AI Aurora slammed her palm against bark that had not stood there a breath ago, and the tree opened its eyes.
Not knots. Not cracks. Eyes, amber and lidless, blinked down the length of an ancient oak trunk as if the wood had woken hungry. Eva swore, stumbled back into Nyx, and passed straight through their shadowed chest with a yelp that came out thin at the edges.
“Don’t do that.”
Nyx flowed back into solid shape, tall and dark against the ring of trees.
“Your flesh startled first.”
“My flesh would like an apology.”
Aurora kept her hand on the trunk. The bark felt warm, damp, alive. Sap oozed between her fingers, golden as honey and smelling of crushed rosemary, old coins, and something sweet left too long in a cupboard. Her Heartstone pendant pulsed beneath her jumper, once, twice, then settled into a dull heat.
“That wasn’t on the map.”
Eva clutched the paper printout of Richmond Park as if printed footpaths could protect them from a forest that had begun to rearrange itself. Her red scarf had snagged on a thornless bramble and hung there like a warning flag.
Nyx tilted their head. Violet light stirred where their eyes should have been.
“Maps dislike places that remember being hidden.”
“Lovely. The park has trauma.”
Aurora drew her hand away. The sap clung to her skin, then sank in. Her crescent scar prickled on her left wrist.
Ahead, the oaks parted without a sound.
A narrow path opened between them, lined by standing stones shaped like twisted oak trunks. Not carved to look like wood, not exactly. More like trees had hardened into stone mid-breath, with bark ridges, root-knuckles, and the suggestion of faces caught beneath grey surfaces. Wildflowers crowded their bases in impossible abundance, bluebells, foxgloves, snowdrops, poppies, and blossoms Aurora had no names for, all blooming together in a wild, silent riot.
Eva stared.
“I’m going to say it. This is above my emotional pay grade.”
“You asked to come.”
“You said hidden grove. I pictured mushrooms and one eccentric woman in a shawl, not Narnia after a nervous breakdown.”
Nyx drifted towards the path. Their edges frayed where the grove’s light touched them, strips of shadow lifting from their shoulders like smoke in water.
“The boundary accepts us. Or opens its mouth.”
“Those are different things.”
“In old places, no.”
Aurora closed her fingers around the Heartstone. The deep crimson gem, no bigger than her thumbnail, warmed against her palm through the thin fabric of her jumper. Warmth meant Hel. Or a portal to it. That had been the one useful warning attached to the thing when it arrived in an unmarked box at the Golden Empress three nights ago.
She glanced at the path. Every instinct that had got her through Evan, late-night deliveries, and London traffic told her to turn round.
The trees behind them shifted closer.
Of course.
“Forward, then.”
Eva made a strangled noise.
“Your survival plan is ‘then’?”
“My survival plan is not letting the haunted park choose our direction.”
Aurora stepped between the first two standing stones.
The world folded.
Sound vanished first. Not softened, not muted, gone. Eva’s sharp inhale vanished from beside her. The rustle of coats, the scrape of Aurora’s boots, the distant thrum of London traffic, all cut away. For one sick second, Aurora felt herself become a sketch on thin paper, all outline and no weight .
Then the grove exhaled.
Sound returned in layers. Water dripping from leaves though nothing fell. Bees humming a tune too neat for insects. Roots creaking far below, deep and slow, like ships turning in black water. Somewhere ahead, a woman laughed once, then the echo ran backwards through the trees.
Eva grabbed Aurora’s sleeve.
“Tell me you heard that.”
“I heard several things I’m choosing not to list.”
“Good. Healthy.”
Nyx emerged last through the stones. Their form shivered, as if the air had teeth.
“This place does not cast shadows correctly.”
Aurora looked down.
Her own shadow lay at her feet, but it pointed in three directions. One crawled ahead of her. One stretched back towards the standing stones. The third stood upright beside her, a black cut-out with her shape and no face. When she lifted her hand, all three shadows lifted theirs a heartbeat late.
Eva tucked both hands under her arms.
“Nope.”
The path curved into the grove. Grass cushioned Aurora’s steps, springy and thick, but it did not bend beneath her boots. Wildflowers brushed her ankles with cool petals. Each touch left a faint silver mark on her jeans that vanished before she could rub it away.
