AI Rory’s fingers brushed the Heartstone pendant where it rested against her sternum, its deep crimson core pulsing with steady warmth that matched the frantic beat of her heart. The silver chain felt heavier than it should, tugging her forward through the ring of ancient oaks that marked the boundary of Isolde’s grove. Richmond Park lay behind them, its mundane winter grass already forgotten. Here, wildflowers bloomed in defiant riot—violets and moon-pale lilies swaying though no breeze stirred. The air tasted of honey and iron.
Isolde moved ahead, silver hair brushing the backs of her knees, feet leaving no imprint on the soft earth. She never did. The half-fae seer hummed a tuneless melody that made the standing stones answer with faint, crystalline echoes . “The veil thins where hunger calls,” she murmured, her voice layered like wind through chimes. “Mind the fruit that offers answers, little lawyer. Some truths digest poorly.”
Beside Rory, Nyx flowed rather than walked, a humanoid silhouette of living shadow that occasionally sharpened into solid limbs and a hooded cowl. Their faintly glowing violet eyes fixed on the shimmering distortion ahead—the Veil itself, visible only because Rory had learned to see it. The boundary looked like heated air above summer tarmac, except this distortion bled amber light instead of haze. Nyx’s voice arrived as a whisper carried on the wind, brushing Rory’s ear though the shade stood two paces away. “I feel the pull of old bargains here. Be wary, Rory. Hel does not release its guests willingly.”
“I’m not planning on signing any contracts today,” Rory said, voice steadier than she felt. Her left wrist itched where the small crescent scar hid beneath her sleeve—a childhood reminder that not every accident was random. She tightened her grip on the hilt of the moonsilver dagger Isolde had given her. The blade was cold enough to sting even through leather wrapping, its leaf-shaped edge emitting the faintest lunar glow. It had tasted demon blood once already. She hoped it wouldn’t need to again.
Isolde paused at the Veil’s edge and turned. Her pale lavender eyes held that eerie agelessness that always made Rory’s skin prickle. “What you seek hides in excess. Follow the scent of overripe promise.” With that, the seer stepped through.
The distortion swallowed her without sound.
Rory exchanged a glance with Nyx. Their shadowy shoulders lifted in what might have been a shrug. “After you, protagonist.”
She exhaled once, tasting ozone and something sweeter—burnt sugar, perhaps—and walked into the shimmer.
The transition yanked every sense sideways. For one stomach -lurching instant Rory existed nowhere, a mote between realms, the Veil’s cold pressure squeezing her ribs. Then heat bloomed across her face, thick and fragrant, like opening an oven door in a bakery the size of a cathedral. She stumbled onto new ground and caught herself against a trellis heavy with grapes the color of fresh blood.
The sky above was warm amber, as if the sun had melted and spilled across the firmament. No clouds marred it, only faint currents of gold that drifted like slow syrup. The light bathed everything in honeyed tones, making edges soft and temptations vivid. Rory’s mouth flooded with saliva before she could stop herself.
“Gluttony,” she whispered.
Nyx materialized beside her, their form flickering as if the transition had unsettled even a creature born of failed sorcery. “Dymas,” the shade confirmed, voice a low rustle of dry leaves. “One of the Seven. Belphegor’s playground.”
Isolde stood a little way ahead, already drifting between the first rows of an orchard that stretched farther than Rory’s eyes could track. Trees bore fruit in impossible abundance: apples speckled with gold, pears that shimmered like opals, clusters of berries that pulsed with inner light. The ground underfoot was rich black soil that clung to her boots like it wanted to taste her. Every breath carried layered scents—ripe peach, roasted nuts, caramelized onion, fresh bread, mulled wine. Her stomach growled despite the large lunch she’d eaten barely an hour ago in the mortal world.
Or had it been an hour? Time in the grove had already felt slippery. Here, it might be devouring itself.
They moved deeper.
Rory kept the pendant in one hand, its warmth increasing with every step. The silver chain grew almost hot. She used the sensation like a compass, letting it guide them along a gentle slope between vineyards. The vines themselves were works of alien art: thick as her wrist, leaves veined with luminous green, grapes so swollen they looked moments from bursting. One vine brushed her arm as she passed. A single drop of juice landed on her skin and burned pleasantly, like spiced brandy. She wiped it away quickly , but the scent clung.
“Unease suits you,” Nyx whispered, drifting incorporeal for a moment to pass straight through a particularly dense thicket of brambles. When they solidified again, their height seemed to have increased, towering nearly six and a half feet. “Your pulse is a drum. I could dance to it.”
“Save the poetry for later,” Rory muttered. “This place is trying to seduce us. I can feel it in my teeth.”
