AI The first sign that the world had gone wrong was the smell.
Not sulphur, not rot, not the scorched-metal stink Aurora had braced herself for when Isolde said the word Hel as if it were a place one might reach by taking a left after the bakery. This was warm butter browning in a pan. Split figs. Honey poured over hot bread. Roasted meat, wine-soaked pears, crushed mint, smoke from applewood, and beneath it all a rich mineral sweetness like rain striking red earth.
Her stomach clenched with sudden, humiliating hunger.
“That,” Aurora said, “feels wildly unfair.”
Nyx stood at her left, a man-shaped absence against the silver-green hush of the grove. Their violet eyes glowed faintly in the shadow of an ancient oak standing stone. “Dymas is rarely fair,” they whispered. Their voice stirred the wildflowers at Aurora’s feet though no breeze touched the clearing. “It is generous instead. There is a difference.”
Isolde smiled as if generosity were the sharpest knife in the drawer.
The Half-Fae seer had brought them to the heart of the hidden grove in Richmond Park just after dusk, though dusk had seemed to arrive three times on the walk in. The sky beyond the trees had dimmed, brightened, and dimmed again. Dew had gathered on Aurora’s boots, vanished, then returned as frost before melting into beads of gold-lit water. Wildflowers bloomed out of season in thick, impossible carpets—bluebells beside winter jasmine, foxgloves nodding among snowdrops, poppies like drops of fresh blood.
Isolde had left no footprints through any of it.
Now she stood before the ring of oak stones, her waist-length silver hair lifted by a wind Aurora could not feel. Her pale lavender eyes fixed on the space between two twisted trunks. The trunks were not stone exactly and not wood either. They had bark ridges and knot scars, but they rose from the earth with the solemn permanence of monoliths. Strange symbols curled under the moss, glimmering when Aurora looked away and dulling when she stared straight at them.
The Heartstone pendant warmed against her chest.
At first it had been a faint pulse , no stronger than a second heartbeat. Now it throbbed through the fabric of her black jumper, deep crimson light leaking between her fingers when she pressed a hand to it. The silver chain felt fever-hot at the back of her neck.
Aurora swallowed. “This is it?”
“The door is not the mouth,” Isolde said. “The mouth is not the hunger. The hunger is not the beast.”
“Right. Brilliant. Very helpful.”
Isolde’s smile widened, but there was no cruelty in it. That somehow made it worse. “If you step through, step lightly . Dymas adores those who arrive empty.”
“I had noodles two hours ago.”
“Not that kind of empty,” Nyx murmured.
Aurora glanced at them. In the dim grove, Nyx’s outline shifted constantly, a living inkblot fraying at the edges. Some nights she could almost forget they had once been human. Tonight, with a portal to Hel breathing pastry-scented temptation into Richmond Park, she could not.
She adjusted the strap of the small satchel at her hip. Inside, wrapped in a scarf, lay the Fae-forged blade Isolde had given her. Moonsilver, leaf-shaped, cold enough to numb her palm even through leather. She had objected to carrying a magical dagger on public transport. Isolde had told her, “The thorn that refuses the rose still bleeds,” and that had apparently settled the matter .
Aurora drew a slow breath. Her black hair stuck damply to her jaw. She flexed her left hand, and the crescent scar on her wrist tugged pale against her skin.
“All right,” she said. “Open it.”
Isolde lifted one hand.
Nothing happened.
Then Aurora blinked, and the world between the oak stones folded inward.
The air shimmered like heat above tarmac. Behind it, the grove stretched and warped, the trees bending away from a point that had no size and too much depth. Aurora’s eyes watered. For one terrible second she saw layers: Richmond Park under nightfall, a field of white ash, a banquet hall crowded with antlered figures, a black ocean under two moons, and behind them all a golden vastness that seemed to be looking back .
The Heartstone flared.
A line of crimson light shot from the pendant to the distortion. The shimmer split with the soft sound of skin tearing. Warm amber radiance poured through.
Aurora’s first instinct was to step back.
Nyx’s shadow-hand touched her elbow. Not gripping. Not pushing. Just there.
“Remember,” they whispered, “do not accept food. Do not give your true name to anything that asks twice. Do not pity what serves with a smile.”
Aurora stared at the opening. “Anything else?”
