AI The oaks did not belong in Richmond Park.
Aurora knew oaks. Cardiff had them in graveyards and schoolyards, London had them hemmed in by iron railings and dog walkers, and Richmond had old ones, great-bellied and wind-bent, their branches crooked with centuries. These were different. They stood in a ring where the map on her phone insisted there was only open grassland, and they were not trees so much as the memory of trees carved from living wood. Their trunks rose straight as pillars, bark furrowed into patterns that made her eyes ache if she looked too long: spirals within knots, knots within faces, faces that became leaves.
Standing stones leaned between them, half swallowed by moss, yet shaped unmistakably like oak leaves. Ancient, Isolde had said. Oak standing stones. Rory had pictured monoliths. She had not pictured stone with veins.
Beside her, Eva made a low sound in her throat. “Tell me that’s new.”
“It’s new,” Rory said, though her mouth had gone dry.
“Liar.”
“I’m reassuring you.”
“You’re terrible at it.”
Rory glanced at her. Eva had both hands shoved into the pockets of her coat, shoulders hunched against a wind that had not existed ten paces ago. Her dark curls had frizzed in the damp, and she wore the expression she reserved for nightclub bathrooms with no locks and men who said just smile. Not fear, exactly. Readiness.
Behind them, Nyx gathered out of the long shadow of a hawthorn.
One moment there was merely evening pooled black beneath the thorn. The next, the darkness deepened, rose, and took on the shape of a person too tall and too thin to be entirely human. Violet eyes opened in the faceless dark, faint as foxgloves under moonlight.
“The threshold listens,” Nyx whispered.
Their voice moved over the grass like wind over a bottle mouth. Eva flinched despite herself.
Rory did not, which she counted as a personal victory and possibly a sign of worsening judgment.
The Heartstone pendant warmed against her chest.
She hooked a finger under the silver chain and drew the gemstone out from beneath her jumper. It was no larger than her thumbnail, deep crimson and faintly lit from within, as though some patient ember had been sealed inside. The warmth had begun as a kiss of heat when they’d left the path. Now it pulsed once, twice, in time with nothing human.
“Not a Hel portal,” Rory murmured.
Nyx tilted their head. “No. But the Veil is thin here. Thin places remember all roads.”
“That’s comforting ,” Eva said. “Love it when geography has memory.”
Rory stared at the ring of oaks. The air beyond it shimmered —not quite visible, not quite hidden . She had no supernatural sight worth bragging about, but the distortion prickled at the edges of her vision, like heat over tarmac, only cold. The Veil, maybe. The Boundary. The thing sensible people went their whole lives never seeing.
She slid her hand into the inner pocket of her jacket and touched the Fae blade.
Cold bit through the leather sheath. It steadied her better than warmth would have. The dagger had been Isolde’s gift, a slender leaf-shaped thing of moonsilver, beautiful in the way a shark was beautiful. Practical. Lethal. Not remotely reassuring.
“Isolde said the path would open at dusk,” Rory said.
“Isolde says a lot of things,” Eva replied. “Half of them sound like threats in poetry.”
“She can’t lie.”
“No, she just tells the truth like she’s trying to win a riddle contest.”
Rory almost smiled. The expression died when the nearest standing stone shifted.
It did not move like something alive. It moved like a page turning. Moss peeled back without tearing, stone veins flaring silver-green, and the air between two oaks folded inward. The space beyond the ring deepened, no longer a gap between trunks but a corridor made of twilight. A scent breathed out: bluebells, rain on warm bark, crushed mint, and beneath it a sweetness almost too ripe, like fruit just before rot.
Eva stepped closer to Rory. “Absolutely not.”
“We came all this way.”
“We took the Tube and walked past three deer. That does not oblige us to enter Narnia’s digestive tract.”
