AI Rory hit the ground shoulder-first, skidded over wet moss, and nearly lost the dagger before Nyx hauled her upright by the back of her jacket.
“Left,” Nyx breathed.
She didn’t argue. Something enormous cracked through the air where her head had been, a black root as thick as a lamppost, barbed with thorns that shone like old teeth. It slammed into the earth, split the moss, and withdrew with a slow, hungry scrape.
“Good news,” Rory gasped, clutching the Heartstone pendant through her shirt. “Not Richmond Park.”
Behind her, Isolde stepped through the tear in the Veil as if she had crossed a parlour threshold. Her silver hair floated around her waist, untouched by wind or panic, and her bare feet left no mark on the moss. Her pale lavender eyes tracked the root as it vanished into the dark green tangle ahead.
“The door remembers blood,” she said.
“That is not an answer to anything I like.”
Nyx’s form thinned, the edges of them shredding into smoke. Violet eyes burned in the hollow of their face.
“It is Dymas-adjacent. Not Dymas itself.”
Rory looked around despite herself.
The grove behind them had vanished.
No London traffic. No deer paths. No ancient oak standing stones circling Isolde’s hidden clearing in Richmond Park. Only vast, leaning trees with trunks the colour of bruised copper and leaves like translucent skin. Veins pulsed inside each leaf, slow and red, carrying some light that didn’t come from any sun. The ground beneath her boots yielded like flesh, then firmed under pressure. Every footstep released a faint scent of crushed mint, warm bread, and something metallic underneath.
The Heartstone pendant burned against her breastbone.
“That’s comforting ,” Rory said. “If the murder forest has a postcode, I’m writing a complaint.”
“Keep your blade out.”
“I’d planned to admire it later over tea.”
The Fae-Forged Blade sat cold in her right hand, slender and leaf-shaped, its moonsilver edge drinking in the strange light. Isolde had pressed it into Rory’s palm before the Veil tore open, with the same expression people used when handing over bad news in a hospital corridor.
A sound drifted through the trees.
Not birdsong. Cutlery.
Thousands of forks striking thousands of plates, far away and just out of rhythm.
Tick-tock, clink-clank, scrape.
Rory swallowed. Her mouth tasted of sugared smoke.
“Tell me we’re not near one of Belphegor’s dinner parties.”
Nyx angled their head.
“Near is a mortal comfort. Here, distance has appetites.”
“Right. I’ll put that on the complaint too.”
Isolde moved ahead, her long silver hair trailing over a mantle of pale cloth that looked woven from cobweb and milk. She touched two fingers to a hanging vine. It curled around her wrist like a curious snake, then recoiled.
“The path that feeds does not always bite. The path that starves does not always spare.”
Rory stared at the vine.
“Do you practise being unhelpful, or is it a gift?”
Isolde’s mouth curved, not quite a smile .
“The truth rarely fits in a human pocket.”
They pushed deeper.
The forest parted in layers rather than clearings. First came the fleshy moss and copper trunks. Then a corridor of pale blue reeds rose on either side, tall as buildings, each reed chiming when brushed. Rory’s sleeve grazed one, and a clean note rang out, bright enough to make her teeth ache. Nyx slid beside her in shadow form, careful not to touch anything.
The reeds weren’t hollow. Shapes drifted inside them.
Tiny figures moved behind the blue skin, no bigger than Rory’s thumb. They carried baskets, climbed ladders, stirred vats, bent over tables. One pressed its face against the reed wall as Rory passed. It had too many eyes and a chef’s white hat made from folded petals.
“Helbound souls?” Rory whispered.
Nyx’s voice came from the shade beneath a reed.
“Fragments. Impressions. Dymas keeps the skills it buys.”
The little figure slapped a hand against the inside of the reed. No sound came through, but its mouth opened in a long scream.
Rory stepped closer.
The Fae blade flashed.
Every reed in the corridor fell silent.
“Carter,” Nyx warned.
“I see it.”
