AI The Heartstone gave its first pulse beneath Aurora’s shirt as they passed between the oak standing stones.
Heat spread across her breastbone, stopped, then struck again.
She caught the silver chain through the fabric and halted. Wildflowers crowded her boots, their blue-and-gold heads turned towards the centre of Isolde’s grove instead of the pale afternoon sun. Behind her, Richmond Park lay under a skin of drizzle. Ahead, the rain hung motionless in the air.
Each droplet held a reflection of an amber sky.
“Nyx.”
Their shadow stretched past her feet, though the clouded sun cast no other. It climbed the nearest standing stone and peeled from the ancient wood, shoulders forming first, then long arms and a head crowned by drifting wisps.
“I feel it.”
Nyx’s whisper stirred the flowers without touching Aurora’s hair.
She pulled out the pendant. The crimson stone glowed between her fingers, its warmth close to flesh. A thread of red light ran from its point towards the suspended rain.
“That wasn’t here when we came in.”
“Neither was the path behind us.”
Aurora looked back.
The two standing stones remained, their bark scored with rings and spirals, but the park had vanished from the gap between them. Silver mist pressed against the boundary. Something moved through it on four legs, too tall for a deer and jointed in too many places.
“Isolde told us to follow the flowers.”
“Isolde also told us, ‘The hungry road eats both the walker and the distance.’”
“Helpful woman.”
“She cannot lie.”
“No. She just murders plain English and buries it under a rhododendron.”
The path of bent flowers ended at a circular pool no wider than a dining table. Aurora had crossed that patch of grass minutes before. She remembered solid ground, moss, and a white mushroom shaped like an ear. Now black water filled a basin lined with green stone. No rain disturbed its surface.
The pendant tugged against its chain.
Aurora approached the pool. Her reflection met her from below: black hair brushing her shoulders, blue eyes bright against a face drained of colour. Nyx had no reflection. In their place stood a man in seventeenth-century dress, one hand raised towards the underside of the water. His narrow face twisted with effort. Blood covered his fingers.
Aurora jerked back.
The image broke. Amber light flooded the pool, revealing steps descending where no depth should have fitted.
Nyx folded over the water. Violet eyes sharpened within their silhouette.
“What did you see?”
“You. Before.”
A ripple passed through their form. It might have been a flinch.
“A dead shape.”
“He was moving.”
“Death takes longer for some of us.”
The steps continued down into honey-coloured brightness. Vines climbed their sides, heavy with translucent grapes. Tiny dark shapes wriggled inside each fruit.
Aurora let the pendant fall against her chest and drew the Fae-forged blade from the sheath strapped beneath her coat. The moonsilver chilled her palm. A pale gleam travelled along the dagger’s leaf-shaped edge.
Nyx’s gaze settled on it.
“Steel would attract less notice.”
“Steel won’t cut a magical ward.”
“Nor will it buy forgiveness when its owners recognise the craft.”
“Good thing Isolde gave it to me.”
“Fae gifts are debts wearing ribbons.”
Aurora put one boot on the first submerged step. The black surface bent around the leather without wetting it.
“We’ve established that Isolde’s sense of generosity needs legal review.”
She descended.
The grove compressed above her into a dark circle framed by roots. Each step carried her through a change in air: damp earth gave way to cinnamon, then smoke, then the rich iron scent of fresh blood. The walls drew farther apart. Vines thickened around columns carved with open mouths, their stone lips stained purple.
Nyx flowed down behind her. Shadow ran across the steps before gathering into their solid form at her shoulder.
At the final stair, Aurora stepped onto red soil.
The sky stretched overhead in a flawless amber vault. It had no sun. Light came from everywhere, warm enough to gild her skin without casting a clean shadow. The portal stood behind them as a tall oval of black water, upright between two pillars of twisted bone. Through it, the grove showed upside down.
Then the surface snapped shut.
The bone pillars remained. Between them hung a curtain of grapevines.
Aurora touched the leaves. They felt warm and faintly damp, like skin after exertion.
“Dymas?”
“Dymas.”
Nyx spoke the name with the care of someone testing a damaged tooth.
Beyond the portal, vineyards spread across rolling hills in neat bands of green, russet and violet. Rivers flashed between them, but their waters ran thick and gold. Trees bowed beneath unfamiliar fruit: glass pears filled with blue flame, black peaches furred in silver, clusters of white pods that opened and closed as if breathing .
Farther off, towers rose above the slopes. Some resembled fluted wine bottles. Others curved like horns, joined by bridges strung with red lanterns. Smoke poured from a vast collection of chimneys and flattened beneath the amber sky.
A bell rang.