Nyx drifted to the threshold. Their outline frayed where the shimmer touched them, edges smoking into strands of darkness. For an instant Rory saw something else through them—a man’s hand, ink-stained fingers, a sleeve of old black wool, gone before she could decide whether she had imagined it.
“The grove permits us,” Nyx said. “For now.”
“For now,” Eva echoed . “Great. Grand.”
Rory drew a breath. Cool air filled her lungs, bright and sharp. She had run from worse places than a fairy wood. A Cardiff flat with a deadbolt she’d learned to dread. A London alley where shadows had teeth. A restaurant kitchen during a Saturday rush, which frankly deserved its own circle of Hel.
This was only a door.
She stepped through.
The world gave way under her boot.
Not fell. Gave. Grass became something softer and springier, like moss laid over a drumskin. Sound vanished with a soft pop. The distant city—the hum of traffic, a dog barking, Eva’s muttered swear—cut off. Rory’s stomach lurched as if a lift had dropped too fast, and then she was standing in a clearing under a sky that was not London’s bruised grey but a deep luminous blue, though no sun shone and no stars had yet appeared.
Wildflowers bloomed everywhere.
They crowded the ground in impossible profusion: bluebells and primroses, foxgloves, snowdrops, poppies, flowers Rory had no names for with petals like translucent glass and stamens glowing gold. They grew among roots as thick as sleeping serpents, up the sides of fallen logs, between stones carved with script that shifted when she tried to read it. Their scents layered until the air felt edible.
Eva stumbled through behind her and grabbed Rory’s sleeve. “Oh.”
That one syllable held all her fear and all her wonder .
Nyx emerged last, or perhaps the shadow cast by the doorway detached itself and became them. The threshold behind them was gone . No oaks, no park, no gap back to London. Only trees, enormous trees, their canopies woven so high above that the branches vanished into blue haze.
Rory turned slowly .
The grove was a clearing only in the sense that a cathedral was a room. Ancient trunks ringed them, bark white, black, bronze, and green. Some had leaves shaped like feathers. Some bore fruit that hung in glassy clusters, each orb containing a flicker of moving light. One tree grew upside down, its roots branching into the air and its silver leaves brushing the ground without touching it. A stream wound through the flowers, but the water flowed several inches above its bed, clear as polished crystal , full of tiny fish with wings for fins.
Something chimed in the distance.
Not bells. Not quite. The sound of icicles touching in a wind. It came again, farther off, then nearer, then from beneath Rory’s feet.
Eva’s grip tightened. “Do we have a plan?”
“Find Isolde,” Rory said.
“That’s not a plan. That’s a wish wearing boots.”
“Follow the path, then.”
“What path?”
Rory looked down.
A trail had appeared between the flowers, narrow and pale, made not of dirt but of flat overlapping leaves the colour of moonlight . It curved away through the trees. She was almost certain it had not been there a moment ago.
“That path.”
Eva stared. “I hate that.”
“You hate most things until they prove they won’t kill us.”
“And I’ve survived this long, haven’t I?”
Nyx moved ahead without disturbing a single petal. In their presence, the shadows beneath the flowers leaned toward them, eager as cats.
Rory followed. The moon-leaf path flexed under her boots. Each step sent a faint ripple outward, and the flowers nearest her turned their faces to watch. She told herself that was a trick of light. Then one poppy blinked.
“Don’t touch anything,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning to lick the suspicious fairy plants, Mum,” Eva muttered.
The air changed as they moved deeper. At the threshold it had been cool and bright; now warmth gathered in pockets, then vanished. A breath of summer crossed Rory’s face. Three steps later, frost crackled along the path’s edge, coating violets that continued blooming cheerfully beneath the ice. Time sat wrong here. She felt it in the lag between heartbeat and pulse , in the way her thoughts sometimes arrived half a second late.
To her left, a doe stepped from between two trees.
Except it was not a doe. Its body was deerlike, fine-boned and graceful, but its hide was dark green, dappled with constellations. Branching antlers held small lanterns instead of tines, each lit with a different colour flame. It regarded them with black, liquid eyes.
