AI Rory’s boots sank into soil that wasn’t soil at all. It gave like warm bread, releasing a perfume of crushed cinnamon and something sharper, like star anise left too long in the sun. The Heartstone Pendant flared against her sternum, a steady heartbeat that matched the sudden thunder of her own. One moment the air had tasted of Richmond Park’s damp leaves and distant traffic; the next it lay thick on her tongue, sweet enough to make her teeth ache.
She kept one hand on the hilt of the Fae-forged blade at her hip. The moonsilver was cold even through her jacket, a single familiar anchor. Behind her, the rift she had stepped through shimmered once, then folded into nothing. No convenient doorway back. Only the warm amber sky curving overhead like molten glass poured across the firmament.
Nyx bled out of her shadow and rose to their full height, a column of living darkness that drank the amber light and gave back violet sparks where eyes should be. Their whisper curled past her ear, intimate as a breath against skin. “Gluttony remembers its gifts. Do not taste anything, Rory Carter. Not even wonder.”
Isolde came last. She left no prints in the yielding earth, her silver hair drifting as though underwater. The half-Fae’s pale lavender eyes scanned the horizon with the mild interest of someone rereading a letter she had already memorized. “The orchard sings its own welcome,” she murmured. “Whether we wish to hear the lyrics is another riddle.”
Rory exhaled, forcing her pulse to slow. Cool-headed, she reminded herself. The same calm she had used to outmaneuver Evan’s rages, to navigate London’s night buses, to deliver late-night orders for Yu-Fei without complaint. This was simply another delivery. Only the package was survival, and the address was somewhere inside a realm that should not exist.
Before them stretched rows of vines thicker than her thigh, leaves veined in gold that chimed softly when the breeze moved through them. Bunches of grapes hung like swollen lanterns, each orb the size of a fist and colored deep crimson to match her pendant. Juice glistened on their skins. The scent alone coiled low in her stomach , a treacherous sweetness that promised to fill every hollow she had ever carried.
She took a deliberate step forward. The ground sighed beneath her, releasing a puff of fragrant steam. “We need to move deeper,” she said. “The pendant grew hotter the moment we crossed. There’s a stronger rift or a conduit ahead. If we can map it, we can guard it.”
Nyx flowed beside her, sometimes solid, sometimes little more than a suggestion of shoulders and a cloak of night. When they solidified, the soil did not yield to their weight ; it simply stopped existing where they touched it, as though reality itself stepped aside. “You speak of maps,” the Shade whispered , “but Dymas delights in changing the page while you read.”
Isolde drifted between two vine trellises, her bare feet hovering a finger’s breadth above the earth. Wildflowers—impossible blue and violent magenta—bloomed in the impressions her shadow left behind. “The Prince’s gardeners are industrious,” she observed. “They plant tomorrow’s regrets before today’s hunger ripens.”
Rory’s stomach gave an unwelcome growl. She pressed a hand to it, annoyed. The aroma thickened as they advanced, now carrying notes of slow-roasted meat, fresh bread, spiced wine. None of it visible. Only the suggestion, drifting on the amber air like bait.
The vineyard gave way to an orchard that defied perspective. Trees whose trunks twisted in spirals climbed twenty meters before exploding into canopies heavy with fruit that should not share the same branch: pears that bled golden syrup, pomegranates whose seeds pulsed like tiny hearts, apples whose skins swirled with galaxies of tiny stars. Beneath the largest tree lay a carpet of fallen fruit, none of it rotting. Instead the wind rolled them gently , and they chimed against one another like delicate bells.
Rory stopped. The sound was almost melodic, a slow lullaby in a key that made her eyelids heavy. She forced them wide again. “Nyx. You were human once. Did your old texts ever mention this place?”
The Shade’s form rippled, violet eyes dimming. “Aldric read many forbidden scrolls before the summoning tore him apart. Dymas was always described as beautiful. Beautiful the way a spider is beautiful to the fly.” They extended one shadow limb and brushed a low-hanging fruit. Where the darkness touched it, the skin blackened and the chime faltered into a discordant note. “See? Even wonder bruises.”
Isolde tilted her head, silver hair sliding over one shoulder. “The fruit does not wish to be refused. It has grown accustomed to souls who sign their names in honey.” She met Rory’s gaze, and for once her voice carried no riddle, only quiet warning. “Your will is iron, child of Cardiff. Do not let it rust here.”
Rory swallowed the saliva that had flooded her mouth and pressed onward. The grass between the trees grew taller, brushing her wrists. Each blade was edged in minute edible flowers no bigger than pinheads. She kept her arms tight to her sides. The scar on her left wrist—the small crescent from the night her father’s temper had shattered a glass—itched fiercely, as though the realm recognized old wounds and wished to fill them with sugar.
Deeper still. The light changed. Amber deepened toward burnt orange, and the air grew dense enough that each breath felt like swallowing warm syrup . Strange shapes moved between the trunks—helbound souls, she realized, their bodies translucent, eyes hollow. They carried baskets woven from living vines. One woman, her face frozen in perpetual bliss, plucked a glowing fig and bit into it. Golden juice ran down her chin. The sound she made was indecent. Rory looked away quickly , cheeks burning.
Nyx drifted closer until their cool darkness brushed her shoulder, a brief relief from the cloying heat. “They contracted willingly,” the Shade whispered . “A lifetime of endless feasts in exchange for one mortal year of service. Time stretches here. One year becomes a thousand.”
“Gluttony is patient,” Isolde agreed. She had plucked a single wildflower and was threading it into the cuff of Rory’s sleeve without touching her skin. The bloom’s petals fluttered though there was no wind. “It waits until the soul forgets the difference between want and need.”
