AI The last of Richmond Park vanished behind them with the soft sound of a door breathing shut.
Aurora stood between two ancient oaks and tried not to look as rattled as she felt.
A moment before, there had been wet grass beneath her trainers, a low grey sky, and the distant, ordinary clatter of London traffic beyond the park wall. Now the air held the clean, green smell of crushed stems and rain that had never touched pavement. The grove stretched ahead in a bowl of silvered land, ringed by standing stones the colour of old bone.
Wildflowers covered everything.
Not patches of them. Not a meadow, exactly. The flowers grew in dense, impossible drifts beneath the trees: bluebells beside sunflowers, snowdrops beside foxgloves, roses opening around delicate white blossoms Aurora did not know. Some shone faintly from within. Others folded and unfolded their petals as though they were breathing .
Behind her, the trunks of the boundary oaks had closed together.
Nyx stood near them, taller than either Aurora or Isolde, their body a silhouette cut from darkness. The daylight—or whatever passed for it here—could not settle on them. It slid around their shoulders in pearly streaks, leaving their violet eyes suspended in the shadow of a face.
“Tell me that’s normal,” Aurora said.
Nyx’s reply came like wind moving through a keyhole. “For this place.”
“That was not reassuring.”
“No,” Nyx said. “It was not meant to be.”
Isolde moved ahead without disturbing a single flower. Her long silver hair streamed down her back, bright against a gown the soft grey of morning mist. Aurora watched her feet out of habit and saw, again, nothing. No flattened grass. No petals crushed beneath her steps. No prints in the damp black earth.
The sight had stopped being surprising twenty minutes ago. It had not stopped being unsettling.
Isolde turned her pale lavender gaze on Aurora. “The Grove knows a guest by the weight of their worry.”
“Then it’s got an excellent introduction to me.”
“The Grove is kind to those who enter with open hands.”
Aurora glanced down. Her hands were fists at her sides.
She made herself loosen them.
The Heartstone pendant lay against her breastbone beneath her jacket, warm enough to feel through her shirt. Since they had crossed the boundary, it had begun to pulse —not hard, not painfully, but with a slow, deliberate throb that seemed to answer something deeper in the grove. Aurora pulled it free of her collar and let it rest in her palm.
The crimson stone glowed from its depths .
Nyx looked at it. “It is awake.”
“It was awake before,” Aurora said. “It nearly burned a hole through me on the Tube.”
“It is more awake now.”
“That’s better, then.”
The pendant gave another pulse .
Across the clearing, one of the standing stones answered.
A thin line of red-gold light lit along its weathered surface, following grooves Aurora had taken for cracks. The marks wound over the stone in spirals, joining at a shape like an eye.
Aurora stared. “Did you know it would do that?”
Isolde’s expression gave away nothing, though her fingers tightened around the crook of her ashwood staff. “I knew the stone was sleeping.”
“That is not an answer.”
“A true answer need not be a complete one.”
“Convenient.”
“Truth often is.”
Nyx drifted closer to the marked stone. Their shadow stretched over the flowers, and the nearest blooms shut tight at once, petals sealing like small frightened mouths.
“Do not touch it,” Isolde said.
Nyx paused, a black hand a few inches from the glowing groove. “It recognizes the Heartstone.”
“Or it recognizes what lies beyond it.”
Aurora looked from one to the other. “What lies beyond it?”
Isolde started walking.
That, apparently, was her answer.
Aurora swore under her breath and followed.
The ground sloped downward, gentle at first. The wildflowers thinned beneath the trees, giving way to a path paved with flat, green-black stones. Moss covered their edges but not their centres, as if unseen feet had worn the way clear for centuries. The trees here were wrong in subtle ways. Their trunks twisted in spirals. Their leaves bore silver undersides that flashed whenever a breeze moved through the branches. Some had fruit growing directly from their bark—glass-clear pears, clusters of plum-coloured orbs, tiny gold apples no bigger than marbles.
One of the apples dropped.
It struck the path beside Aurora’s foot with a bright metallic chime.
She jumped.
Nyx made a sound that might have been a laugh, if laughter had learned to whisper .
“Very funny.”
“It startled you.”
“Obviously.”
“Then it was funny.”
Aurora gave their shadowed profile a look and bent to inspect the fallen fruit. It had rolled against the toe of her trainer. Up close, it was not an apple at all. Its skin seemed to hold a miniature sunrise, clouds and gold light shifting beneath a smooth transparent surface.
A thin root uncoiled from the soil beside it.
Aurora straightened fast.
The root wrapped around the fruit and drew it gently back under a curtain of moss.
“No touching,” Isolde called from ahead.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“The Grove has heard that before.”
The path narrowed until branches brushed Aurora’s shoulders. Cold droplets touched the back of her neck, though the leaves overhead were dry. Somewhere beyond the trees, water moved with a sound too large for a stream. It rose and fell in a patient, tidal rhythm.
Aurora kept one hand near the inside pocket of her jacket.