Eva forgot to breathe.
Rory stopped. Slowly, she lowered her gaze. Predators hated staring. So did men looking for excuses. Maybe fairy deer did too.
The creature bent its elegant neck and sniffed the Heartstone.
The pendant warmed sharply , almost hot. Rory hissed and closed her fingers around it.
The doe’s nostrils flared. In its lantern-antlers, one flame turned crimson. Then it sprang away, hooves striking no sound from the ground, and vanished through a curtain of hanging moss.
“What was that?” Eva whispered.
“A local,” Rory said.
Eva made a strangled laugh. “You cannot delivery-driver your way through the Fae realm.”
“I can try.”
The path narrowed. Trees crowded closer, their trunks etched with doorways no taller than Rory’s knee, each sealed with a different object: a brass key, a bone button, a human tooth, a sprig of rosemary tied in red thread. In one hollow, a tiny table had been set with acorn cups and a silver thimble full of cream. The cream’s surface reflected not Rory’s face but a shoreline under amber skies, tables heavy with food, orchards bending beneath swollen fruit.
Dymas.
The image lasted only a moment. Then the thimble held cream again.
Rory backed away, skin prickling.
Nyx noticed. “What did you see?”
“Hel,” she said quietly. “I think. Gluttony. Amber sky.”
Eva swallowed. “That pendant doing fun new things again?”
The Heartstone pulsed against Rory’s palm, guilty as a secret.
She tucked it beneath her jumper, though that did nothing to muffle the heat. The unknown benefactor who had given it to her felt suddenly less like a mystery and more like a hook set deep.
They walked on.
The grove refused to stay one place. A stand of birches rearranged itself when Rory glanced away, opening a view of a lake where no lake should fit. Its surface shone black and still, reflecting a sky full of stars though overhead remained blue twilight. In the centre rose a stone arch covered in roses, freestanding, leading nowhere. Voices murmured from across the water—too faint to understand, intimate enough to feel like eavesdropping.
Eva drifted toward the shore.
Rory caught her wrist.
Eva blinked as if waking. “I thought I heard my mum.”
“Your mum’s in Croydon.”
“I know that.”
“Stay on the path.”
Eva’s face tightened. For a second she looked young, younger than all the careful armour she wore. “It sounded exactly like her.”
“I know.”
Rory did not know, not really . Her own mother’s voice would have undone her faster. Jennifer Carter saying cariad from across impossible water. Her father clearing his throat before delivering some barrister-polished disappointment. Evan’s voice—
No.
She tightened her grip until the crescent scar on her left wrist pulled pale against her skin. Childhood accident, her mother always called it. A broken mug, blood in the sink, Rory too small to understand why everyone looked frightened. It had healed into a neat little moon. Some marks stayed tidy. Some did not.
Nyx turned toward the lake. Their violet eyes brightened. “Names sleep in that water.”
“Do not make that sound tempting,” Rory said.
“I did not say they sleep kindly.”
That was the trouble with Nyx. Comfort never came without teeth.
They left the lake behind. The murmur faded reluctantly , thinning into leaves.
Soon the path rose. The ground swelled into a hill carpeted with white flowers that glowed faintly in the dimness. At the top stood three stones taller than Rory, arranged like judges. They were carved with the same leaf-vein pattern as the threshold stones, but these marks moved openly, silver lines crawling and branching across grey surfaces.
Between the stones hung a curtain of rain.
It fell from nothing and vanished before touching the ground. Each droplet contained a tiny image. Rory saw a fox running through snow. A woman laughing with blood on her teeth. Silas’ bar sign swinging in a storm. Yu-Fei slamming a cleaver into a chopping board hard enough to make dumpling wrappers jump. Herself, older, or only exhausted, standing beneath an amber sky with the Heartstone blazing like a wound.
