AI The pendant had been warm for the last half hour, a steady, insistent pulse against her sternum like a second heartbeat. Rory had followed its pull off the main path through Richmond Park, past the last dog walker and the final jogger with their bobbing headlamp, until the trees closed in and the city sounds faded to nothing but the crunch of her own boots on frost-kissed grass.
She’d come for answers. The unknown benefactor who’d left the Heartstone in her flat above Silas’ bar hadn’t left a note, only the thing itself, and its warmth had been the first real lead she’d had in weeks. Now the silver chain felt hot against her collarbone as she pushed through a tangle of brambles and stepped into the clearing.
The Fae Grove.
She’d heard Eva mention it once, in passing, with a strange look in her eyes that Rory had chosen not to press. Now she understood why. The standing stones ringed the glade like ancient teeth, their surfaces furred with moss that caught the thin moonlight and turned it silver. The grass underfoot was impossibly green for November, and wildflowers she couldn’t name bloomed in clusters at the base of the oaks, their petals dark and velvety as bruises.
It was wrong. Beautiful, but wrong, like a room in a dream where the furniture had been arranged just slightly askew.
Rory pulled out her phone. No signal. The clock read 9:47 PM, but even as she watched, the numbers flickered , jumped to 10:02, then back to 9:31. She pocketed it and breathed slowly , deliberately , the way she did when Evan used to corner her in the kitchen demanding to know where she’d been. Cool-headed. That’s what people said about her. Cool-headed and quick.
She’d need both tonight.
The pendant pulsed again, a throb of heat that made her touch it through her jacket. It was pointing toward the largest of the standing stones, a slab of granite that split the moonlight into two unequal halves. The air here tasted different—copper and honey and something green and rotting, all at once.
“Right,” she whispered to herself . “You came here for answers. Find the answer, get out.”
The sound came from behind the stone. A soft, wet scrape, like something being dragged across wet grass.
Rory froze. Her breath caught in her throat and she held it, straining to hear over the thud of her own pulse . The grove was silent. Not the silence of a cold November night with its rustle of dead leaves and distant traffic, but a dead silence , a held-breath silence , like the whole clearing was waiting to see what she would do.
Nothing moved. The wildflowers didn’t sway. The moonlight didn’t shift.
She took a step toward the stone.
The scrape came again, louder this time, and now she could place it—it was coming from the other side of the monolith, low to the ground, rhythmic . Something breathing. Something that didn’t want her to hear it.
Rory’s hand went to her pocket. She’d brought a small flashlight, a folding knife, a lighter. Pathetic tools against whatever lived in a fae-touched grove at night, but they were what she had. She pulled out the flashlight and clicked it on.
The beam cut across the grass, illuminated the base of the standing stone, and showed her nothing. Just moss and dirt and a scatter of small white pebbles that caught the light like bone.
She let out the breath she’d been holding.
And the lights went out.
Not the flashlight—that was still on, its beam still cutting a path across the grass—but the moon. One moment the grove had been bathed in that silver light, the next it was gone , swallowed by cloud or something else, and the clearing plunged into a darkness so absolute it felt solid against her skin.
The pendant was cold.
She hadn’t noticed it cooling down. One moment it had been a steady warmth against her chest, the next it was an ice-cold stone, pressing against her skin like a finger. She grabbed it through her jacket and felt the hardness of the gem, the sharp edges of the silver setting. It felt dead in her hand.
The stones moved.
They didn’t shift—they were too massive for that—but the shadows at their bases stretched and contracted, and a sound like grinding rock came from deep underground, vibrating up through the soles of her boots. The wildflowers at her feet began to writhe, their stems twisting, their petals curling inward like closing fists.
Rory backed toward the treeline. Her heel hit something soft and she stumbled, looked down, and saw a hand.
It was pale, almost luminous in the dim glow of her flashlight, and it was reaching up through the grass like a plant pushing toward the sun. Fingers uncurled. Nails, black and jagged, scraped the dirt. The hand was attached to an arm, which was attached to the ground, and the ground was moving, bulging upward, and she could see the shape of a body trying to force its way through the soil.
She ran.
The flashlight beam swung wildly as she crashed through the brambles, thorns tearing at her jacket, her jeans, her face. The branches clawed at her, hooked into her hair, and she pulled free with a ripping sound that was too loud in the dead air. Behind her, the grinding grew louder, and the wet scrape of something dragging itself across the earth.
She didn’t look back.
The path was gone . The path she’d taken, the gap in the bushes she’d pushed through, was simply not there anymore. In its place was a wall of hawthorn, its thorns long and black, slick with something that gleamed in the swinging light.
Rory spun. The grove was behind her, the standing stones dark and silent, and in the center of the clearing, where she’d stood moments ago, a figure was rising from the grass.
It was tall and thin, its limbs too long, its joints bending at angles that should have snapped. It had no face—just a smooth oval where features should have been, pale as milk, reflecting the light of her flashlight back at her in a flat, dead shine. It wore something that might have been a dress, or a shroud, or skin, and it was growing, stretching upward until its head cleared the top of the standing stones.
Rory’s hand found the knife in her pocket. She pulled it out, clicked the blade open. The steel caught the light and she held it in front of her, a sad, ridiculous gesture, but she couldn’t not do something.
The figure tilted its head. A sound came from its direction—not a voice, but a crack, like ice splitting on a frozen lake . It took a step toward her, and the wildflowers at its feet turned black and curled to ash.
The pendant flared hot against her chest.
Not warm. Hot enough to burn through her jacket, to sear the skin beneath. She gasped, grabbed it, and the stone was glowing , pulsing with a deep red light that bled through her fingers and cast her own shadow long across the grass. The figure stopped. Its head tilted the other way, and the crack came again, louder.
Rory didn’t wait to see what it would do. She turned and ran straight at the hawthorn wall, threw her arms in front of her face, and plunged through.
The thorns raked her arms, her shoulders, her scalp. One caught her cheek and tore a hot line across her skin. She pushed through, broke free on the other side, and stumbled onto the familiar dirt path of Richmond Park.
The moon was out. The streetlights glowed in the distance. A car drove past on the road, its engine a mundane, beautiful sound.
Rory collapsed to her knees on the grass and breathed.
The pendant was warm again, a gentle pulse against her chest like a heart. She pulled it out from under her jacket and looked at it. The deep crimson gem glowed faintly from within, then dimmed, faded, settled back to its usual inert state.
She touched her cheek. Her fingers came away wet with blood.
The grove was behind her. The path she’d come from was just a path, dark and quiet, leading into the deeper woods. She could see the gap in the undergrowth where she’d pushed through, and beyond it, nothing but shadows and bare winter branches.
She didn’t know what she’d found. She didn’t know if it had been a trap, a test, or a warning.
But the pendant had answered her question, at least.
She wasn’t alone.