“No. It sees you.”
The tiny figure inside the reed had changed. Its eyes no longer begged. They fixed on the Heartstone pendant beneath Rory’s shirt. All along the corridor, small faces turned in perfect unison.
A hundred mouths shaped one word without sound.
Malphora.
Rory’s fingers tightened around the dagger.
“That name again.”
Isolde looked back over one shoulder. For the first time since they had entered the place, the seer’s ageless face sharpened.
“A seed name. A name buried before its owner knows the tree.”
“Still allergic to simple answers, then.”
The blue reeds began to bend inward.
Nyx became solid in a rush of darkness, a tall humanoid silhouette between Rory and the nearest wall. Their hand passed through one reed, and the thing blackened from within. The trapped little chef crumbled into sparks.
“Move.”
The corridor rang as the reeds bowed lower, chiming in panicked, beautiful discord. Rory ran. Notes struck her skin like sleet. One reed snapped across her path, spilling thick golden fluid that smelled of butter, wine, and rot. She vaulted it, landed badly, recovered, and kept moving.
Isolde never seemed to hurry. Yet she stayed ahead, white feet gliding over the moss without disturbing it.
The corridor ended in a sudden drop.
Rory windmilled at the edge. Nyx caught her wrist.
Below spread a city.
Not a city built by hands that understood mercy.
Terraces spiralled down inside a vast bowl of stone and root. Amber light glowed from no visible source, warming towers of black glass, orchards suspended upside down, canals of ruby liquid, and plazas set with tables long enough to seat armies. Silver bridges arched between platforms like fish bones. Gardens grew in mid-air, their soil held by braided roots that flexed and tightened, flexed and tightened, as if the whole place breathed.
At the centre stood a banquet hall carved into the ribcage of some colossal beast. Its curved bones rose like cathedral arches. Between them fluttered banners of red silk , each marked with a swollen golden mouth.
The sound of cutlery rolled up from below.
Rory forgot to breathe.
“Dymas,” she said.
“An old threshold to it.” Nyx released her wrist but didn’t move far. “A place between the grove and the realm. A tasting room.”
“Of course Hel has a tasting room.”
Isolde crouched near the edge and touched the stone. A ring of tiny white flowers burst open around her fingers, bloomed, blackened, and sank back into dust.
“The prince’s hunger brushes this place. It does not yet turn its face.”
“Yet,” Rory said. “Love that.”
A bridge waited to their right, narrow and white, formed from interlocking bones. It had no rail. On the far side, a terrace held a grove of trees heavy with fruit that glowed deep crimson, each one roughly the size of a heart.
The pendant pulsed .
Once.
Twice.
The fruit answered.
Rory felt the beat in her teeth.
“Please tell me those are pomegranates.”
“They are not pomegranates,” Nyx said.
“Wonderful. Brilliant. Why start lying now?”
Isolde lifted her gaze to the crimson orchard.
“What was stolen from Dymas calls to what was planted in Dymas.”
Rory pulled the Heartstone out from under her shirt. The deep crimson gemstone shone against its silver chain, warm enough to redden her fingers. Inside it, something moved like a coal under breath.
“You said this was given by an unknown benefactor. Any chance that benefactor was a generous, non-murderous jewellery enthusiast?”
Nyx stared at the pendant.
“No.”
“Had to ask.”
A groan shuddered through the bowl-city.
The terraces below shifted. Tables slid back. Chairs scraped stone. Far beneath them, figures in pale uniforms stepped from doorways and alcoves. Chefs. Servants. Diners with distended bellies and antlered masks. Some moved like people. Others dragged themselves on too many hands.
None looked up.
Not at first.
Rory tucked the pendant away.
Too late.
Every face below snapped towards the cliff.
The silence hit harder than the noise.
Nyx’s shadow spread across the bone bridge.
“They have scented the Heartstone.”
“Then we go back.”
Rory turned.