The grove widened as they walked. It should have run out of space within minutes. Richmond Park had limits, roads, fences, dog walkers, men in padded jackets shouting after spaniels. This place ignored all of that. Trees rose taller than church spires, their trunks braided together in spirals of living wood and pale stone. Leaves glowed from within, green, violet, gold, and shades that made Aurora’s eyes ache if she looked too long.
Between the trees, pools of still water reflected rooms instead of sky. A kitchen with blue tiles and a smoking pan. A narrow hospital corridor. A courtroom with empty benches. Aurora halted at the last pool before she knew why.
In the reflection, a man in a dark suit stood at a barrister’s table, one hand resting on a stack of papers. Brendan Carter. Her father’s mouth moved, but no sound rose from the water.
Eva touched her elbow, gentle for once.
“Rory.”
Aurora stepped back. The image rippled and turned into a field of stars.
“Cheap trick.”
Nyx bent over the pool.
“Not cheap. Old.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Age rarely improves cruelty.”
Eva crouched by another pool and recoiled.
“That one showed me my Year Eight fringe. I vote we classify these as hostile.”
A low chime trembled through the grove.
The flowers turned towards it.
Not swaying. Turning. Hundreds of delicate heads pivoted towards the deeper trees, blue bells and crimson cups and pale star-shaped blooms all moving at once. Their petals parted. Tiny teeth shone where stamens should have been.
Eva stood in one smooth, alarmed motion.
“Flowers are looking peckish.”
Aurora took a slow step away from the nearest cluster. The Heartstone gave another pulse . Hotter this time.
“Nyx.”
“I feel it.”
“Hel?”
“Something has pressed its face against the Veil.”
The word made the grove tighten around them. Branches curved overhead. The path narrowed. The standing stones behind them disappeared between ranks of black-leafed shrubs, their berries glossy and swollen like watchful eyes.
Eva reached into her coat and pulled out a small iron poker from Silas’ bar fireplace. It had looked ridiculous when she insisted on bringing it. Less so now.
“I read somewhere Fae hate iron.”
Nyx looked at the poker.
“Many Fae dislike insults too. You brought both.”
“She can dislike it from over there.”
Aurora moved deeper before the flowers decided on a menu.
The path spilled them into a clearing where the ground shone like mother-of-pearl. No grass grew there. Instead, the earth formed a great circular mosaic made of shell, bone, glass, and small flat stones that shifted under the eye but not underfoot. A stag with antlers like rivers chased a fox with nine tails. A woman with a crown of thorns held a cup to a mouth full of stars. A winged thing knelt before a tree and offered its own heart in both hands.
At the clearing’s centre stood a table.
Not a picnic table, not an altar, though it borrowed the wrong parts of both. A long slab of pale wood rested on roots that curled like sleeping serpents. Plates lined its length, each made from a different material. Silver. Clay. Black glass. Bone. One plate held a heap of red fruit that breathed in and out. Another carried a roasted bird with feathers still aflame, though no smoke rose. A third held nothing but a folded parchment tied with a strand of golden hair.
Eva’s stomach growled.
She slapped a hand over it.
“Betrayal. From within.”
“Do not eat.”
“I wasn’t going to eat the fire chicken.”
“You looked at the fruit.”
“The fruit looked back.”
Aurora circled the table without touching it. The smells changed with every step. Butter and cinnamon. Charred meat. Wine. Fresh bread. Rot beneath sugar. Her mouth watered despite the warning climbing her throat.
The Heartstone burned against her chest.
She pulled it free. The deep crimson gem glowed with a faint inner light, but its warmth no longer came in pulses. It pressed steady heat into her palm.
Nyx drew closer, then stopped. Their outline flickered .
“This is wrong.”
“For us or for everyone?”
“For this place.”
Aurora studied the parchment. A line of writing crawled over the surface, black ink shifting into shapes that almost became letters. Law had taught her one useful thing, contracts loved to hide the knife in polite language.
“Can you read it?”
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed .
“Parts. Appetite. Passage. Debt. A prince’s seal.”
Eva lifted the poker.
