AI The pendant warmed against Rory’s sternum before she saw the tear in the world.
At first Richmond Park looked the way it always did after dusk—black-limbed trees, wet grass silvered by moonlight, deer moving like ghosts between the trunks. Then the air ahead of her shivered. Not mist. Not heat. A thin, vertical distortion hovered between two ancient oaks whose roots had knuckled up through the earth like old hands. The space inside the shimmer held the wrong color.
Amber.
Rory stopped so abruptly that Eva would have walked into her back if Eva had been here. But Eva was safe in London, where the worst things prowling the streets generally had knives or credit cards, and Rory had only Nyx at her shoulder and Isolde Varga three paces ahead, barefoot on the frosted ground, leaving no footprints.
The Heartstone pendant pulsed again, deep crimson light leaking through the gaps between Rory’s fingers when she pressed a hand over it.
“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Rory said.
Nyx leaned out of the shadow of an oak, their body more suggestion than flesh: tall, narrow, edges feathering into the dark. Violet eyes glowed faintly where a face should have been. “That depends on whether you think it is a door.”
“I was thinking wound.”
“A door is only a wound with manners.”
Rory gave them a look. “That was almost helpful.”
“Then I shall strive to do worse.”
Isolde turned. Moonlight combed through the long fall of her silver hair, and the lavender of her eyes caught the shimmer ahead like two chips of dawn. She appeared no older than Rory and older than every tree in the park at once. The leaf-shaped dagger she had given Rory lay cold against Rory’s hip beneath her coat, sheathed but never entirely forgotten.
“The hungry realm opens when the heart remembers its first feast,” Isolde said.
Rory closed her eyes for half a second. “Brilliant. Yes. Excellent. Very clear.”
“She means Dymas,” Nyx whispered. Their voice slid through the branches, making the leaves tremble though no wind moved. “Gluttony.”
“I know what she means.” Rory looked again at the amber distortion. “I was hoping knowing would make it less mad.”
The standing oaks that marked Isolde’s grove rose behind them, bark dark and ridged as old stone. Inside the grove, wildflowers bloomed despite winter, violets and primroses and small white bells nodding under beads of frost that never seemed to kill them. Time had already slipped once tonight. Rory’s phone had gone from 8:14 to 8:09 to a blank black screen that reflected her bright blue eyes and the set line of her mouth. She had put it away before it could start counting backwards in Latin or whatever came next.
Now the Veil thinned before them. She could not see it the way Nyx claimed to, not truly, but the place made her teeth ache . The air smelled of sap, cold mud, and suddenly —impossibly—roasted sugar.
Her stomach tightened.
“Once we cross,” she said, “how sure are we that we can cross back?”
Isolde smiled sadly . “The path home is a cup with a crack. Hold it gently .”
“That is not a percentage.”
“Percentages are a mortal lullaby.”
Rory huffed out a breath. Her hand found the scar on her left wrist beneath her sleeve, thumb rubbing over the small crescent-shaped ridge there. A childhood accident, her mother had always called it, as if childhood didn’t consist of a thousand tiny disasters survived by luck and plaster. She had survived Cardiff. Evan. London rent. Delivering noodles at midnight to men who thought a woman carrying food also owed them a smile.
A glowing hole into Hel was not ideal, but it was a hole . Holes could be mapped. Doors could be jammed open. Wounds could be stitched.
“Fine,” she said. “We go in, we look, we don’t touch anything with teeth, contracts, or cutlery. If someone offers us food, we say no.”
A faint ripple passed through Nyx, as close to amusement as their shadow-body came. “In Dymas, that may be considered a declaration of war.”
“Then we’ll be very diplomatic about starving.”
Isolde stepped through first.
The shimmer swallowed her silver hair strand by strand. For one heartbeat she became a figure painted on amber glass, then she vanished.
Rory’s pulse kicked.
Nyx inclined their head to her. “After you, Aurora Carter.”
“Don’t full-name me at a portal.”
“Would ‘Malphora’ be better?”
“Absolutely not.”
She drew the Fae blade. The moonsilver handle bit cold into her palm, a clean, sharp cold that steadied her better than comfort would have. In moonlight the leaf-shaped blade glowed faintly, as if it remembered a sky older than this one. Rory lifted her chin and walked into the wound.
The world folded.
There was no falling, not exactly. Falling had direction. This was being pulled through the eye of a needle by every version of herself that had ever been hungry. The scent of her mother’s bara brith. The cheap chips she’d eaten outside Cardiff University, too angry to go home and too broke to do anything else. Golden Empress dumplings steaming in bamboo baskets. Evan’s aftershave turning her stomach across a dinner she hadn’t wanted. Sugar, salt, wine, smoke, blood-warm bread.
Then her boots struck earth.
Rory staggered, caught herself, and forgot to breathe.
Dymas opened around her beneath a warm amber sky.