The reed corridor had sealed behind them. The tall blue stalks had woven themselves into a wall, smooth and pulsing, no seam left in it. A dozen tiny faces pressed against the inside, watching.
One smiled with too many teeth.
Rory’s mind moved fast, chopping panic into pieces she could use. No exit behind. City below. Fruit ahead. Pendant reactive. Fae blade cut wards. Isolde spoke in riddles but never lies. Nyx could move through shadow, but Rory and Isolde had bones, and bones had limits.
“Isolde. That orchard. Is it a way out or a way in?”
“Yes.”
Rory shut her eyes for one sharp second.
“I am going to push you into a canal.”
“The drowned feast on patience.”
“Nyx?”
“The orchard may contain a gate. Or a lure. Often both.”
“Good. We’re back to normal awful.”
A clatter rose below. The servants had begun to climb. Not stairs, not ladders. They flowed up the terraces, over tables and walls, faster than bodies should allow. Plates hung from their necks like collars. Knives jutted from their sleeves. Their faces shone with grease.
Rory stepped onto the bridge.
Bone shifted under her boot, slick but solid.
“Carter,” Nyx hissed.
“Unless you’ve got a taxi in your shadow pockets, we’re taking the horrible bridge.”
Isolde followed. The bridge played notes under her bare feet, soft and low, like a cello heard through a wall.
Halfway across, the bridge woke.
The bones flexed. Vertebrae rolled beneath Rory’s boots. A rib near her ankle opened a small mouth and whispered in a language that made her stomach cramp with hunger.
She stabbed it.
The Fae blade sank into bone as if into cheese. Blue-white light burst from the wound. The whole bridge convulsed.
“Lovely blade,” Rory said through clenched teeth.
“Do not let it taste too much,” Isolde called from behind her.
“That warning needed to come earlier.”
Nyx surged past them, no longer walking. Their shadow stretched ahead, pinning the far end of the bridge in place. Violet eyes flared as servants reached the near side behind them. One leapt onto the bridge, jaw unhinging, a carving fork held like a spear.
Rory spun.
The fork scraped sparks from her blade. The servant’s face had no skin, only a glaze of honey over muscle. Its mouth worked around words.
“Course one. Course one. Course one.”
“Put me down as vegetarian.”
She kicked its knee. The joint bent backwards with a wet snap. It didn’t fall. Isolde touched two fingers to its forehead.
The servant froze.
“The full cup cracks first.”
Its skull split like an overripe plum. Steam poured out, scented with rosemary.
Rory gagged.
“Warn me before you do kitchen witchcraft.”
“I did.”
“No, you said crockery philosophy.”
The bridge bucked again. Behind them, more servants swarmed onto it. Ahead, Nyx’s pinned shadows tore loose from the far terrace. The crimson orchard rustled though no wind touched it. Fruit swung from black branches, each one beating in time with Rory’s pendant.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
They reached the far side as the first section of bridge collapsed.
Bone segments fell into the amber depths below. Servants tumbled with them, limbs flailing, plates chiming. The sound went on too long.
Rory stumbled beneath the first tree.
The orchard smelled intoxicating.
Roast meat. Apples split with cinnamon. Fresh bread. Red wine. Her mother’s leek soup from childhood. Golden Empress dumplings steaming in bamboo baskets. Coffee from the corner shop near her flat above Silas’ bar. The air threaded each scent through her head, tugging at memory, want, comfort, weakness.
Her stomach growled so hard it hurt.
“No eating,” Nyx said.
“I gathered.”
A crimson fruit dropped at her feet.
It split open.
Inside lay a human eye, bright blue, wet and blinking.
Rory stopped.
The eye looked up at her.
Then it rolled towards the pendant.
Isolde caught Rory’s sleeve before she stepped back into another fallen fruit. This one had opened like a mouth, lined with small square teeth.
“The orchard offers what the hand reaches for,” Isolde said. “Keep your hungers nameless.”
“Great. I’ll just stop having a subconscious.”
