AI Aurora’s boot sank into something that breathed.
She jerked back, one hand clamping over her mouth before the sound in her throat could escape. The ground under the old oak arch bulged once, then settled, as if whatever lay beneath the moss had rolled over in its sleep.
“Absolutely not.”
Her voice came out thin, swallowed by the trees.
The path behind her had gone.
A minute ago, she had pushed through bracken from the deer track in Richmond Park, following the strange heat of the Heartstone Pendant against her chest. She had counted the landmarks Yu-Fei had made her memorise after pressing the takeaway bag into her hands with too much force and no eye contact: split beech, fallen rail, three blackthorn bushes, then the stones. She had stepped between the ancient oak standing stones because a note in the delivery bag had told her to, because the handwriting matched the note that had first arrived with the pendant, because the words YOU OWE YOUR LIFE TO THIS had sat under her ribs all day like a second heartbeat.
Now the trees pressed close behind her, their trunks packed so tight they made a wall.
Aurora took the small torch from her coat pocket and clicked it on.
The beam flickered over bark, moss, white roots, and flowers.
Flowers.
At night, in the hidden middle of Richmond Park, wildflowers bloomed as if someone had forced spring to kneel there and held a knife to its throat. Bluebells, foxgloves, primroses, small pale blooms she did not know, all open, all facing her.
The pendant pulsed against her sternum.
Warm. Warm. Hot.
She hooked a finger under the silver chain and lifted the deep crimson gemstone from beneath her jumper. It glowed faintly, not enough to light the clearing, just enough to stain her fingertips red. Roughly the size of her thumbnail, it looked harmless until it beat against her skin.
Tick-tock.
Aurora froze.
Not a clock. Not exactly. A wet, wooden sound came from somewhere ahead, two knocks, a pause, two knocks.
Tick-tock.
She angled the torch between the trees.
The Fae Grove opened beyond the standing stones, a hidden clearing that should not have fitted inside the park. The space stretched wider than the map allowed. Ancient oaks ringed it, thick and knotted, their branches plaiting overhead. The standing stones marked the boundary in a broken circle, grey shapes sunk into the earth like old teeth. Some had oak roots wrapped round them. Some had faces in the grain where bark had swallowed stone.
At the far side of the grove, a lantern hung from a low branch.
It had not been there before.
Aurora licked her lips. Her mouth tasted of pennies.
“Right. That’s inviting.”
The lantern swung without wind. Its flame burned green.
She could leave.
Except the path had closed behind her, and the last note had said: Bring the Heartstone to Isolde’s grove when it wakes. Come alone. Speak to no one. Do not let the warmth turn to pain.
The warmth had turned to pain ten minutes ago, outside the treeline, when she had still had the sense to turn back. It had seared her skin so sharply she had doubled over beside a bin full of dog bags while a jogger crossed the path to avoid her. The moment she faced the trees again, the pain had eased.
So. Not a request, then.
Aurora stepped into the grove.
The moss gave under her boots with a soft, sucking sound. Each footfall left a dark print that filled slowly , not with water, but with a gleam like oil . She kept the torch low and avoided the flowers. She had read enough old stories as a child in Cardiff to know that pretty things in hidden clearings rarely thanked you for trampling them.
Her left wrist prickled.
She rubbed the small crescent-shaped scar there with her thumb. A childhood accident, her mother always called it, in the bright, brisk tone adults used when they had agreed never to answer follow-up questions. Hot pan, kitchen floor, poor little Rory, such a fright. Aurora remembered none of it, only the white curve that tugged when rain came, and the way her father’s face had closed the one time she had asked why the scar looked more like a bite.
A twig snapped to her right.
The torch beam shot sideways.
Nothing.
The flowers trembled .
Not all of them. Just one patch of foxgloves, tall and speckled, their bells nodding in a neat line as if something small had passed between them.
“Fox,” Aurora said.
The grove gave her back the word, but not as an echo .
“Fox.”
It came from ahead.
Her stomach tightened. She held the torch higher.
“Who’s there?”
The trees listened.
No birds. No distant traffic. No London hum. The silence had depth, thick enough to press against her ears. Then, from behind one of the oak standing stones, came the drag of something across moss.
Scrape.
Pause.
Scrape.
Aurora slid one hand into her coat pocket and found her keys. The longest key stuck between her fingers. Ridiculous weapon. Familiar weight .
“Name first, weird entrance second.”
No answer.