She stepped back.
Eva’s voice came thin. “Please tell me you saw the terrifying slideshow too.”
“Unfortunately.”
Nyx reached toward the rain. Their hand dissolved where droplets struck shadow. For the first time since Rory had known them, they recoiled.
“What?” she asked.
Their form shuddered, edges scattering. “1643.”
The whisper was nearly lost.
Rory looked at them more carefully . Living shadow, ageless, strange, dangerous. But behind that single year she heard a person trapped in a mistake that never stopped happening.
“We don’t have to go through,” she said.
“The path says otherwise,” Nyx replied.
Ahead, beyond the rain-curtain, the moon-leaf trail continued down into a hollow thick with silver grass.
“Paths don’t get votes,” Eva said.
“In Fae places,” Nyx murmured, “they often do.”
Rory studied the falling images. The blade in her pocket radiated cold, as if answering the rain . Isolde had given it to her for wards, demons, things with claws. Not for weather with opinions.
Still.
She drew the dagger.
Moonsilver slipped free with a soft sigh. The blade was leaf-shaped, slender, faintly luminescent in the strange twilight. Cold climbed her fingers and sank into her bones. The moving lines on the stones paused. The rain did not stop, but it leaned away.
Eva stared. “That is deeply pretty and deeply illegal-looking.”
“Fae-forged,” Rory said.
“Of course it is.”
She raised the blade and touched its tip to the curtain.
The rain split.
No thunderclap, no burst of light. It simply parted around the dagger like cloth cut along a seam. The droplets trembled , images spinning wildly—faces, doors, flames, antlers, the amber feast-land again—and then the opening widened enough for one person.
Rory went first.
Cold washed over her. Every hair on her arms lifted. For a heartbeat she stood nowhere. She felt London behind her, vast and damp and noisy; Hel below or beside or inward, warm and hungry; the Fae realm pressing close with green fingers; and between them all the Veil, shimmering, strained, alive with old scars. Then her boot struck grass on the far side.
She dragged in a breath.
Eva tumbled after, swearing under hers. Nyx came through last, compressed into a blade-thin streak of darkness that unfolded with visible effort. The rain sealed behind them.
The hollow below was quiet.
Not empty. Quiet.
Silver grass grew waist-high, each blade edged with dew. Fireflies drifted among them, but their lights were blue, and they moved with intention, forming patterns that broke apart when Rory tried to follow. At the centre of the hollow stood a table made from a single slab of pale wood. Upon it lay objects arranged with careful precision: a cracked porcelain cup, a black feather, a child’s red shoe, a tarnished wedding ring, a spoon carved from bone, a fresh apple split neatly in half.
Rory did not want to approach.
That, more than anything, made her do it.
The grass whispered against her jeans. Not words. Almost words. Her name brushed past her ankle in several voices.
Aurora.
Rory.
Laila.
Carter.
Malphora.
The last name struck wrong, sour and hot. She stopped dead.
Eva bumped into her. “What is it?”
“Did you hear that?”
“I hear grass being creepy.”
Nyx glided closer, violet eyes narrowed . “The grove tastes names. It offers some back.”
“That one wasn’t mine.”
“Are you certain?”
Rory looked at the table. The apple’s white flesh had begun to bead red, not juice but blood-bright syrup . Sweetness thickened the air.
“I’m certain I don’t want it to be.”
She stepped to the table. The objects seemed ordinary at first, then less so . The cracked cup smelled faintly of her mother’s kitchen, tea gone cold beside a stack of exercise books. The black feather cast a shadow shaped like wings much too large for any bird. The child’s shoe was wet with seawater. The wedding ring rolled once, though no one touched it, and stopped pointing toward Eva.
Eva went very still.
“No,” Rory said, before the grove could do whatever it intended. “Not hers.”
The ring stilled.
A laugh rustled through the grass. Amused. Not kind.