Isolde’s laughter floated back like silver bells. “Seduction is the first course. Gluttony serves seven. Tell me, shadow-of-a-man, what did Aldric feast on before the summoning claimed him?”
Nyx’s form rippled, violet eyes narrowing. The whisper grew colder. “Do not speak that name here, oracle. Some doors stay closed for reasons.”
Rory filed the exchange away even as her attention snagged on movement ahead. Between two ancient gnarled trunks—trees older than cathedrals—figures worked. Humans, or what had once been humans. Helbound souls, the codex in her mind supplied, though she’d never read any such book. Their skin carried a faint reddish sheen, as though the amber sky had stained them. They moved with the languid grace of people half-drunk on their own labor. One woman sang while plucking glowing figs, her voice rich and mournful. Another man fed slices of something golden to a creature that looked like a cross between a boar and a peacock. Both man and beast wore expressions of sloppy bliss.
Rory’s stomach cramped with sudden, ferocious hunger.
She forced her gaze away only to find a long table laid out beneath a bower of flowering vines. No one sat there, yet platters overflowed: roasted birds with crispy skin still sizzling, pies whose crusts had burst to reveal molten fillings, cheeses veined with edible gold, fruits carved into miniature sculptures of beasts and lovers. A carafe of deep red wine stood at the center, breathing out aromas of blackberry and smoke and something darker—regret, perhaps.
Her feet carried her three steps toward it before her mind caught up.
“No,” she said aloud, planting her boots. The effort sent a tremor through her legs. “We’re here for the rift signature the pendant detected. Not the buffet.”
Isolde appeared at her elbow, though Rory hadn’t seen her approach. The seer’s breath smelled of lilac. “The table is older than the prince who claims it. One bite and you may leave whenever you wish. The leaving, however, will not be as you arrived.”
“A riddle wrapped in bacon,” Rory said tightly . “Helpful as always.”
Nyx flowed between them, a barrier of cool shadow that broke the table’s olfactory spell. The shade’s presence grounded her; the living darkness carried no scent of food, only the faint ozone of between-realms. “I sense wards ahead,” they whispered. “Old ones. The kind that once kept me from escaping my own summoning circle. Something important hides behind them.”
The pendant flared hotter, almost painful. Rory followed its urging, leaving the treacherous table behind. The three of them pressed deeper into the orchard, where the trees grew taller and stranger. Some bore fruit that chimed softly when the wind touched them. Others wept sap that hardened into sugar crystals midair before falling like snow. The ground began to slope upward toward what looked like the ruins of an amphitheater carved from rose-colored stone. Wild culinary competitions, the lore had said. Rory could almost hear ghostly applause rolling down the tiers.
A new sound reached them—laughter, deep and rolling, accompanied by the clink of goblets and the wet tear of meat from bone. Not ghostly at all. Real. Close.
Rory’s hand tightened on the Fae-forged blade. The moonsilver thrummed against her palm, cold against the realm’s sticky warmth . Good. The contrast helped her think .
They crested the rise.
Below them sprawled a natural amphitheater filled with long tables arranged in concentric circles. Hundreds of helbound souls and a few actual demons—red-skinned, elegant, with curling horns—feasted in a riot of excess. Platters the size of rowing boats held entire roasted beasts stuffed with smaller roasted beasts. Rivers of wine flowed through channels carved in the tables, caught by crystal goblets that refilled themselves. In the center ring, three chefs in towering hats engaged in what looked like a duel, flinging spices that exploded into colored flames and singing fish that leapt from pan to plate still gasping lyrics.
The wonder of it hit Rory like a physical force. This was no ordinary kitchen or banquet. This was indulgence elevated to cosmic art. A part of her—the hungry, tired twenty-five-year-old who delivered noodles on a scooter for barely enough rent money—wanted to descend those stone steps and drown in it. To taste something that might finally fill the hollow Evan had left in her chest.
The unease followed immediately, a sour note beneath the symphony of smells. Nothing here was free. Every glistening fruit, every perfect pastry, every droplet of wine carried a subtle hook. She could feel them brushing her mind like spider silk .
Nyx’s form had gone almost translucent with tension . “I remember banquets like this in 1643,” the shade whispered, the words barely audible even this close . “Aldric laughed at such excess. Then the circle claimed him and laughter became... this.” Their silhouette gestured at the amphitheater with what might have been disgust or longing. It was hard to tell with living shadow.
Isolde stood perfectly still, lavender eyes reflecting the amber sky. “The prince watches from his vineyard tower,” she said in her soft, riddling way. “He tastes every soul that crosses his border. Even those who only watch. Especially those.”