“If the sky begins to chew, run.”
She looked at them.
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed with what might have been amusement. “That was almost a joke.”
“Needs work.”
Isolde passed through first.
One moment she stood in the grove, silver hair bright beneath the oaks. The next she stepped into amber light and vanished without disturbing a single flower. Nyx followed, becoming smoke at the threshold, their tall shape drawn thin and then re-formed beyond.
Aurora was left with the smell of honey and the pulse of the Heartstone and every sensible instinct she possessed shouting at her to go home, lock the door, and pretend none of this was her life.
She thought of the flat above Silas’ bar. Of rain on the windows. Of Yu-Fei Cheung shouting order numbers over the hiss of the fryer. Of Cardiff, of courtrooms she had never wanted, of Evan’s hand closing around her wrist hard enough to teach her how quickly a room could become a cage.
No.
She had done enough cages.
Aurora stepped through.
Warmth swallowed her whole.
For a heartbeat she was nowhere. Her feet found no ground. Her lungs filled with golden air so rich it felt drinkable. Sound stretched into a long, trembling note—laughter, knives on plates, bees humming, distant thunder, a thousand voices sighing with pleasure and pain.
Then her boots struck soil.
She stumbled, caught herself, and looked up.
The sky over Dymas was amber.
Not sunset amber, not the dirty orange glow of London streetlamps, but a vast translucent gold that seemed poured over the world . Clouds drifted through it in slow, creamy ribbons, their undersides glowing red as pomegranate seeds. There was no visible sun. Light came from everywhere, soft and indulgent, gilding every edge until even shadows looked expensive.
They stood on a hillside above a valley so lush it made Aurora’s chest ache.
Vineyards flowed down the slopes in ordered terraces, their leaves a glossy green too dark to be natural. Heavy clusters of grapes hung among them, each fruit the size of a plum, some purple-black, some pearly white, some glowing faintly from within like lanterns. Beyond the vines stretched orchards where trees bowed under impossible burdens—apples striped blue and silver, peaches furred with gold, pears long and crimson as tongues. Between the groves ran canals of clear water, except the water moved too slowly and reflected things that were not overhead.
Gardens sprawled farther out, stitched with paths of pale stone. Flowers taller than Aurora opened and shut their petals with wet, thoughtful sounds. Something like wheat grew in a field to the west, but each stalk ended in a tiny porcelain cup that chimed when the breeze passed.
And at the center of the valley stood a city.
No, not a city. A table pretending to be one.
That was the first thought that came to her, absurd and undeniable. Long colonnades spread like banquet boards. Domes rose like glazed loaves. Towers twisted upward in stacks of tiered platters, their balconies crowded with trailing vines and bright awnings. Waterfalls of wine-dark liquid spilled from stone mouths into basins where steam curled up fragrant and pink. Roads wound between buildings in loops and spirals, polished smooth as serving trays.
From somewhere far below came music: strings, drums, flutes, and a deep rhythmic pounding like a giant pestle grinding spice in a mortar.
Aurora forgot to breathe.
“Dymas,” Nyx said beside her.
Their voice sounded thinner here, less at home in all this lavish light. Their shadow-body held its shape, but the edges smoked faintly where amber radiance touched them.
Isolde stood a few paces ahead in grass that glittered with dew. Her bare feet made no impression. “Gluttony dreams with an open mouth.”
Aurora pressed a hand over the Heartstone. It had settled into a steady warmth now, almost content. “This is Hel?”
“One of its realms,” Nyx said. “Do not let beauty make you careless.”
“I’m not careless.”
A bird flew overhead. At least, it had wings. Four of them, lacquer-red and translucent as sugar glass. Its long beak carried a wriggling silver fish, though there was no sea in sight. As it passed, it cried out in a sound exactly like a cork popping from a bottle.
Aurora watched it vanish over the vineyards. “I’m revising my definition of careless as we speak.”
They began down the hill.
The path was made of crushed shells that shone like mother-of-pearl. With each step, it released a different scent. Rosemary. Charred lemon. Cinnamon. Freshly baked bread. Aurora tried breathing through her mouth and immediately tasted vanilla at the back of her tongue.
“Absolutely not,” she muttered.
“What?” Nyx asked.
