt.
Eva stopped behind her and clutched the strap of her rucksack.
“Please tell me Richmond Park always had haunted tree monoliths and I missed them because I don’t jog.”
Silas lifted the torch on his phone. The beam thinned before it reached the stone, bending around it as if light had lost its nerve.
“I’ve poured pints for vampires, Eva. I still wouldn’t jog.”
Nyx slid out of the shadow beneath a hawthorn and gathered themself into a tall, dark outline. Violet eyes opened in the dark of their face, faint as bruised starlight.
“The boundary remembered being a forest before men named it a park.”
Aurora touched the pendant through her jumper. Warm. Too warm. It ticked against her breastbone, a small living pulse .
“Is that a warning or your way of saying we’re at the right place?”
Nyx tilted their head.
“Yes.”
“Brilliant. Very helpful.”
She took another step. The grass flattened under her trainers, wet with evening dew. Behind them, the London sky hung low and orange from street glow, planes stitching red lights above the black crowns of trees. In front of them, between the petrified oaks, the air shimmered like heat above tarmac, though the night had teeth.
The second stone hummed when she passed it.
Not a sound in her ears. In her bones. The crescent scar on her left wrist prickled, then cooled. Aurora held up her hand and watched the pale mark silver over for one breath, as if moonlight had got under her skin.
Eva saw it. Her face tightened.
“Rory.”
“I saw.”
“Do we like that?”
“I’m making a list. That’s not near the top.”
Silas stepped level with her, broad shoulders filling the space between two stones. He had brought a crowbar, because of course he had. It hung from his fist like a bad joke.
“If anything eats us, I’m haunting your delivery routes.”
“If anything eats us, you’ll complain about seasoning.”
“That’s fair.”
Nyx drifted past them, no footfall , no crush of grass. The shadows of the stones leaned towards them as they moved, stretched thin across the ground. The air ahead opened without opening. Aurora’s eyes watered. A seam appeared between the stones, not a gate, not a door, but a place where the world had forgotten to continue.
Beyond it, wildflowers bloomed under a sky full of stars.
Eva swore, soft and reverent.
The park vanished with one step.
Aurora felt the change through the soles of her feet first. Earth became springy, deep, packed with roots that flexed under her weight . Cold London damp peeled away from her skin. Warmth brushed her cheeks, scented with crushed mint, rain on leaves, and something honeyed that sat on the back of the tongue.
She looked behind her.
The standing stones framed a slice of Richmond Park: black grass, distant city glow, Silas’s bar somewhere beyond it, life reduced to a postcard held upright in the dark. Then the shimmer folded, and only trees remained.
Eva spun round.
“No. No, no, no. Where’s the exit?”
Nyx’s voice slipped between the leaves.
“Behind us. Around us. Under certain moons, nowhere at all.”
Silas jabbed a finger at them.
“You need to start choosing the less awful version first.”
Aurora crouched and pressed two fingers to the ground. The soil breathed.
Not with lungs. With sap. A slow swell and fall pushed against her fingertips. Tiny white flowers turned their faces towards her, each centre a pinprick of gold. One brushed her knuckle. Its petals folded in greeting.
“Eva. Look.”
“I’m busy not screaming.”
“Do both.”
Eva crouched beside her. A flower leaned towards her hand, then recoiled before touching her chipped black nail polish.
“Oh, that’s rude.”
Silas laughed once, then cut himself off.
Something answered.
Far ahead, through trees with silver bark and leaves like green glass, a bell rang beneath the ground. One note. Deep. It rolled through the grove, stirred pollen from the flowers, and left the air trembling.
Aurora stood. The pendant warmed again, but this heat differed from the Hel portals—less ember, more sun on old stone. The deep crimson gem glowed under her jumper, leaking red through the fabric.
Nyx stared at it.
“That should not wake here.”
Aurora pulled the chain free. The Heartstone rested against her palm, thumbnail-sized, crimson lit from within. The silver chain had gone cold.
“You’re full of comfort tonight.”
“The grove has an appetite for truth. Dymasian craft carries bargains in its marrow.”
Silas shifted the crowbar to his other hand.
“You’re saying her necklace has contractual bones.”
“I am saying nothing made in Gluttony came away hungry.”
Eva backed closer to Aurora.
“Can we not say hungry while standing in fairy Narnia?”
“Don’t call it that,” Aurora murmured.
“Why?”
A branch above them bent, though no wind moved. Leaves clicked together like teeth.
“That’s why.”
They walked on.
The path did not reveal itself until Aurora stopped searching for one. Grass parted ahead, wildflowers bowing to either side. Threads of pale light ran between their stems, not quite roots, not quite water . Each step sent a ripple along them. Somewhere beneath the soil, the bell gave a second low note.