The deep note rolled across the vineyards. At once, thousands of pale birds rose from the vines. Their wings flashed like knives. Workers among the rows straightened, lifted baskets onto their heads and began walking towards the distant city.
Aurora watched one pass below their hill. The figure wore a linen robe stained to the knees, with a bronze collar around his throat. His basket overflowed with green grapes. Each grape whispered in a different human voice.
“Please.”
“Water.”
“I had children.”
“Not yet.”
The worker kept his gaze on the road.
Aurora’s grip tightened around the Fae blade.
“What are those?”
“Regrets, fermented before their time.”
“That answer made no sense.”
“It will.”
“I hate it when everyone does that.”
They moved down the hill.
The soil yielded beneath Aurora’s boots with a slow, muscular throb . Pale roots surfaced, coiled away from the moonsilver and burrowed into the ground. When she paused, the earth paused with her.
“Tell me the land isn’t alive.”
“All realms are alive.”
“London doesn’t recoil from my knife.”
“London has learnt manners.”
The vineyard path led beneath an arch woven from thorny branches. A clay tablet hung from its centre, marked with a mouth swallowing a crown. The pendant heated again.
Aurora lifted it. Crimson light seeped between her fingers and painted the tablet.
The mark opened its stone lips.
“Name your hunger.”
The voice came from the arch, thick and wet.
Aurora glanced at Nyx.
“Do not answer with a desire .”
“What else would I answer with?”
“A name.”
The arch repeated itself. Its branches flexed, thorns sliding from the wood like teeth from gums.
“Name your hunger.”
Aurora raised the pendant towards it.
“Belphegor.”
The vines recoiled. The clay mouth clenched, cracked down the centre and spat a seed at her boots.
Nyx’s whisper carried a note of approval.
“Out-of-the-box thinking.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“You ignored each lesson.”
“Not each one.”
She crouched over the seed. It was the size of her thumbnail, polished red and marked with a tiny version of the same devouring mouth. Before she could touch it, the Heartstone pulled towards it. The seed rose from the soil and struck the pendant with a bright metallic click.
Crimson lines spread across the silver chain.
Aurora tore the pendant away. The seed dropped, smoking, and a shriek broke from the earth beneath it. Vines lashed across the arch.
Nyx seized her coat and dissolved.
Cold shadow swallowed Aurora. The world lost its colour and weight . For one breath she hung in a narrow space filled with distant whispers, each one speaking from behind a closed door. Something brushed her crescent-shaped wrist scar from the inside.
Then Nyx released her ten paces beyond the arch.
Aurora stumbled onto a paved road. Her stomach lurched as though the rest of her had arrived half a second before it.
“Warn me next time.”
“The thorns had already voted.”
Behind them, the arch clawed at empty air. Its roots ripped free of the ground, exposing rows of small white bones caught in their knots. It could not pass the edge of the vineyard. After several snaps of its branches, it settled back into place.
The tablet’s split mouth chewed itself shut.
Aurora pressed a hand to her abdomen.
“How do you travel like that without vomiting?”
“I possess nothing to vomit.”
“That sounded smug.”
“I remember smugness. It fits.”
The road curved between orchards. Paving stones clicked under Aurora’s boots, each one carved with a date and a name. Some dates belonged to ancient kingdoms; others had not arrived yet. She avoided stepping on a slab bearing 2089.
Music drifted through the trees.
Not instruments. Knives.
Blades struck chopping boards in overlapping rhythms, joined by the hiss of fat and the boom of oven doors. The sounds came from a low building nestled among the orchards, its walls built from dark brick and enormous rib bones. Copper pipes pierced its roof. Steam curled from them in the shapes of dancers before breaking apart.
A doorway stood open.
Inside, a kitchen stretched beyond the dimensions of the building. Rows of counters vanished into fragrant haze. Cooks in white coats hurried between ovens tall enough to roast elephants. Some looked human. Others carried horns, tails or extra arms. One blue-skinned woman spun sugar between six hands, weaving it into a cage around a furious winged creature.
At the nearest counter, a thin man sliced a pear of blue flame. His knife passed through it without damage. Each cut released a clean note, and another cook captured the notes in stoppered jars.
Aurora stopped at the threshold.
The air carried roasted garlic, hot bread, burnt orange peel and a sweetness so dense she tasted it against her teeth. Her stomach cramped. She could not remember when she had last eaten. Breakfast in the flat above Silas’ bar seemed to belong to someone else.
A tray rested beside the door.
On it sat small pastries glazed in gold. Steam lifted from their split tops. Inside each one, a memory moved: her mother’s kitchen in Cardiff, rain streaking the window; her father at the table with legal briefs stacked beside his tea; Eva laughing with a chip caught between her teeth.