“This place is trying to season me.”
“A perceptive observation.”
“Again, don’t love that.”
Isolde walked ahead, unhurried. Her silver hair streamed behind her though the air remained still. Now and then she paused to look at a flower, a stone, a curl of mist rising from the grass, as if listening to something Aurora could not hear .
The farther they descended, the louder the valley became. Bees the size of thumbs moved drunkenly among blossoms, their bodies banded in black and molten gold. Somewhere in the orchard, branches creaked under fruit and something laughed with too many throats. The canals whispered as they passed, not with water sounds but with voices . Aurora caught fragments.
A little more.
Just taste.
You deserve—
She stopped.
A canal ran beside the path, narrow and perfectly straight. Its surface shone clear as glass, but instead of reflecting the amber sky, it showed a kitchen.
Not any kitchen she knew. This one was cavernous, lit by blue flame and crowded with figures in white coats. Human figures. Men and women chopped, stirred, plated, sweated. Their faces were drawn with exhaustion, but their hands moved with frightening precision. At the far end, a woman with cropped grey hair lifted a spoon to her mouth, tasted a sauce, and began to cry silently while still whisking.
Aurora crouched before she thought better of it. “Are they alive?”
Nyx stopped behind her. “Some.”
The woman in the reflection turned sharply , as if she had heard. Her eyes met Aurora’s through the canal.
Help me, she mouthed.
The surface rippled. The kitchen vanished, replaced by amber clouds.
Aurora’s fingers curled against the shell path. A coldness cut through all the warmth and sweetness, clean as a blade.
“Helbound souls,” Nyx said softly . “Contracts. Debts. Bargains made in hunger.”
Aurora stood. The smell of bread had turned cloying. “And everyone just eats?”
“In Dymas, everything is consumed. Food. Art. Skill. Time. Grief.”
Isolde looked back at her. “The feast remembers every hand that fed it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the truest one you will get.”
Aurora wanted to argue. She wanted to demand names, rules, loopholes, a legal framework she could pry apart with enough pressure. But the canal murmured again, and this time the voices sounded like chewing .
She moved on.
They entered the first orchard under an arch of braided branches. The temperature changed at once. The hillside warmth softened into a damp, green hush. Leaves overlapped overhead, filtering the amber light into shifting coins. Fruit hung low enough to brush Aurora’s shoulder. One apple turned as she passed, following her with a small puckered hollow where its stem should have been.
She gave it a wide berth.
Nyx drifted beside her, their feet not always touching ground. “The orchards are old. Older than most courts in Hel.”
“How old?”
“Old enough to have learned patience.”
“That’s not ominous at all.”
A peach dropped from a branch ahead.
It landed on the path without bruising. Its skin split neatly down the seam. Steam rose from inside, carrying the scent of summer in Cardiff: sun-warmed pavement, cut grass, her mother’s kitchen window open while bara brith cooled on the counter. For one aching second Aurora was ten years old again, hungry after school, safe before she knew safety could be temporary.
Her throat tightened.
The peach opened wider.
Inside was not flesh but a small room. A memory, perfect and lit from within. Her mother turned from the counter, younger than Aurora was now, smiling.
Rory, cariad, wash your hands.
Aurora took one step toward it.
Cold clamped around her wrist.
She gasped. The Fae blade had burned through the scarf inside her satchel, its chill biting her skin where her hand had fallen near the flap. Pain snapped the world back into focus. The peach on the path pulsed wetly. The thing wearing her mother’s voice smiled too wide.
Nyx was suddenly between Aurora and the fruit, no longer drifting. Their shadow stretched tall and jagged, violet eyes bright.
“Do not,” they said, and the whisper cracked like ice .
The peach collapsed in on itself. The room winked out. All that remained was a rotten pit crawling with tiny white worms.
Aurora backed away, heart hammering. “It knew that.”
“Dymas knows appetite,” Isolde said from beneath a tree heavy with silver pears. “Memory is only another tongue.”
Aurora rubbed her wrist. The small crescent scar there had gone pale. Anger arrived a beat after fear, hot and welcome. “If this realm tries to emotionally blackmail me with baked goods again, I’m setting fire to something.”
Nyx’s outline softened. “A healthy response.”
“Was that almost approval?”