Rory tore her gaze from a nearby table where a demon was feeding sugared violets to a bound soul whose expression suggested ecstasy and horror in equal measure. Instead she studied the far side of the amphitheater. There, half-hidden by a curtain of flowering vines, a darker shimmer disturbed the air. Another rift? Or the source the pendant had been leading them toward?
The Heartstone flared so brightly she had to squint. Its inner glow painted her fingers crimson.
“There,” she said, pointing with the dagger. The blade’s cold edge seemed to cut the very light. “Whatever we came for is behind that curtain. Can either of you sense what it is?”
Nyx drifted closer to the edge of the slope, becoming incorporeal to let a sudden gust of spiced wind pass through them. “A knot in the Veil. Old. Hungry in a different way than this realm. It feels... familiar .” Their violet eyes flicked to Rory. “Like the accident that gave you that scar, perhaps. Some wounds call across worlds.”
She resisted the urge to touch her wrist. Instead she started down the slope, keeping to the shadows of the outermost trees. Isolde and Nyx followed in their own strange ways—one leaving no footprints, the other leaving footprints that dissolved into smoke.
The closer they drew to the feasting rings, the stronger the pull became. Rory’s steps grew heavier. Her mind filled with unwanted images: her mother’s Sunday roasts back in Cardiff, the cheap but comforting curries from Yu-Fei’s restaurant, the champagne Evan had poured the night he’d first raised his voice. Every good taste she’d ever known paraded behind her eyes, each one promising that here , in Dymas, she could have them perfected. Forever.
Her scar burned.
She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood—her own, sharp and grounding. “Not today,” she muttered.
A helbound server passed nearby carrying a tray of frosted pastries that smelled like every childhood birthday Rory had never quite enjoyed. The woman’s eyes met hers. For a moment the glaze of contentment slipped, revealing raw desperation. “Don’t,” the server whispered. “It never fills. It only stretches.”
Then the moment passed. The woman smiled dreamily and offered the tray.
Rory’s hand trembled toward a pastry before Nyx’s shadowy fingers closed around her wrist. The contact was icy, a shock that cleared her head.
“Focus, Rory Carter,” the shade whispered, voice like wind through a graveyard. “You fled one cage. Do not step into another wearing sugar instead of chains.”
She nodded once, grateful, and pressed on.
They reached the curtain of flowering vines. Up close the flowers proved to be tiny mouths, each singing a different note in perfect , stomach -turning harmony. Rory slashed the Fae-forged blade through them. The moonsilver parted vine and song alike. The severed ends bled clear sap that smelled like expensive perfume .
Beyond lay a smaller, hidden grove—not unlike Isolde’s, but twisted by Hel’s influence . Ancient trees bore fruit shaped like tiny screaming faces. In the center stood a stone plinth, and hovering above it, a tear in reality no wider than her hand. The rift crackled with violet lightning that reminded her of Nyx’s eyes. Through it she caught glimpses of London streets at night, her own flat above Silas’s bar, the alley behind Golden Empress where she parked her delivery scooter.
The pendant jerked forward so hard the chain snapped. It flew from her hand and slammed into the rift, where it hung suspended, spinning slowly . Its crimson glow synchronized with the lightning.
Isolde tilted her head, listening to something only she could hear. “The benefactor’s gift returns home. A door swings both ways, little lawyer. But every key demands its toll.”
Rory felt the ground tilt beneath her—not physically, but in her understanding . The pendant hadn’t just been leading her here. It had been calling its sibling piece, or its maker, or something older. The realization brought both wonder and fresh unease. She had crossed into an alien realm wearing a beacon around her neck and never once questioned its origin.
Nyx solidified fully beside her, tall and almost human in the amber light. Their whisper held an edge of something like fear . “I know this rift’s signature. It was part of the circle that trapped me in 1643. Gluttony was only the first sin I bargained with that night.”
Rory drew a slow breath that tasted of honey and danger and new possibilities. The dagger in her hand sang its cold song. Behind them the grand feast roared on, oblivious or perhaps purposefully ignorant of the smaller drama unfolding at its edge. Ahead, the rift pulsed like an open wound between worlds.
She stepped forward, cool head finally winning over the realm’s relentless sensory assault.
“Tell me the toll,” she said to Isolde without looking back. “And then tell me how we pay it without losing who we are.”
The seer’s answering smile held riddles sharp enough to cut. The amber sky pressed down. The orchards whispered promises of more—always more. And deep in the heart of Dymas, something ancient noticed three new souls moving through its bounty and began, slowly , to hunger in return.
Rory Carter adjusted her grip on the Fae blade, heart steady despite the wonders and warnings pressing in from every side. Whatever came next, she would meet it the way she’d met every challenge since fleeing Cardiff: with quick thinking, sharper steel, and friends who walked in shadow and moonlight.
The realm of Gluttony breathed around them, waiting for their next move.