Rory’s fingers tightened around the Fae blade. “We’re here to see Isolde.”
The hollow exhaled.
At the far end, silver grass bent apart, forming an aisle. Beyond it rose a tunnel of intertwined branches hung with flowers that had no business blooming together: roses and heather, jasmine and holly, lilies black as ink. Pale light pulsed within.
“Finally,” Eva whispered. “Customer service.”
They followed the aisle. The sense of being watched multiplied. Rory glimpsed faces in bark, eyes opening in knots, small winged shapes darting just out of sight. Once, something like a hand brushed her shoulder—three fingers, cool as mushroom flesh. She jerked away. A giggle skittered overhead.
“Do not answer if they speak,” Nyx said.
“I gathered.”
“Do not thank them.”
“Also gathered.”
“Do not bargain.”
“Nyx.”
“Yes?”
“Is there anything we can do?”
They considered. “Breathe.”
Eva let out a sharp laugh. “I’m doing that badly.”
The branch tunnel sloped downward, though the light ahead grew brighter. Roots arched underfoot like ribs. Water dripped upward from pools in the earth, rising in silver beads to vanish into flowers overhead. Rory’s ears popped. The Heartstone warmed, cooled, warmed again, confused or excited or afraid. She wished artifacts came with instruction manuals. Preferably laminated.
Then the tunnel ended.
They stepped into the heart of the grove.
Wonder hit Rory so hard she forgot to be afraid.
The clearing was small compared to the cathedral forest behind them, but it held more sky. Above, the canopy opened onto night. Not twilight, not London cloud, but a velvet black crowded with stars enormous and near. Some moved lazily like fish. The Milky Way spilled silver across the dark, and from it fell a slow rain of light that vanished before touching the ground.
An ancient tree grew at the centre. Its trunk was white as bone, vast enough that ten people holding hands could not have circled it. Its leaves were silver on one side, green on the other, and they turned though there was no wind, flashing like minnows. At its roots, wildflowers bloomed year-round, riotous and bright, circling a clear pool that reflected not the stars above but a sunlit meadow .
Beside the pool stood Isolde Varga.
She looked exactly as Rory remembered and not at all. Silver hair fell to her waist in a shining sheet. Her face was ageless, too delicate to be human, too weary to be young. Pale lavender eyes fixed on Rory as if they had been waiting not minutes, not hours, but centuries . She wore a gown the colour of mist, and where her bare feet touched the earth, the grass did not bend. No footprints marked the damp soil behind her.
“The sparrow returns with a coal beneath her tongue,” Isolde said.
Eva leaned close to Rory. “Is that you?”
“Probably.”
“I hate that I understood it a little.”
Isolde’s gaze shifted to Eva, and a small smile curved her mouth. “The thornbush walks beside her, bleeding all who would pluck the fruit.”
Eva opened her mouth, shut it, then said, “Thank you? Wait—am I allowed to thank her?”
Nyx made a warning sound like wind under a door.
Isolde’s smile sharpened. “Gratitude is a coin. Spend it only when you know the price.”
Rory slid the Fae blade back into its sheath, slowly . “You told me to come.”
“I told the river where the stone would fall. The ripple chose its own shore.”
“Right.” Rory rubbed her thumb against the cold ache in her palm. “Is there a version of this conversation where you just say what you mean?”
“No.”
“At least that was clear.”
The tree’s leaves whispered overhead. In the pool, the reflected meadow darkened. Amber seeped into the water like dye. Tables appeared beneath a warm sky, laden with fruit, roasted meats glazed dark, towers of sugared pastry, goblets full to spilling . Figures moved among them, laughing, feeding, devouring. Dymas. Gluttony. Rory smelled honey and char and wine so rich it made her stomach clench with sudden hunger.
The Heartstone flared.
Pain lanced across her chest. She gasped and caught the pendant through her jumper. Heat burned her palm.
Eva grabbed her elbow. “Rory?”