Not sunset. The light had no sun that she could find, no single source. It soaked the whole horizon, thick and golden, as if the air itself had steeped in honey. Hills rolled away in every direction, furred with vineyards whose leaves gleamed emerald and burgundy at once. Orchards climbed the slopes beyond them, trees bowing under fruit too vivid to be natural: pears translucent as green glass, figs black and glossy as polished shoes, pomegranates split open to show jewel-red seeds that glowed from within. Farther off, towers rose—no, not towers. Stacks of terraces, open kitchens, banquet halls, colonnades draped in vines, all built from creamy stone veined with something that shimmered like fat on hot broth.
The air was warm enough that frost melted instantly from Rory’s coat. It smelled of roasting meat, crushed herbs, wine, ripe fruit, caramelized onions, sea salt, smoke, yeast. Too much. Every breath was a meal. Her mouth filled with saliva before she could stop it.
“God,” she whispered.
Nyx emerged beside her as a spill of black ink across the ground that gathered itself into a tall silhouette. They seemed thinner here, their edges agitated by the amber light. “Not quite.”
Isolde stood ahead on a path paved with dark red stones. No dust clung to her bare feet. She looked less out of place than either of them, though Rory suspected Isolde would look at home at the bottom of the sea or in the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Behind them, the portal hung between two pillars of basalt carved with mouths. Human mouths, animal mouths, mouths with too many teeth, mouths open in song or agony or appetite. Through the shimmer, Rory glimpsed Richmond’s moonlit oaks, small and cold and impossibly far away.
The Heartstone cooled slightly but kept a low, steady warmth , like a pulse against her chest.
Rory turned in a slow circle. The path curved down toward the vineyards, where workers moved between rows with silver pruning hooks and baskets strapped to their backs. At first she thought they were human. Then one straightened, and she saw the horns curling from his temples, the gleam of copper skin, the smile too wide to be kind. Another figure, pale and stooped, hauled a basket of grapes larger than her torso. His clothes were old-fashioned—a stained white chef’s jacket, black trousers, shoes cracked with age. A chain of tiny brass links ran from his wrist to the basket handle. He did not look up.
Unease slid under the wonder, cold and familiar .
“Helbound souls?” Rory asked quietly.
Nyx followed her gaze. “Some. Contracted from Earth, perhaps. Chefs, vintners, gluttons, debtors. Dymas has refined appetites and poor ethics.”
“Hel has ethics?”
“Hel has rules. Do not mistake them for morality.”
From somewhere below came a roar of applause.
Rory flinched. The sound rolled up the hillside like thunder. A bell rang three times, deep and resonant. Then came music—strings, drums, flutes, something that purred under the melody like a satisfied cat. The path opened as they descended, revealing a vast amphitheatre carved into the valley floor. At its center, beneath awnings of red and gold silk , cooks worked over enormous stoves. Flames burned blue and green. Steam rose in twisting shapes that almost became faces before tearing apart. Around them lounged hundreds—demons with jeweled horns, women with serpent tails, men in embroidered coats whose shadows moved independently, small winged things perched on goblets, pale human souls watching with eyes too empty for celebration.
Long tables radiated from the amphitheatre like spokes. Every surface groaned under platters: lacquered birds with gold leaf crisped over their skin, mountains of fruit dusted with sparkling powder, bowls of soup dark as ink, pastries shaped like roses, loaves braided around bones. Wine flowed from fountains into channels cut through the tables. Guests dipped cups, hands, mouths.
Rory’s stomach clenched again. Hunger rose sharp enough to hurt.
She had eaten before leaving. A sensible bowl of rice and leftover mapo tofu from Yu-Fei’s kitchen, standing by the back door while rain rattled the alley bins. She remembered the burn of Sichuan pepper, the comfort of it.
Still, the smell from the amphitheatre hooked into her and pulled.
Nyx’s shadow-hand closed around her wrist. Not touching, not quite. The pressure was cool and insubstantial, but it broke the spell enough for Rory to take a breath through her mouth.
“Do not let the realm decide what you lack,” they murmured.
“I’m fine.”
“You were walking.”
She looked down. She had left the path by three steps, boots in the grass, angled toward a table where a woman in a crown of pearled antlers sliced into a cake that bled cherry-red cream.
Rory swallowed. “Right. Less fine.”
Isolde watched the amphitheatre with a remote sadness. “Here, desire wears perfume. Even a cage may smell of cinnamon.”
Rory sheathed the Fae blade before someone noticed the moonsilver gleam and decided to covet it. The cold it left in her palm lingered. “We need to find out who sent the Heartstone. If it came from here, someone here knows why.”
“The pendant will know its oven,” Isolde said, and started down the path.
“Of course it will,” Rory muttered, following. “Why wouldn’t jewelry have kitchen instincts?”