“Do not become greedy.”
Despite herself, she laughed once. It sounded shaky, but it was hers.
They pressed deeper through the orchard. The path narrowed, then split into three. Isolde chose the middle without hesitation. When Aurora looked back, the other two paths had vanished behind a curtain of hanging vines. She decided not to mention it. Some observations did not deserve encouragement.
Beyond the orchard lay a garden unlike any she had ever seen.
It spread in concentric circles around a dry fountain carved from black stone. Beds overflowed with herbs and flowers, but none stayed still. Basil leaves folded and unfolded like hands in prayer. Lavender stalks bent away from Nyx and toward Isolde. Red flowers with glossy lips whispered recipes to one another in a language Aurora almost understood. Mushrooms grew in clusters beneath silver cages, their caps painted with tiny scenes of banquets and wars.
At the fountain’s edge, a statue reclined on one elbow.
It depicted a woman—or perhaps a demon, though Aurora was learning those categories were less useful than she had hoped—with a serene, heavy-lidded face and six arms. Each hand held something different: a pomegranate, a knife, a goblet, a chain, a book, and a human heart. Time had worn the statue smooth in places, but the mouth remained sharp. Not smiling. Waiting.
“Who is that?” Aurora asked.
Isolde stopped beside the fountain. For the first time since they had entered Dymas, the seer’s expression lost its dreamy distance.
“An old hunger with a borrowed face.”
Nyx stared at the statue. “This predates Belphegor’s kitchens.”
Aurora looked between them. “Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Nyx whispered, “Dymas was not always a realm of feasts.”
The garden seemed to lean closer.
Aurora stepped toward the fountain. There was no water in its basin, only a layer of pale dust. At first she thought the dust was ash. Then she saw the grains were tiny bones—fish spines, bird ribs, delicate finger joints no longer than matchsticks. In the center of the basin, half-buried, something crimson glimmered.
The Heartstone answered with a pulse .
Aurora reached for the dagger in her satchel. The moonsilver hilt numbed her fingers, but she welcomed the bite. She used the blade’s tip to stir the bone dust aside.
A shard lay beneath.
It was the same deep red as her pendant, though duller, unpolished. Roughly triangular. No larger than a broken piece of boiled sweet. It glowed faintly when the blade touched it, and a thread of warmth climbed the moonsilver like blood rising through water.
Isolde inhaled.
Nyx’s shadow drew tight. “Rory.”
“I’m not touching it.” Aurora kept her voice steady with effort. Her bright blue eyes fixed on the shard. “But I’m guessing this is important.”
“The heart breaks before the door opens,” Isolde said softly . “The little stone remembers the mountain. The mountain remembers the mouth.”
Aurora closed her eyes for half a second. “Please, just once, use a noun like a normal person.”
“I cannot lie.”
“You can be annoying with perfect honesty. I’ve noticed.”
A sound came from the far side of the garden.
Metal striking porcelain .
Once. Twice.
Then applause.
Aurora straightened slowly .
Across the rings of restless flowers, beyond a screen of cypress trees trimmed into spirals, figures moved along a raised terrace. They wore long aprons over elegant clothes. Their faces were hidden behind polished masks shaped like smiling mouths. Each carried a tray. On the trays sat covered dishes, silver domes gleaming under the amber sky.
The masked figures stopped as one.
Every smiling mouth turned toward the fountain.
Toward Aurora.
The Heartstone grew hot enough to hurt.
Nyx dissolved at the edges, spreading across the ground like spilled ink. Isolde did not move, but the wildflowers nearest her bent flat as if under a sudden gale.
One of the masked servers lifted a hand in greeting. The gesture was graceful. Welcoming.
From behind its porcelain smile came a voice as smooth as cream.
“Honored guest,” it called. “You have come such a long way. Won’t you dine?”
Aurora’s hand tightened on the Fae blade until cold sank into bone.
The valley below glittered with vineyards and golden roofs. Music swelled from the distant city, joyous and grand, and for one dizzy moment the whole realm seemed to breathe in. Waiting for her answer. Waiting to see what kind of hunger she had brought with her.
Aurora looked at the masked figures, the ancient statue, the bone-dry fountain, the crimson shard half-buried at her feet.
Then she smiled without showing her teeth.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m working.”