“You buried the important bit under vocabulary.”
Aurora looked at the breathing fruit, the burning bird, the laden plates. Excess on a table in a Fae grove. Her mind jumped to the pendant’s origin, Dymas, realm of Gluttony, Prince Belphegor’s amber-skied kingdom of feasts and contracts.
“Belphegor.”
The grove hissed.
Every leaf in the clearing turned its underside towards her. Pale veins shone like script.
A voice answered from behind the table.
“The sluggard prince fattens on bargains others cannot digest.”
Aurora spun.
The woman stood where no one had stood a moment before. Silver hair fell to her waist in a smooth sheet. Her pale lavender eyes held too much distance, as if she watched Aurora from the far end of a century. She wore a dress the colour of lichen and old moonlight, simple until it moved, then it shimmered with threads that showed tiny scenes, a fox under snow, a blade in water, a girl with black hair standing before a red door.
No footprint marked the mother-of-pearl ground beneath her bare feet.
Eva’s poker drooped.
“If you’re the eccentric woman in a shawl, I’d like to file a complaint about the staging.”
The woman’s mouth curved.
“I own no shawl. Complaints feed briars.”
Nyx bowed their head, not low, not submissive, but old thing to old thing .
“Isolde Varga.”
“Nightwhisper. Aldric in the hollow of your name. You still spill shadow where blood once answered.”
Nyx went utterly still.
Eva’s gaze flicked between them.
“That felt private.”
Aurora slipped the Heartstone back beneath her jumper, but its heat bled through the fabric.
“You knew we were coming.”
Isolde’s eyes settled on Aurora’s face.
“The thorn knows the hand before the hand knows blood.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is. Not the one you wanted.”
“Can you give one that saves time?”
“Time is the least faithful creature in my grove.”
A soft laugh ran through the trees, or through the leaves, or under the mosaic . Aurora disliked how the grove seemed to enjoy its owner’s jokes.
Eva folded her arms, poker still in one hand.
“Right, she speaks in riddles. Excellent. Rory, do your lawyer thing.”
Aurora stepped nearer the table and felt the heat from the fire-feathered bird kiss her knuckles. The smell of roasted skin and thyme tightened her hunger into a hook.
“You can’t lie.”
Isolde inclined her head.
“Fae blood bars that door.”
“But you can mislead.”
“Mortals built roads. We merely admire the practice.”
“Then I’ll ask narrow questions. Is this table from Hel?”
“No.”
Aurora blinked.
Nyx’s shadow eyes sharpened.
Isolde touched the edge of the pale wooden slab. The roots beneath it twitched.
“The table is older than Hel’s present princes. Older than their appetites wearing crowns. The feast upon it, that reeks of Dymas.”
Eva’s grip tightened on the poker.
“So someone sent demon catering into your house.”
“The mouth beneath the orchard has begun to chew.”
Aurora frowned.
“There’s a portal.”
“Not yet.”
The Heartstone flared hot enough to make her gasp. She tore it away from her skin by the chain. Crimson light spilled between her fingers.
Isolde’s gaze dropped to it.
“Ah. A heart that remembers the vineyard.”
Aurora held it up.
“An unknown benefactor gave me this. It reacts near Hel portals. Why does it react here if there isn’t one?”
“Because a door need not open to let the smell of dinner through.”
The plates rattled.
The fruit on the nearest dish swelled, its red skin splitting to show wet white flesh and rows of seed-teeth. Eva backed up until her shoulder struck Nyx’s arm. Nyx did not move away.
Aurora forced her eyes back to Isolde.
“How do we close it before it opens?”
The Seer watched the crawling writing on the parchment.
“A ward cannot be reasoned with once it learns hunger. It must be cut from what feeds it.”
“With what?”
Isolde reached into her own hair and drew out a blade.
No sheath. No blood. One moment her fingers combed through silver, the next they held a slender, leaf-shaped dagger of moonsilver. Its surface glowed faintly, as if it remembered moonlight even here beneath alien leaves. Cold rolled off it in a clean wave that cut through the feast-smell and left Aurora’s head clear.
Eva let out a low breath.
“That is not from a kitchen drawer.”