The trees grew stranger as they moved deeper. One held a flock of translucent moths inside its trunk, wings beating in slow rhythm beneath the bark. Another had fruit shaped like tiny glass lanterns; within each, a spark circled as if trapped in syrup. Vines draped from branches and whispered in voices too small for words.
Silas reached towards a lantern fruit.
Aurora caught his wrist.
“Do not.”
He looked from her hand to the fruit.
“I wasn’t going to eat it.”
“You were going to poke it.”
“That’s research.”
“That’s how you end up married to a bush.”
Eva made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh. It helped. Her shoulders dropped half an inch.
A stream cut across the path, narrow as a scarf, its water black beneath a skin of stars. Not reflected stars. Aurora leaned close and saw constellations she did not know turning in the current. A fish made of bone-white light darted under the surface and vanished under a pebble too small to hide it.
Silas knelt at the bank.
“Water’s flowing uphill.”
Aurora followed the stream with her eyes. It climbed a slope ahead, ran over exposed roots, and poured into the hollow of a fallen tree, where it disappeared without sound.
Eva pulled her sleeves over her hands.
“My nan had a rule about places where water got ideas.”
“Welsh nan or Jamaican nan?”
“Both, actually. They agreed on spooky water.”
Nyx crossed without touching it, their body thinning to smoke over the stream. The water rose towards them, little starry fingers reaching, then fell back when their shadow passed.
Aurora stepped onto the first stone. It shifted under her shoe, softening like flesh. She froze.
The stone blinked.
An eye opened beneath her foot, amber and ancient, iris ringed with moss.
She jerked back so fast Silas grabbed her elbow.
The “stone” sank into the bank with wounded dignity, four stubby legs unfolding from underneath. Mud sloughed off a shell marked with runes and lichen. It regarded Aurora, then opened a beaked mouth.
“Late,” it croaked.
Eva pressed both hands over her mouth.
Silas stared.
The creature turned, shuffled into the stream, and became a stepping stone again halfway across.
Aurora’s pulse beat in her throat.
“Sorry?”
“Late,” the stone-creature repeated, muffled beneath its shell.
Nyx’s eyes narrowed .
“Old ward-tortoise. They sleep between appointments.”
Aurora looked at them.
“You knew those existed and didn’t warn us?”
“I had not seen one awake since plague bells rang over London.”
“Add it to your brochure.”
The ward-tortoise lifted its head enough to glare.
“Step. Or stay. Mud keeps both.”
Aurora drew a breath, set her foot on its shell with more care, and crossed. The shell held firm, warm through her sole. Eva followed, whispering apologies to each “stone” until one sneezed a spray of glittering mud onto her boots.
“Yep. Deserved that.”
Silas crossed last. The largest tortoise rose under him and carried him two feet downstream before stopping.
“Oi.”
“Heavy,” the tortoise croaked.
Silas pointed the crowbar at it.
“I run a bar. That’s muscle and emotional damage.”
The tortoise sank half an inch.
“Loud.”
Aurora failed to stop her grin.
“Come on, Muscle Damage.”
He stepped off with a mutter and wiped mud from his jeans.
Beyond the stream, the grove widened.
The trees drew back to reveal a meadow under impossible moonlight. No moon hung overhead. Light pooled from the flowers themselves—bluebells with silver tongues, foxgloves full of green fire, poppies that opened and shut around tiny sleeping faces. In the centre stood a ring of oak standing stones, smaller than the boundary markers, each carved with spirals that shifted when Aurora looked away.
A table grew from the meadow floor.
Not built. Grown.
Its surface was smooth pale wood streaked with gold, its legs rooted among the flowers. Bowls sat upon it, filled with fruits Aurora had no names for: black pears dusted with frost, red berries that smoked, white figs veined with blue light. A silver cup brimmed with clear liquid that smelled of rain and old books.
Eva grabbed the back of Aurora’s jacket and held tight.
“No eating. No drinking. No accepting suspicious table service.”
Silas leaned over a bowl.
“These look like the olives Yu-Fei charged me twenty quid for in Soho.”
“Silas.”
“I’m looking with professional resentment.”
A chair unfolded from the ground beside the table. Then another. Then four more, roots creaking, backs woven from living willow. One small stool pushed itself towards Nyx, hesitated, then retreated into the grass.
Nyx’s shape rippled.
“The grove remembered guests.”
Aurora glanced around the meadow. The back of her neck tightened.
“Or it expected us.”
The bell rang again.
This time, the note cracked open into voices.
They came from everywhere. From the grass. From the fruit. From the hollows in the stones. Snatches of language braided together—Welsh, Irish, Latin, something older than mouths. Aurora caught her own name inside the noise and then another name, one she did not use.