Rory felt the pendant vibrate harder, almost painful now. Its inner glow pulsed in time with something ahead, a low thrumming that traveled up through her soles. “There,” she said, pointing .
Between two colossal trees whose branches had grown together to form a natural arch lay a sunken amphitheater. Its stones were veined with the same crimson as the Heartstone. At its center stood a fountain, but instead of water it bubbled with liquid gold that released fragrant steam. Around the rim, empty goblets waited, each one carved from a different gemstone. The air above the fountain shimmered like the Veil itself, thinner here, ready to tear.
Rory’s pulse matched the pendant’s rhythm. She started down the wide steps, each one etched with scenes of feasting: figures laughing, devouring, growing larger and larger until they split at the seams and became new vineyards. The carvings moved when she wasn’t looking directly at them. She kept her gaze fixed on the fountain.
Nyx hesitated at the top of the stairs. Their form flickered . “Rory. The ground here is older than my curse. I feel…pulled.”
Isolde remained on the grass above, silver hair lifting. “The Prince’s table is set for three tonight,” she said softly . “One who still tastes mortal regret, one who has forgotten taste entirely, and one who was never meant to sit at all.”
Rory reached the fountain’s edge. The aroma rising from it was everything she had ever craved—her mother’s Sunday roast, the first cup of coffee after an all-night study session, the cheap but perfect dumplings from Golden Empress after a long delivery route. Her hand rose without permission. The pendant flared so brightly it cast her shadow backward.
She snatched her fingers back at the last second, hissing as the heat of the liquid gold kissed her skin. A single drop clung to her knuckle. It burned coldly .
Nyx was suddenly beside her, solid enough to grip her wrist with fingers that felt like chilled silk . “No.” The whisper had sharpened into something almost human. “You are not a contract. You are Aurora Carter, who ran from one cage and refused to enter another.”
The drop slid off her skin and fell back into the fountain with a sound like a sigh of disappointment.
Rory’s legs trembled . She forced them steady. Around them the orchard seemed to lean closer, branches creaking like old chairs pulled up to a table. The helbound souls had gathered at the rim of the amphitheater, watching with hollow hope. Their baskets overflowed, yet their mouths remained empty.
She drew the Fae-forged blade. The moonsilver hummed in the amber light, its edge bright as moonlight on snow. The moment it cleared the sheath, the fountain’s bubbling slowed. The enticing scents receded a fraction, as though the realm had flinched.
“There,” Rory said, voice steadier than she felt . She pointed the blade at the shimmering space above the fountain. “That’s a tear. Smaller than the one we crossed, but it leads somewhere else inside Hel. Or maybe back toward the Grove. We can mark it, reinforce the Veil.”
Isolde descended the steps at last. Where her feet should have touched stone, tiny white flowers erupted instead. “You see clearly for one so young. Yet the tear is also a mouth, and mouths grow hungry when fed attention.”
Nyx’s form thinned until they were little more than a silhouette cut from the air itself. “I can slip through first. Shadows pass where solid things cannot. If I return, we will know it is safe.”
Rory shook her head. “We stay together. That was the deal.” She looked at each of them—her unlikely companions, one born of shadow and old regret, one half-fae and bound by truth that bent like light. “I didn’t come to Hel to lose anyone else.”
The admission surprised her. She had meant to say “to lose the trail.” But the words had come out honest, and in this place of excess, honesty felt dangerously sharp.
She lifted the Heartstone Pendant with her free hand. Its chain warmed against her neck. The crimson gemstone brightened until it rivaled the fountain’s gold. The tear above the water rippled in answer, showing fractured glimpses of other landscapes: frost-covered gardens that might have been Fae, a rain-slick London alley that smelled of chips and diesel, a vast library whose shelves were made of bones.
Wonder and unease braided tight beneath her ribs. She was twenty-five years old, a part-time delivery driver who had once dreamed of arguing cases in court. Now she stood in Gluttony itself, holding an artifact that pulsed like a second heart, flanked by a shade and a seer, preparing to stab a hole in reality with a dagger forged by creatures older than language.
A laugh bubbled up before she could stop it—short, incredulous, alive. “My mother always said I had an overactive imagination. She should see me now.”
Isolde’s lips curved, the first true smile Rory had seen from her. It made the half-Fae look almost mortal. “Imagination is simply memory of places we have not yet visited.”
Nyx’s whisper carried a rare thread of amusement. “Then let us give your imagination new material, Rory Carter.”
Together they approached the tear. The fountain’s song rose in pitch, tempting, pleading. Rory’s stomach roared again, but she set her jaw and thought of Eva waiting back in London, of Yu-Fei’s worried frown if she missed another shift, of the small flat above Silas’ bar that smelled of old beer and safety. Small, stubborn things. Anchors.
She raised the blade. The moonsilver cut the air with a sound like a page turning in an enormous book. Light bled from the tear, cool and silver against all the amber excess. For the first time since crossing over, Rory felt a clean wind brush her face.
She stepped forward.
Behind her, the orchard sighed in collective disappointment. Fruit dropped from branches like forgotten promises. The helbound souls turned away, baskets dragging.
Rory did not look back. She kept her eyes on the silver cut in the world, on the promise of whatever lay beyond, and moved deeper still into wonders that could kill her if she let them taste her first. The pendant steadied. The blade sang. And somewhere inside her chest, cool-headed Aurora Carter felt the first real stirrings of awe that had nothing to do with fear.
The realm stretched on, ancient and ravenous and impossibly beautiful, and she walked into it with her monsters at her side.