As they moved deeper, Dymas unfolded in layers of impossible abundance. The vineyard rows were taller than Rory up close, leaves whispering though there was still no wind. Grapes clustered like amethysts, rubies, pearls. Some were the size of plums. One split its skin as she passed, releasing a sigh of vapor that smelled exactly like the first glass of wine she had ever stolen from her father’s study at sixteen—sharp, forbidden, thrilling. She jerked away.
A laugh rustled through the vines.
Rory froze.
Between two rows, something small crouched over a fallen grape. It had the body of a fox and the face of an old woman, with dark eyes bright as wet seeds. It licked juice from its paws and grinned at her.
“Lost morsel,” it said.
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed . “Vine-wight.”
“Shadow-scrap,” the creature shot back, and snapped its teeth.
Rory lifted a hand, palm out, because apparently diplomacy with haunted fox-grannies was her life now. “We’re passing through.”
“All things pass through,” the vine-wight said. “Few pass by.” Its gaze dropped to the pendant under Rory’s coat. “Warm heart. Red heart. Stolen heart?”
Rory’s fingers closed around the chain. “Gift.”
“Same thing, if the giver smiles.”
Before Rory could ask what that meant, Isolde spoke. “Which way does the forgotten kitchen smoke?”
The vine-wight’s grin faded. For a moment it looked genuinely afraid. Its ears flattened. “Old hunger. Below sweet. Beneath full. Where Belphegor’s first table rots.”
Nyx went very still.
Rory glanced between them. “I dislike how everyone knows what that means except me.”
The vine-wight snatched another grape and vanished into the leaves. Its voice lingered, high and sing-song. “Do not eat the white figs. They remember you back.”
Rory stared after it. “I wasn’t planning on eating the white anything.”
The path narrowed beyond the vineyard and dipped into an orchard. Here the trees grew in precise circles around shallow pools of dark water. Their branches twisted into shapes almost like arms, offering fruit over the path. Pears chimed softly against one another. Pomegranates cracked open with tiny wet pops. In one pool, Rory saw not her reflection but a banquet room in ruins: overturned chairs, torn silk , a table so long its end disappeared into shadow. Something huge moved beneath it.
She blinked, and the pool showed only amber sky.
Her skin prickled under her coat.
“Nyx,” she said softly .
“I saw.”
“Good. Hate that.”
They walked on. The music from the amphitheatre faded, replaced by subtler sounds: sap clicking inside bark, insects humming in chords, distant knives chopping in perfect rhythm. Under it all lay a low vibration, not heard so much as felt in her bones. The whole realm seemed to digest.
At the edge of the orchard stood a gate made from black iron and polished bone. No wall flanked it. It barred nothing. Beyond it, a sunken road descended between banks of flowering herbs—rosemary, thyme, basil, and plants Rory didn’t recognize, their leaves shaped like tongues. The Heartstone flared hot.
Rory hissed and pulled it away from her skin. Crimson light seeped through her shirt, painting her fingers.
Isolde’s lavender eyes sharpened. “The cup tips.”
“Meaning?”
“The thing that called you is near.”
Nyx slipped partly incorporeal, their lower body thinning into smoke. “This gate was warded once. Old work. Demon-made, perhaps older. The blade may be needed.”
Rory drew the Fae dagger again.
The moment the moonsilver cleared the sheath, the iron-and-bone gate screamed.
Not metal. Not hinges. A mouthless, furious shriek tore through the orchard. Fruit dropped from branches in a soft, horrible rain. Pools trembled . Somewhere distant, the amphitheatre music faltered.
Rory clapped her free hand over one ear. “Subtle!”
“Cut,” Nyx urged.
She stepped forward, teeth gritted, and slashed the dagger across the air where the gate’s latch should have been. The blade met resistance in empty space. Light sparked—green, gold, a vicious red—and the cold in the dagger surged up Rory’s arm to her shoulder. For one awful second she felt the ward looking at her, tasting the salt on her skin, the human heat in her blood, the stubborn knot of refusal that had carried her out of Evan’s flat and into a life she had chosen badly but chosen herself.
Then the ward split.
The scream stopped.
The gate swung open without being touched.
Silence rushed in, thick and waiting.
Rory lowered the blade. Her arm shook. She hated that, so she tightened her grip until the tremor became stillness.
From behind them came a clatter among the orchard trees. Voices. Not human. Curious, sharp, excited.
“They heard,” Nyx said.
“Everyone heard. The gate auditioned for opera.”
Isolde was already moving through. “A bitten fruit still shines. Hurry before the teeth arrive.”
Rory did not need translating.
They slipped past the gate and down the sunken road. The warmth of Dymas changed as they descended. Above, it had been luscious, heavy with spice and sun. Here it grew damp. Sour. The herbs along the banks were overgrown , their scents bruised and medicinal. Amber light dimmed to a deeper orange, then to the color of old grease. Rory’s boots sank into earth that gave too softly underfoot.