Laila.
The pendant burned.
Aurora hissed and closed her fist around it. Heat bit her palm. For a heartbeat, the meadow vanished.
She stood in amber light beneath a sky the colour of burnt sugar. Tables stretched to the horizon, heaped with roasted meats, sugared fruits, wines dark as blood. Laughter rolled over the feast, rich and cruel. A hand she could not see placed the Heartstone around her neck.
Then the grove snapped back.
Eva held her shoulders.
“Rory. Look at me. Cardiff. Your flat has mould behind the sink. Yu-Fei says you stack dumpling boxes like a drunk badger. You hate coriander because you’re wrong.”
Aurora sucked air through her teeth. The pendant cooled by degrees. Her palm bore no burn, only the crescent scar shining faintly at her wrist.
“I saw Dymas.”
Nyx leaned close without quite touching her.
“Describe.”
“Amber sky. Food everywhere. A feast. Someone gave me the pendant.”
Silas’s jaw set.
“Someone with a face?”
“No. Just a hand.”
The flowers around the table turned towards the far side of the meadow.
A figure stood between two stones.
Silver hair fell to her waist. Pale lavender eyes caught the flowerlight and gave none of it back. She wore a gown the colour of mist over frost, though the hem never brushed a blade of grass. Her bare feet touched the meadow without bending it. No footprints marked the path behind her.
Eva went still.
Silas lowered the crowbar by an inch, then raised it again because sense returned.
Nyx bowed their head.
“Isolde Varga.”
The woman smiled as if someone had cut the expression from moonlight and placed it on her face.
“Shadow with a borrowed name. Cardiff child with a Hel-warmed heart. Keeper of taps and thresholds. Daughter of two warnings.”
Eva’s hand lifted.
“I’m guessing I’m the warnings?”
Isolde’s gaze slid to her.
“Two grandmothers spoke into your bones. You kept one word from each and lost the rest under city noise.”
Eva swallowed.
“Don’t do that.”
“I cannot do otherwise.”
Aurora stepped forward, one hand still around the Heartstone.
“You sent for me?”
Isolde’s smile shifted. Not wider. Sharper.
“A letter may fly without knowing the hand that loosed it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It was one. Not the one you asked.”
Silas made a low sound in his throat.
“I already dislike this meeting.”
The seer turned to him.
“Good. Liking sweetens the cup. Suspicion checks the rim for poison.”
He blinked.
“Fine. I like you a bit.”
Eva elbowed him.
Aurora kept her eyes on Isolde. The grove pressed close. The flowers leaned, listening. The table’s fruit smoked and glimmered, untouched.
“Why did the pendant react here?”
Isolde lifted one hand. Long fingers, nails like pearl. She did not point at the Heartstone. She pointed through Aurora, or past her, or into some place the pendant had opened.
“A crimson seed remembered the orchard that fed it. Gluttony has many mouths. One chewed through mercy and spat out a gift.”
Aurora’s fingers tightened around the gem.
“Who?”
“Names have hooks. Some pull fish. Some pull fishermen under.”
Nyx’s voice thinned.
“The Veil trembles at the western rifts. Hel-stone should not answer Fae soil unless a bargain crossed the Boundary.”
The standing stones behind Isolde flickered . For an instant, Aurora saw lines in the air between them, faint shimmering distortions like heat over glass. The Veil. Not whole here. Layered. Stitched. The grove sat between seams, and every seam quivered .
A sound rose from the trees to their left.
Not a bell. Not a voice.
A wet chewing.
Silas turned first. The crowbar came up. Eva backed into Aurora, and Aurora’s free hand slid under her jacket to the cold sheath at her belt.
Isolde’s gift waited there, moonsilver biting chill through leather.
Between the trees, a patch of darkness bulged where no shadow should have been. It clung to the air, round and glossy, and in its centre opened a slit of amber light. Warmth rolled from it, thick with cinnamon, blood, and roasted fat. The Heartstone flared.
Nyx spread into a curtain of black across the meadow.
“Do not let it scent fear.”
Eva’s laugh came out broken.
“Bit late, mate.”
The slit widened. Something on the other side breathed in. The flowers nearest it withered to threads.
Aurora drew the Fae-Forged Blade.
Moonlight, though no moon shone, ran along the leaf-shaped dagger. The cold of it locked her fingers around the hilt. The blade’s glow painted the crescent scar on her wrist silver-white.
Isolde watched the amber wound in the air.
“The hungry door found the red key.”
Aurora stepped in front of Eva.
“Can your riddles wait until after we shut it?”
“For once,” Isolde murmured, and her bare feet left no mark as she moved aside, “the straight road stood beneath your boot.”