The lantern flame shrank, then flared.
Something stood beside it.
Aurora stopped so hard her knees jarred. The figure had the height of a child and the stillness of a coat hung on a peg. Its head sloped wrong, long at the back, narrow at the chin. The torch struck it, and the light seemed to bend around the shape instead of landing.
She blinked.
The figure became a split branch.
The lantern hung from it. Empty space around it. Nothing else.
“Brilliant.”
Her breath shook once. She made it stop. Panic had a shape, and she knew it well. It had lived in flats with thin walls. It had stood in doorways after midnight and asked where she thought she was going . It had smiled while blocking exits. Aurora had learned the trick: name the room, name the door, name the weapon, name what could be used if the weapon failed.
Clearing. No door. Keys. Torch. Pendant. Stones. Trees.
The pendant beat faster.
Tick-tock.
This time the sound came from behind her.
Aurora did not turn at once. She watched the lantern flame. It leaned towards her, green and eager.
Tick-tock.
Two knocks. Pause. Two knocks.
She turned.
One of the oak standing stones had moved.
It stood three paces closer than before. She knew it. She had passed it on her left, a squat, crooked thing with a seam down the middle. Now it waited behind her, the seam wet and dark. The bark around it had split into a mouth-like hollow.
Her torchlight quivered over it.
Inside the hollow, teeth of pale wood lined the gap.
Aurora backed away.
The moss behind her shifted.
She spun, and the torch beam caught a flash of black between two trees. Shoulder-length hair. A pale face. Bright blue eyes.
Her own.
The woman between the trees wore Aurora’s face, but not her expression. It smiled with all the wrong muscles, lips peeling too far from the teeth. It lifted its left hand.
A crescent scar marked the wrist.
Aurora’s fingers went numb round the keys.
“No.”
The double tilted its head.
“Rory.”
Hearing the name in her own voice did something worse than fear. It turned the air intimate.
“No one calls me that here.”
“Eva does.”
Aurora’s skin crawled. The double stepped from behind the oak, and the flowers around its boots bent away. It wore her black coat, her faded jeans, even the scuffed boots she had bought second-hand in Camden. But where Aurora held herself tight, ready to bolt or bite, the thing moved loosely , as if its bones hung from hooks.
“Eva told you to come to London. Eva told you Silas had a room. Eva told you Evan would never find you above a bar.”
Aurora’s mouth dried.
The thing took another step.
“Eva screams when they peel her shadow off the wall.”
Aurora lunged before she had decided to move.
The double vanished.
Her keys cut through empty air. She staggered into the foxgloves and crushed several underfoot. A smell rose from them, sweet at first, then rotten, like fruit left in a warm bin. Tiny pale insects poured from the broken bells and scattered across her boots.
The lantern went out.
Darkness folded over the grove.
Aurora clicked the torch off, then on.
Nothing.
Off, on.
The beam returned, weak and yellow. The clearing had changed.
The standing stones no longer formed a circle. They stood in two rows ahead of her, like the ribs of a huge beast half-buried in the earth. The trees leaned over them, branches interlocked. At the end of the row, a gap opened into a narrow path lined with year-round flowers, each bloom turned inward as if watching a procession .
The Heartstone Pendant pulsed hard enough to hurt.
She swore under her breath and lifted it. The crimson glow brightened towards the path.
“Course. Straight into the nightmare corridor.”
A sound came from the trees to her left.
A delivery bell.
Not a bicycle bell. The small brass bell above the Golden Empress door in Soho, bright and sharp. Ding-ding. She heard the hiss of oil, Yu-Fei shouting Cantonese into the kitchen, the slap of takeaway containers on the counter.
Then Yu-Fei’s voice, close enough to touch.
“Rory, order up. Move your arse, girl. Customer waits, ghost eats.”
Aurora shut her eyes.
“Cheap.”
“Cheap saves lives.”
The voice came again from the dark, brisk and clipped, exactly right. Yu-Fei had a way of making every sentence sound like both insult and blessing.
Aurora opened her eyes and kept walking.
The path narrowed. The moss turned to packed black earth. Roots crossed it in ridges, slick underfoot. On either side, flowers brushed her coat and left damp streaks. Their petals quivered when she passed, and some of them whispered.
Carter.
Laila.
Aurora.
Malphora.
She stopped at the last name.
The grove stopped with her.
No rustle. No scrape. No tick-tock.
“What did you call me?”
The flowers bowed their heads.