The servants reached the far side by another route, climbing under the broken bridge like spiders along the remaining bones. Beyond them, in the city below, the banquet hall’s rib doors groaned open.
A deeper sound rolled out.
Breathing.
The crimson fruit beat faster.
Nyx moved to the nearest tree and plunged an arm into its shadow. Their form flickered . The bark swallowed them to the elbow, then to the shoulder. For a moment their face twisted, not with pain, but with recognition .
“A gate root,” they whispered. “Old. Fae-grown. Hel-fed.”
“Can you open it?”
“No.”
Rory lifted the moonsilver dagger.
“Can I cut it?”
Nyx looked at Isolde.
The seer’s lavender eyes reflected the orchard, the city, the crawling servants, and something vast shifting inside the ribcage hall.
“The knife will open mouths. Choose which one speaks.”
Rory scanned the trees. Each trunk bore marks beneath the bark, faint lines in spirals and loops. Not writing. Wards. She had seen enough supernatural nonsense lately to recognise intent when it pressed its thumb against the room.
One tree stood apart from the rest. Smaller. Older. Its bark looked almost silver under the copper-dark canopy, and no fruit hung from its branches. Instead, a hollow gaped in its trunk, oval and black.
A standing stone in tree form.
The pendant burned.
Rory’s crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist prickled.
“That one,” she said.
The servants spilled into the orchard.
“Course one,” they chanted. “Course one. Course one.”
Nyx became a wall of shadow behind her. Knives passed through them and emerged black with frost. Servants shrieked as their hands withered.
Isolde walked to Rory’s left. No footprints. No haste. She lifted one hand, and wildflowers burst from the fleshy ground, pale and lovely and wrong in this place. The servants that stepped on them slowed, staring down as petals crawled up their legs.
“Hurry, seed-name.”
“I hate that less than Malphora, which worries me.”
Rory reached the silver-barked tree. The hollow breathed cold air across her face. It smelled of rain on London pavement, old leaves in Richmond Park, and something sharp as broken glass.
Home, or a clever imitation.
She pressed the Fae blade to the ward.
The tree screamed.
Not in sound. In taste.
Bitterness flooded Rory’s mouth. Burnt sugar. Old blood. Her knees softened, but she drove the dagger in. Moonsilver light ran through the bark, tracing hidden lines. The hollow widened. Darkness peeled back, revealing not a passage but a suspended skin of shimmering distortion .
The Veil.
Thin. Bruised. Alive.
Beyond it flickered the Fae Grove, ancient oak standing stones, wildflowers blooming year-round, the safe lie of familiar grass.
Rory laughed once, breathless.
“Found the exit.”
The orchard answered.
Every fruit opened.
Thousands of eyes stared from the branches.
Nyx’s shadow wall buckled as something struck it from the other side. Not the servants. Larger. Slower. A hand the size of a dining table slid between the trees, pale and ringed with gold, each finger tipped with a silver tasting spoon. It pressed into Nyx and drove them back through the moss.
The ribcage hall below yawned wider.
A voice rose from it, rich as cream poured over knives.
“My little Heartstone has come home.”
Rory seized the pendant. It had gone white-hot.
Isolde’s face drained of its strange calm.
“Do not answer.”
“I wasn’t planning to RSVP.”
The huge hand lifted. Nyx re-formed beside Rory in ragged strips, violet eyes dim but fixed.
“Through. Now.”
Servants lunged between the trees. Rory slashed the ward again. The Veil split like wet silk .
Cold air rushed out.
For one impossible second, she saw both worlds at once. The crimson orchard and the hidden grove. The banquet city and Richmond’s secret green pocket. Hel’s appetite pressed against Fae silence , and the cut between them widened around her blade.
Then the Heartstone pendant tore free from its silver chain.
It flew towards the giant hand.
Rory grabbed it with her bare left hand.
Fire bit into her scar. She screamed and held on.
The voice from the hall chuckled.
“Ah. There you are.”
The crescent scar on her wrist opened like an eye.