“No.” Isolde held it hilt-first to Aurora. “The Courts forged it before they learned mercy could ruin a good execution.”
Aurora did not take it at once.
“What does it cost?”
Isolde smiled without warmth .
“Wisdom, at last.”
The flowers around the clearing closed their toothed petals. The hush that followed pressed against Aurora’s ears.
“The blade asks no coin. Gifts grow hooks only when named bargains.”
“That sounds like a bargain with better manners.”
“It is a warning with pretty hands.”
Nyx’s voice brushed Aurora’s cheek like cold silk .
“Fae gifts change the shape of a path.”
“So does being eaten by a Hel portal.”
Eva lifted one finger.
“I vote against eating. Strongly.”
Aurora took the dagger.
Cold bit her palm. Not pain, not exactly. A bright, clean shock that raced up her arm and settled in the crescent scar on her wrist. The old mark flashed silver. The blade’s hilt fitted her hand as if someone had measured her bones years before she had entered the grove.
The mosaic beneath her feet shifted.
The stag stopped chasing the fox. The crowned woman lowered her cup. Tiny shell eyes turned towards Aurora from every figure in the floor.
Isolde stepped back.
“Cut the root that drinks from elsewhere. Not the tree. Not the door. The root.”
“Specificity remains a growth area for you.”
“The sharp one sees where language dulls.”
Aurora crouched and peered beneath the table. Roots twisted there, brown, grey, silver, and one slick black strand threaded with amber light. It pulsed in time with the Heartstone. Each pulse made the plates shiver and the food swell.
“There.”
Eva leaned over, then clapped a hand over her nose.
“That smells like a buffet in a morgue.”
Nyx lowered into a smear of shadow, sliding under the table without disturbing the plates. Their voice came from beneath, stretched thin.
“The black root passes through a seam. Not earth. Not Fae soil.”
Aurora knelt. The mother-of-pearl ground chilled her knees through her jeans. She angled the moonsilver blade towards the black root.
The table’s plates screamed.
Not clattered. Screamed. Thin voices burst from silver, clay, bone, and glass. The roasted bird thrashed, flame-feathers beating against its dish. The red fruit split wider and spat seeds that struck the floor like teeth. Eva swung the poker and knocked a leaping seed aside before it hit Aurora’s face.
“Less admiring, more cutting.”
Aurora thrust the blade down.
The black root whipped aside.
It lashed around her wrist.
Pain snapped up her arm. The root squeezed, slick and hot, right over her scar. The Heartstone blazed. The clearing lurched , and for a second Aurora saw another place beneath the grove, warm amber sky, endless vineyards, golden tables laid across rolling hills, mouths in the soil opening and closing between the vines.
A laugh rolled up through the root. Fat, pleased, intimate.
Nyx surged from under the table and struck the root with both shadowed hands. Their fingers sank in, steaming.
“It has tasted your name.”
“Tell it to choke.”
Aurora shifted the dagger to her other hand. The root tightened until her bones ground together. Eva jammed the iron poker beneath it and levered with a snarl.
“Courtroom voice, Rory. Intimidate the salad.”
Aurora gritted her teeth and drove the moonsilver blade into the root.
The cut opened like an eye.
Amber light poured out.
Isolde’s head snapped towards the trees.
“Too deep.”
The clearing split.
A crack raced through the mosaic from table to treeline, scattering shell birds and bone stars. The wildflowers tore themselves from the ground and retreated on pale roots. The air filled with the smell of wine, hot bread, and butchered meat.
Beyond the crack, something vast inhaled.
Nyx threw themself between Aurora and the widening seam. Their shadow form stretched, tall and ragged, but the amber glow carved holes through them.
Eva hauled Aurora back by the collar.
“Move, Carter.”
The black root fell away from Aurora’s wrist, severed but still writhing. The table sagged. Plates slid, smashed, and bled sauces that crawled towards the crack in eager streams.
Isolde lifted one hand. The trees bowed towards her, branches knitting, leaves flashing with green fire.
“The door is not open.”
The crack widened.
A clawed hand, slick with honey and blood, thrust through and gripped the broken edge of the grove.
Isolde’s face went still.
“It has been invited.”