Aurora reached for one.
Nyx’s fingers closed around her wrist. Their touch sank cold through her skin.
“That is not food.”
Her fingertips hovered above the pastry. In its glazed surface, her mother turned from the sink.
“Rory, love, you’ll miss the train.”
Aurora pulled her hand back.
The memory-mother turned farther than a human neck allowed. Her face split into a small, eager mouth.
The pastries trembled on the tray.
“Hungry, Laila?”
The voice came from the kitchen.
Every knife stopped.
A cook at the nearest oven lifted his head. He had a handsome human face, save for the second jaw opening along his throat. Flour dusted his bare arms. A brand in the shape of a crown smouldered above his elbow.
Aurora kept the dagger low against her leg.
“Wrong person.”
“Names don’t cross the Veil by accident.”
He wiped his hands on his apron. The fabric whimpered beneath his palms.
Nyx spread across the doorway, their silhouette widening until violet eyes floated in a wall of darkness.
The cook’s throat-jaw grinned.
“Nightwhisper. Still wearing Aldric’s ruin?”
The temperature dropped. Frost silvered the tray, sealing the memories beneath a skin of ice.
Aurora stepped between Nyx and the threshold.
“We’re looking for someone.”
“So is every soul in Dymas. A lost child. A faithless lover. The cook who stole their recipe.” He pointed his knife towards the road beyond the orchard. “You’ll find the registrars at the Banquet Steps. If your someone entered by contract, they’ll have a place setting.”
“We didn’t mention a contract.”
“No one comes here for the scenery.”
A crash sounded deep inside the kitchen. A roar followed, then applause. The cooks resumed their chopping as one, restoring the hard rhythm.
The flour-dusted man plucked a jar from the counter. A pale note fluttered inside it, beating against the glass.
“Payment for directions.”
Aurora held still.
“What do you want?”
“Your first taste of Dymas.”
The pastries shed their frost. Gold glaze shone beneath the kitchen lamps.
Nyx’s hand slipped from Aurora’s wrist, leaving numb bands around her skin.
“Refuse.”
The cook tilted the jar. The trapped note struck the stopper and produced a sound like a child calling through a wall.
Aurora looked past him, towards the kitchen’s distant rows. Human faces bent over steaming pots. Bronze collars flashed at their throats. Above them hung thousands of numbered keys, each suspended from a butcher’s hook.
She lifted the Heartstone instead.
The cook’s smile vanished.
The pendant throbbed in her palm, bright enough to turn her bones red beneath the skin.
“You recognise this.”
The throat-jaw snapped shut.
“Cover it.”
“Directions first.”
“Cover it, Carter.”
Her surname travelled through the kitchen.
One knife faltered. Then another. Heads rose along the counters, dozens at first, then hundreds, their eyes fixing on the crimson stone.
Aurora closed her fingers around the Heartstone, but its glow leaked through the gaps.
The cook came around the counter and stopped short of the moonsilver blade.
“Take the western road. Follow the river of clarified butter until you reach the city walls. Don’t drink from it, don’t answer the ferrymen, and don’t let the bells complete thirteen strokes while you stand outside a door.”
“What happens on thirteen?”
“You become the meal expected within.”
Nyx gathered into solid form beside her.
“And the Banquet Steps?”
“Past the Market of Last Suppers. Beneath the palace terraces.” His human mouth tightened. “Now hide that stone before something with rank scents it.”
Aurora tucked the pendant beneath her shirt. Its heat settled against her breastbone, stronger than before.
The cooks lowered their heads. Chopping resumed in broken pockets until the rhythm joined and filled the hall.
On the western road, the golden river wound between orchards towards the distant city. Flat-bottomed boats moved across its gleaming surface, each poled by a hooded ferryman. Along the banks, trees shook their silver leaves and dropped fruit into waiting baskets with soft, fleshy thumps.
Aurora sheathed the Fae blade but kept her hand on its hilt.
“Market of Last Suppers.”
Nyx watched one of the hooded figures guide a boat against the current.
“Do not eat anything there.”
“I gathered that.”
“Do not smell anything for too long, either.”
“How do I control that?”
“Breathe less.”
“That’s your practical advice?”
“It has served me for centuries.”
Aurora stepped onto the western road. Heat from the paving stones climbed through her soles, and the amber sky pressed its sourceless light across vineyards that stretched beyond sight. Somewhere behind them, the kitchen knives changed rhythm.
Ahead, the first ferryman turned his hood towards the road and lifted one pale hand in greeting.