The name had not sounded like a nickname . It had dropped into the air with weight , old and ugly, a key thrown onto a table.
Ahead, the path opened into a smaller clearing.
A flat stone sat at its centre, waist-high and broad enough to lay a body on. Someone had carved rings into its surface, hundreds of them, circle inside circle, spiralling towards a small round hollow. The hollow shone black.
Beside the stone lay a white paper bag.
Golden Empress. Red dragon logo. Grease stain in the corner.
Aurora approached it with the care of someone reaching into a trap. The smell hit first: soy, chilli, roasted garlic. Pork dumplings. Her last delivery of the night, the order that had never had an address, just a name on the receipt.
A. Carter.
Her own handwriting marked the side of the bag.
She had no memory of writing it.
The torch beam slid across the flat stone. The carved rings glistened wetly. In the hollow, something moved under the black surface.
Aurora set the bag down on the edge of the stone.
The pendant flared.
Heat speared through her chest. She hissed and grabbed the chain, but the silver bit into her neck. The crimson gemstone dragged itself forward, drawn towards the hollow like a magnet.
The black surface trembled .
Tick-tock.
From beneath the stone.
Tick-tock.
From the trees.
Tick-tock.
From inside her skull.
“Enough.”
Aurora yanked the chain over her head. The clasp scratched her nape, caught in her hair, then snapped free. The pendant dangled from her fist, crimson light painting the carved rings, and the grove inhaled.
Every flower turned towards the Heartstone.
The hollow in the stone opened.
Not like water. Like an eye.
A round black pupil split the stone’s centre, and within it moved a depth that had no place in a London park. Far below, flames burned without colour. Shapes crossed in front of them, long and thin, walking on too many joints. The pendant throbbed in answer, warm, hungry, almost pleased.
Aurora’s fingers tightened round the chain.
“No one said portal.”
A laugh came from behind her.
This voice did not copy anyone she knew. It sounded scraped from leaves and old bone, polite as a knife laid beside a dinner plate.
“Most refuse the invitation if one uses the proper terms.”
Aurora turned slowly .
A woman stood at the edge of the clearing.
At first glance, she looked elegant, tall and wrapped in a dark green gown that trailed over the moss. Then Aurora’s eyes adjusted. The gown had veins. Tiny roots stitched it to the ground. The woman’s hair hung in pale ropes, not hair at all, but fine white fibres like fungus . Her face held beauty the way a museum holds dead things: behind glass, labelled, untouchable. Her eyes had no whites. Only deep green, ringed with gold.
“Isolde, I presume.”
The woman smiled.
“A borrowed name. You may use it.”
“I was told to bring the Heartstone.”
“So you have.”
“By an unknown benefactor with a flair for creepy stationery.”
“Dymas always did enjoy theatre.”
The name struck the pendant. It flashed once, sharp as a camera bulb.
Aurora held it away from her body.
“Dymas gave me this?”
“He gave you many things.”
“Specifics. I’m fond of those.”
Isolde’s gaze dropped to Aurora’s left wrist.
The crescent scar burned.
Aurora curled her hand into a fist.
“No.”
“You were smaller then. Softer. Your mother sang in Welsh while she cleaned the blood from the tiles. Your father argued law with creatures who have no courts.”
The grove leaned closer.
Aurora stepped back until her hip touched the flat stone. The black eye in the hollow widened behind her. Heat licked the back of her coat.
“You don’t get to use my parents as set dressing.”
“Humans love ownership. My wound. My name. My grief.” Isolde moved without lifting her feet, roots pulling free and sinking again. “Yet you carry a stone from Dymas and walk under my oaks when Hel mouths open beneath London. What shall we call that, Aurora Carter? Coincidence?”
“Call it poor life choices and get to the point.”
Isolde’s smile thinned.
“The point lies in your hand. Feed the gate.”
The pendant tugged hard. The chain slipped across Aurora’s palm and cut a red line into her skin.
“Feed it what?”
“Warmth. Blood. Memory. A little of each. Enough to seal it.”
“And if I don’t?”
The black eye behind her blinked.
The clearing changed.
For one instant, Aurora saw the grove filled with people. Not people. Shadows wearing human outlines, packed shoulder to shoulder between the standing stones. Some wore modern coats. Some wore armour. Some had antlers stitched through their skulls. All faced the hollow.
Then the vision snapped away.
Something scratched beneath the stone.
Scritch-scratch.
A fingernail sound.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Aurora looked down.