In the pool, someone turned.
She saw only a silhouette at first, broad-shouldered against the amber light. Then a hand lifted a glass in salute.
The image shattered .
Rory stood breathing hard in the star-lit clearing, the scent of feast smoke still lodged in her throat.
Isolde had not moved.
“The red heart wakes when the hungry door yawns,” the Seer said softly . “A gift is a hook. A hook is a promise. A promise is meat.”
Rory’s pulse hammered. “Who gave it to me?”
Lavender eyes held hers. Fae compulsion meant Isolde could not lie. That did not mean the answer would be kind.
“A hand you have not yet shaken,” Isolde said. “A mouth that knows your name. A prince’s table has many empty chairs.”
Belphegor. Prince of Dymas. The name did not need saying; it settled over the clearing anyway, heavy and perfumed.
Eva whispered a very filthy word.
Nyx’s shadows writhed along the grass, restless. “The Veil thins around her.”
“The Veil remembers wounds,” Isolde replied. “Winter taught it weakness. Summer will teach it pride. But pride is brittle, Nightwhisper.”
Nyx went still at the old name.
Rory looked between them. “Is the grove safe?”
Isolde’s expression gentled, which frightened Rory more than riddles. “No place with doors is safe.”
A laugh escaped Rory, short and humourless. “Brilliant.”
The fireflies in the outer grass surged suddenly blue-white. The ancient tree shivered from root to crown. Far away—or very near—something groaned. Not animal. Not tree. A pressure rolled through the clearing, warm and greedy, carrying the echo of clattering plates and delighted applause.
The Heartstone pulsed once, violently.
In the pool, the amber sky returned for a heartbeat. Beneath it, a door opened.
Rory saw vineyards sprawling over golden hills. Orchards heavy with swollen fruit. Gardens too lush, too bright. And at the centre of it all, a banquet hall with windows like open mouths.
Then the Fae blade at her side flashed cold.
The image snapped shut.
Silence crashed down.
Eva’s hand was still on her elbow. Nyx stood half-dissolved, shadows stretched toward every patch of darkness. Isolde watched Rory with eyes full of terrible patience.
Rory swallowed. Her throat tasted of sugar and smoke.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Eva said.
“No,” Rory agreed, though she could not tell whether she meant the grove or Earth or anywhere touched by that hungry amber light.
Isolde lifted one pale hand and pointed to the ancient tree. At its base, among the flowers, a narrow opening had appeared between two roots. Steps descended into darkness. From below came the soft sound of water, and beneath it, faintly, the chiming they had heard at the threshold.
“The first wonder is the skin,” Isolde said. “The first fear is the door. Deeper roots drink older truths.”
Rory stared at the steps.
Every sensible part of her wanted to turn back, demand the exit, drag Eva with her, and spend the rest of the night above Silas’ bar pretending the world was only bills, takeaway orders, and bad beer. But wonder had its own gravity. So did dread. And somewhere beneath her feet, under star-rain and silver roots, the grove held answers that might not wait for courage.
She drew a breath.
“All right,” she said.
Eva closed her eyes. “I knew you were going to say that.”
Rory managed a crooked smile. “You can wait here.”
“Absolutely not. If you get eaten by poetic tree roots, I’m witnessing it for the police report.”
Nyx drifted to the opening. Violet eyes glowed over the dark stair. “Something below casts no shadow.”
“Is that bad?” Eva asked.
Nyx looked back at them. “It is unusual.”
“That means bad. I speak Nyx now.”
Rory touched the cold hilt of the Fae blade, then the hot Heartstone beneath her jumper. Fire and ice. Hook and knife. Gift and warning.
She stepped between the roots and began to descend. Behind her came Eva’s muttered complaints, Nyx’s whispering dark, and Isolde’s voice, soft as falling petals.
“Mind the feast that offers itself, little sparrow. Hunger is a road. Not all who walk it are fed.”