The road ended at a courtyard half-swallowed by roots.
A building crouched there, ancient and vast, its creamy stone blackened by smoke. It might once have been a palace kitchen or temple or both. Chimneys rose like broken fingers. Carved along the lintel were scenes of feasting so worn that faces had become skulls and platters had become wounds. Vines forced their way through cracks in the walls, but they bore no fruit. Only pale flowers hung from them, each shaped like a tiny open mouth.
Rory stood at the threshold and felt wonder return despite herself, darker now but no less powerful. This place was old. Older than the amphitheatre, older than the polished excess above. It held the same awful gravity as standing before a ruined abbey and realizing people had once placed all their fear and longing into stone. But here the longing had teeth. Here hunger had been worshipped , not satisfied.
The Heartstone burned bright enough to light the hollow of her throat.
Inside the ruin, something answered.
A pulse of crimson glowed far within, between collapsed arches and drifts of ash.
Rory took one careful step over the threshold. The air changed again. Cooler. Stale. Full of old smoke and dried fruit and something metallic. Her breath sounded too loud. Nyx flowed beside her, silent as spilled ink. Isolde followed, silver hair a pale river in the gloom .
The first chamber stretched wider than any kitchen had a right to be. Hearths large enough to roast cattle lined the walls. Copper pots hung from chains, green with age, some big enough for Rory to stand inside. Tables of black stone ran in rows, scarred by knives and heat. In the ash on the floor were footprints.
Fresh ones.
Rory crouched. The prints were narrow, human-sized, pressed into grey dust. One set going in. None coming out.
Her fingers tightened around the dagger.
“Someone’s here.”
Nyx bent, their shadow falling over the marks without disturbing them. “Or was.”
From deeper in the ruin came the faint scrape of metal against stone.
Rory went still.
It came again. Slow. Deliberate. Like a knife being sharpened .
Isolde’s voice dropped to a whisper , and for once no riddle softened it. “Do not answer if it speaks your name.”
Rory’s mouth went dry. “Was that actual advice?”
“Yes.”
Somehow that was worse.
They moved between the tables. The crimson glow ahead brightened in time with the pendant. Rory could feel it now not just as heat but as tug, a thread hooked behind her ribs . She passed a hearth where blackened bones lay stacked with ceremonial care. Passed a wall of shelves holding jars filled with liquids that glimmered faintly—gold, green, milky white. One jar held what looked like a preserved apple . As she glanced at it, the apple turned, revealing a closed human eye in its skin.
She looked away fast.
“Dymas is disgusting,” she whispered.
“Dymas is honest,” Nyx replied. “Most realms consume. This one admits it.”
They reached an archway choked by roots. Beyond it, a smaller room waited. At its center stood a round table of white stone stained rust-red. On the table lay an object no bigger than Rory’s fist: a second crimson gem, unmounted, cracked down the middle but glowing with the same inner fire as her pendant.
Beside it sat a plate.
On the plate rested a single white fig.
Rory stopped so hard Nyx drifted through her shoulder and recoiled with a hiss.
The fig’s skin was pale as candle wax. A bead of juice trembled at its split tip.
The scrape sounded again, from the shadows behind the table.
Then a voice, soft and familiar as memory, said, “Rory.”
Her blood iced.
Not Aurora. Not Carter. Rory, in Eva’s voice, warm with worry and London vowels rounded by late-night wine.
Nyx’s warning moved like cold smoke through her mind. Do not answer if it speaks your name.
Rory stared at the cracked Heartstone on the table. The pendant at her throat thudded hard enough to hurt.
The shadow behind the table shifted.
“Rory,” Eva’s voice pleaded. “I’m so hungry.”
For one terrible second, the room became a different place: her old flat in Cardiff, Evan in the doorway, blocking the way out with an apology already souring in his mouth; her phone buzzing with Eva’s messages; the empty ache of choosing survival over explanation. Hunger was not always food. Sometimes it was wanting someone to need you. Sometimes it was wanting to be forgiven before you had even done the thing.
Rory lifted the Fae blade.
Her hand was steady now.
“Nice try,” she said, because refusing to answer was not the same as refusing to speak. “But Eva hates figs.”
The thing in the dark exhaled.
All around them, the tiny mouth-flowers on the vines opened wider. The ruined kitchen seemed to inhale, hearths and tables and ash drawing breath as one enormous body.
Isolde’s eyes shone pale in the crimson light. Nyx spread into a wide shadow at Rory’s side, violet gaze fixed on the dark.
Wonder and terror braided through Rory until she could no longer tell them apart. She had crossed a wound in the world and found an ancient hunger waiting with her friend’s voice and a jewel that matched the one against her heart.
She smiled without warmth .
“Right,” she said. “Let’s see what else this place has swallowed.”