Hairline cracks spread across the flat stone from the hollow. A smell seeped up, cold ash and damp iron. Her torch flickered . In the black eye, one of the long shapes lifted its head.
It had no face.
It had heard her.
Isolde’s voice softened.
“Place the Heartstone in the hollow.”
Aurora’s mind moved fast, arranging pieces. Unknown benefactor. Pain near the grove. A portal to Hel. An artifact that warmed near it. A Fae creature asking for blood, memory, warmth . No. Not asking.
Bargaining without naming the price.
“What happens to me after I seal it?”
Isolde’s fingers flexed. Thin roots pierced the moss round her bare feet.
“London keeps breathing.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Clever girls rarely enjoy answers.”
The stone cracked louder.
A black finger slipped through.
It looked too long, jointed in three places, its skin slick and tight over bone. It hooked the edge of the hollow and pressed. The carved rings around it smoked.
Aurora’s body moved before fear could root her in place.
She snatched the Golden Empress bag from the stone, ripped it open, and flung hot chilli oil across the black finger.
The thing below shrieked.
The sound tore through the grove and sent every flower flat against the earth. Isolde recoiled, one elegant hand flying to her face. The portal convulsed. The pendant jerked towards it, but Aurora wrapped the silver chain round her fist and held on.
“Yu-Fei was right. Customer waits, ghost eats.”
Isolde’s head turned slowly back.
Her beauty had slipped. Beneath it, bark split her cheek. Something pale moved inside.
“Child.”
Aurora grabbed the carton of dumplings and hurled that too.
The carton burst against the stone. Dumplings scattered into the hollow, sizzling as they touched the black surface. Steam rose, thick and fragrant, and for a heartbeat the portal stuttered.
Not sealed.
Distracted.
Good enough.
Aurora sprinted.
The path between the standing stones had vanished, but she aimed for the nearest gap in the trees. Branches whipped her face. Roots rose under her boots. She jumped one, skidded on moss, slammed shoulder-first into an oak, and kept moving. Behind her, Isolde spoke a word that made the air fold.
The grove answered.
The standing stones shifted with grinding sighs. Trees stepped into her path. Flowers snapped shut as she passed, their stems lashing at her ankles. One wrapped round her boot and held.
Aurora hit the ground hard. Pain burst through her knee. The pendant flew from her fist but the chain stayed wrapped round her fingers, dragging her arm forward.
Something crawled from the stone behind her.
She heard it.
Not the scrape of one body. Many limbs. Wet pressure. Patient.
Scrape-click. Scrape-click. Scrape-click.
Aurora rolled, dug her key into the flower stem at her ankle, and sawed until it snapped. Sap spurted black over her jeans. The smell of rot filled her mouth.
“Rory.”
Her own voice came from above.
The double crouched on a branch over her, hair hanging down, blue eyes wide and bright. It smiled upside down.
“You always run.”
Aurora kicked the trunk. The branch shook. The double dropped, landed on all fours, and unfolded too far, spine rising like a tent pole.
Aurora lurched back.
The pendant burned white-hot in her grip.
The double’s smile faltered.
Aurora swung the Heartstone.
The crimson gemstone struck the thing’s cheek. Light burst through its skin, showing bark, worms, and a row of borrowed teeth beneath. It screamed in Aurora’s voice, high and furious, and staggered into the foxgloves.
The grove went mad.
Every tree began to knock.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The sound pounded from trunk to trunk, faster, louder, until Aurora’s teeth ached. She ran between two standing stones just as they ground towards each other. Stone scraped her coat. Bark tore her sleeve. The crescent scar on her wrist blazed as if something had bitten it anew.
Ahead, between the trees, she saw the deer track.
Real earth. A broken rail. The ordinary black shape of a litter bin.
The exit.
Then the ground opened in front of it.
A seam split the moss from left to right. Black light poured up. Not darkness, light, a shining absence that made the trees look flat and false. Fingers hooked the edge. Long arms followed, then the smooth crown of a head with no face.
Aurora stopped so fast she almost fell into it.
Behind her, Isolde entered the narrow path, roots dragging, gown whispering over crushed flowers. The thing from the stone crawled at her side, unfolding limb by limb.
The faceless head in the seam turned towards Aurora.
The Heartstone Pendant pulsed once.
The thing in the ground pulsed back.
Isolde raised one root-thin hand.
“Now, Aurora Carter. Choose which mouth takes you.”