The Fae-forged blade rested there in its slim sheath, cold through the lining. Isolde had placed it in her hands near the boundary stones, the moonsilver dagger gleaming faintly in the dim afternoon. It was beautiful in the way certain dangerous things were beautiful: leaf-shaped, slender, its edge too clean to catch the light properly.
“A gift,” Isolde had said.
Aurora had looked at it. “People usually bring wine.”
“Wine has fewer uses.”
She had not argued.
Now, as the trail sank into blue-green shade, the blade’s cold seemed to spread through the pocket into her palm.
Nyx noticed. “You feel it.”
“It feels like it’s been kept in a freezer.”
“The blade dislikes this path.”
Aurora looked ahead at Isolde. “There’s a path it likes better?”
“There are paths it fears,” Isolde said. “That is not the same.”
“That is also not reassuring.”
They emerged from the trees onto the edge of a ravine.
Aurora stopped so sharply Nyx flowed around her rather than collide.
The ravine was perhaps thirty feet across, its walls plunging into a depth filled with luminous mist. Great roots bridged the gap overhead, woven together like the ribs of some colossal animal. Beneath them, water ran upward.
Aurora watched it for several seconds before her mind accepted what her eyes were seeing .
A river poured from the bottom of the ravine in ribbons of white and violet, streaming toward the sky. It climbed in a wide twisting column until it vanished into clouds that hung impossibly low above the grove. Fish flickered within the upward current—silver things with translucent fins, their bellies lit green. They swam against the rising flow as easily as birds.
The sound Aurora had heard came from that river. Not roaring . Singing.
It carried a melody too soft to follow, threaded with high, clear notes that made the bones behind her ears ache.
“Bloody hell,” she whispered.
For once, Nyx said nothing.
Isolde stood at the ravine’s lip, serene, but Aurora caught a small shift in her eyes. Recognition, perhaps. Or caution.
A bridge crossed the gap: not one of the root arches, but a narrow span of pale stone, half-hidden beneath curtains of hanging ivy. It had no rails. Its surface was covered in carvings—animals with antlers and wings, crowned women with empty eyes, men kneeling before flames that sprouted leaves.
At the bridge’s centre stood a stone figure.
It was roughly human-sized, but no human had ever looked like it . Its body was carved in flowing robes; its head was the skull of a stag, crowned with branches. One hand stretched toward them, palm up.
In that palm rested a small black key.
Aurora’s Heartstone thudded once, hard enough to make her gasp.
The statue’s stone fingers closed over the key.
The bridge gave a low, groaning sound.
“Isolde,” Aurora said, quietly now. “Please tell me that isn’t another sleeping thing.”
“The sleepers are more merciful than the waking.”
“That means yes.”
The statue raised its head.
Stone grated on stone. Dust spilled from the hollows of the stag skull. Within them, two green lights opened.
Nyx slid forward, shadows peeling from their limbs in long tendrils. “Stay behind me.”
Aurora’s hand went into her jacket. She drew the Fae blade.
Moonlight did not reach the ravine, yet the dagger gleamed. Its silver surface caught the green fire in the statue’s eyes and sent it back in a cold, white flash.
The thing looked at the blade.
The bridge stopped groaning.
For a long moment, nothing moved except the river climbing the sky.
Then the statue stepped aside.
Its gesture was oddly courtly. One stone arm swept toward the bridge.
Isolde dipped her head. “The old manners endure.”
Aurora did not lower her dagger. “What was that?”
“A gatekeeper.”
“A gatekeeper to what?”
Isolde looked across the ravine, toward a dark opening in the cliff beyond. It was almost invisible behind draping vines, but Aurora could see it now: a tall archway cut into the stone, its interior blacker than Nyx.
“To a question,” Isolde said.
Aurora looked at the gatekeeper, then at the narrow bridge, then down into the luminous mist.
“Could we perhaps find a question with a handrail?”
Nyx’s violet eyes flicked to her. “You can return.”
Aurora looked behind them.
The path through the trees had gone.
There was no trail, no gleam of standing stones, no glimpse of the oaks that had marked the boundary. Only a wall of trunks packed impossibly close together, their silver-backed leaves rustling though the air around Aurora lay still.
The grove had swallowed the way out.
Her throat tightened. She hated enclosed places. Hated the sensation of a door closing somewhere behind her, even when there was no door. For one ugly second she was back in Cardiff, staring at a locked flat door while Evan’s voice rose on the other side of it.
Aurora pressed her thumb against the crescent scar on her left wrist until the sting grounded her.
Not there, she told herself. Not then.
She looked at the bridge again.
“Fine,” she said. “We cross.”
The gatekeeper’s green eyes dimmed.
Isolde walked first, stepping onto the pale stone without a sound. Her silver hair moved around her as if underwater. Nyx followed, their form thinning as they took the bridge, shadow stretching flat over the carved surface.
Aurora came last.
The first step felt ordinary enough. Stone under rubber sole. The second made the Heartstone flare hot against her palm. On the third, the carvings beneath her feet shifted.
She froze.
The etched animals were moving.
A fox ran through the stone grain, its tiny legs pumping . A flock of birds broke from a carved tree and swept across the bridge in a line of shallow grooves. Then a figure emerged under Aurora’s foot, no more than a few inches tall: a woman in a long dress, carrying a lantern.
The woman turned her carved face upward.
Aurora’s breath caught.
She had Aurora’s straight black hair. Her blue eyes. Even the tiny crescent at her wrist.
The miniature figure raised the lantern.
A red glow spilled from it—the exact deep crimson of the Heartstone.
“Aurora,” Isolde said from ahead.
Aurora tore her gaze away.
The carved figure vanished beneath the stone.
“What?” Aurora called, though her voice came out hoarse .
“Do not let the bridge tell you who you are.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“The bridge does not require plans.”
A tremor travelled through the span.
Aurora moved.
She did not run; the bridge was too narrow, and the ravine yawned at either side with its impossible upward river. But she walked quickly , each step measured , the dagger gripped tight in one hand and the pendant in the other.
Halfway across, the singing water changed its tune.
The melody became a voice.
Not words at first. A murmur under the sound of the river. Then, clear as someone speaking over her shoulder:
Rory.
She stopped.
No one called her that except people who knew her. Properly knew her. Eva, mostly. Her mother, when she wanted something. Silas, when he was pretending not to care whether she had eaten.
Rory, the voice said again.
Aurora did not turn around.
Her scalp prickled.
Come back.
The voice was Eva’s.
For one breath, she nearly did.
Then Nyx’s shadow reached behind them, curling across the bridge like black smoke. It wrapped around Aurora’s wrist—not touching skin, but cold close to it .
“That voice has no pulse ,” Nyx whispered.
Aurora swallowed. “Neither do you.”
“I did not ask you to follow it.”
Fair.
She forced her feet forward.
The moment she reached the far side, the bridge’s carved creatures went still. The upward river sang only to itself again.
The archway waited ahead.
Vines hung over it in thick ropes, each leaf broad as Aurora’s hand and veined with pale gold. In the stone above the opening was an inscription written in a script that seemed to rearrange itself whenever she tried to focus on it .
Her pendant burned warm.
Nyx stopped at the threshold. Their edges blurred, as if the darkness inside the arch were pulling at them.
“This is not part of the Grove,” they said.
Isolde’s face had lost its distant calm. “No.”
Aurora stared at her. “You brought us here.”
“I brought you to the Grove.”
“That is a spectacularly technical distinction.”
“The path changed.”
“Can paths do that?”
“In places like this, paths do little else.”
From beyond the arch came a smell that did not belong among flowers and rain. Spice. Smoke. Roasted fruit. Rich meat browning in fat. It was mouth-watering and sickening at the same time, an aroma so lavish it felt almost like a hand closing over her stomach .
The crimson Heartstone pulsed faster.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Nyx leaned toward the darkness, their violet eyes narrowing. “Hel.”
Aurora’s fingers tightened on the moonsilver hilt.
The word settled in the air with the weight of a stone dropped into deep water.
Beyond the arch, something glowed amber.
The colour seeped through the blackness in thin, wavering bands. Aurora could see a different sky on the other side: warm gold, crowded with enormous clouds. She heard distant music, drums and strings, and beneath it the roar of a thousand voices raised in laughter or hunger.
A gust of hot wind rolled through the arch.
It carried ash that landed on the wildflowers. Where it touched, petals curled black.
Isolde lifted one hand. A pale shimmer spread from her fingers, catching the ash before it reached Aurora’s face. The particles hung for a moment like dark snow, then dissolved.
“Dymas,” Nyx said.
Aurora knew the name because Nyx had said it once before, in the cramped back room of Silas’ bar, with the lights off and the windows covered. A realm of indulgence. Of endless feasts. Of things that ate because they could.
The place on the other side of the arch did not look like a feast from here.
It looked hungry.
Something moved in the amber distance: a line of figures crossing beneath towering trees heavy with scarlet fruit. Farther off, terraces rose across a hillside in bands of vineyards and glittering fountains. Beyond them stood a palace, huge and bright, its many windows glowing like a mouthful of teeth.
Aurora felt wonder before she could stop herself.
It was beautiful.
That was the worst part.
A bell rang somewhere in Dymas. Low and resonant. Once. Twice.
The gatekeeper across the ravine answered with a groan of stone.
Isolde’s gaze fixed on the open rift. “The Veil is thinning ahead of its hour.”
“How ahead?” Aurora asked.
Isolde looked at her.
That was answer enough.
Aurora slid the Heartstone back beneath her shirt, though its heat pressed through the fabric. She sheathed the dagger, then took it out again. Better ready than clever, for once.
Behind them, the route home had vanished. Before them, Hel breathed through a torn door in the heart of the Fae Grove.
Nyx’s shadow gathered around Aurora’s feet, protective or possessive; she could not tell which. “We should not enter.”
A second bell sounded from beyond the arch.
The pendant gave a sharp, answering pulse .
Aurora looked at the crimson glow beneath her hand.
Then she looked into Dymas.
“No,” she said. “But I think it wants us to.”