AI The last of Richmond Park vanished behind them with the softest sound imaginable: a door settling shut in an empty house.
Aurora stopped between two ancient oak standing stones and looked back.
There should have been bracken , wet grass, perhaps the dark bulk of a deer moving beneath the trees. Instead there was only a wall of silver-grey mist pressed close between the stones. It shivered once, caught a faint reflection of her bright blue eyes, and went still.
“Tell me that is meant to happen,” she said.
Isolde moved past her without disturbing a single blade of grass.
The Half-Fae’s silver hair spilled down her back like moonlight poured from a vessel. She wore no coat despite the December cold beyond the grove, only a long dress the colour of old leaves. Wildflowers opened around the hem as she walked: bluebells, foxgloves, tiny yellow stars Aurora did not know the names of. None bent beneath Isolde’s feet.
“Meaning is a net mortals throw over water,” Isolde said. “It catches little but makes them feel less hungry.”
“That is not remotely an answer.”
“No,” said Isolde. “It is a warning.”
Nyx stood in the shade cast by one of the stones, though there was no proper sunlight to make it. They had taken the shape of a tall figure in a long coat of darkness, broad-shouldered and almost human except for the faint violet shine where their eyes should have been. The shadows under the trees seemed to lean toward them.
“The path remains open,” they whispered. Their voice slid through the clearing like wind under a locked door. “For now.”
Aurora’s hand went to the pendant at her throat.
The Heartstone had been warm since she passed through the stones. Not just warm—alive. Its deep crimson gem beat against her sternum in a measured pulse , one she could feel through her jumper and skin. She curled her fingers around it. The stone answered with another throb of heat.
Not a Hel portal, then. Not exactly.
Still, whatever lay ahead had noticed it.
She glanced at the slim dagger tucked inside her coat. The Fae-forged blade rested against her ribs, cold enough that even through its sheath she could feel its bite. Isolde had pressed it into Aurora’s hand only an hour ago, pale lavender eyes fixed on hers.
A thorn may open a locked door, the seer had said. It may also teach the hand that turns it why roses have teeth.
Aurora had not asked what that meant. She was learning that asking Isolde direct questions only gave the woman more room to be unhelpful.
The grove itself was beautiful in the way a storm cloud could be beautiful: so complete in its strangeness that looking at it made a person forget the sensible order of things.
Trees ringed the clearing, but they were not oaks anymore. Their trunks rose smooth and white, twisted in slow spirals, their branches intertwined overhead in an arching canopy of translucent leaves. The leaves flashed green, then gold, then colours Aurora had no names for. Under them, the air smelled of rain on stone, crushed mint, and something sweetly rotten beneath the sweetness.
The ground sloped away from the standing stones into a narrow path paved with flat black pebbles. A stream ran beside it, clear enough that Aurora could see every pale stone beneath the surface. But the water flowed uphill.
She stared at it.
A silver fish passed against the current, then broke the surface without making a ripple. For one suspended second it hung in the air , fins fluttering soundlessly, before dissolving into a scatter of sparks.
Nyx turned their head. “Do not drink from it.”
Aurora looked at the stream again. “Wasn’t planning to.”
“Good,” Nyx said. “It remembers everyone who has.”
That earned a sharp glance from her. “And what does that mean?”
Their violet eyes dimmed and brightened. “Exactly what I said.”
Isolde smiled faintly, though whether at Nyx or Aurora she could not tell. “The river carries names to roots. Roots carry them to old mouths. Old mouths are seldom kind.”
“Right.” Aurora rubbed the back of her neck. “No drinking. No giving the scenery my full legal name. Anything else?”
“Do not eat anything offered to you,” Isolde said.
Aurora looked at the abundance crowding the forest floor. Scarlet berries grew in clusters as large as grapes. White mushrooms with blue-veined caps pushed through the moss. Pears hung from a low branch, their skins burnished gold, their scent thick and ripe.
“And if nothing offers?”
“Then do not take it,” Isolde said.
“Helpful distinction.”
They set off down the black-pebbled path.
At first Aurora kept expecting the grove to end. A clearing was a clearing, however strange, and Richmond Park was still London. Somewhere beyond the trees there ought to be traffic, aircraft, the faint blunt roar of the city. Instead there was a silence that had texture. It pressed gently against her ears. Her own footsteps seemed too loud, though Nyx made none and Isolde left no marks in the moss.
Then the silence shifted.
Bells rang far away.
Not church bells. These were smaller, brighter, a cascade of delicate notes tumbling over one another. Aurora stopped and listened. The sound seemed to come from above, then under the earth, then from behind her teeth.
“What are those?” she asked.
“Flowers,” Isolde said.
Aurora looked up.
The branches overhead bore pale blossoms shaped like bells. Every time a breeze moved through the grove, they chimed. But there was no breeze touching Aurora’s face. Only the flowers swayed, hundreds of them, their soft peals making a tune that was almost familiar .
Almost.
A memory rose unbidden: her mother singing while marking exercise books at the kitchen table in Cardiff, humming under her breath because she thought nobody was listening . Aurora felt the old house with impossible clarity—the yellow kitchen curtains, the radiator ticking, her father’s leather briefcase propped by the door.
Her throat tightened.
Nyx’s hand closed around her elbow.
Their fingers were not fingers, not precisely . Cold darkness folded over the sleeve of her coat. The memory snapped apart.
Aurora drew in a breath. “What was that?”
“The grove hears what you carry,” Nyx said. “It wears familiar voices to make you turn aside.”
She glanced toward the bells. The flowers continued to chime, innocent as lanterns in a garden.
“Is it trying to trap us?”
“Trying is a mortal word,” Isolde said.
Aurora gave her a look.
The seer’s expression softened, just barely. “The grove does not hunger for prisoners, Aurora Carter. But it has existed longer than most kingdoms, and it does not understand why short-lived things are afraid of getting lost.”
“That makes it much better.”
“It should,” Isolde said. “You are not lost yet.”
The path curved among the white trees. With every step, the world became less like a hidden corner of a London park and more like a place that had dreamt London into existence as an afterthought.
They passed a pool no wider than a bathtub. Its surface reflected not the canopy above but a night sky crowded with unfamiliar stars. A pale moon drifted across it, huge and ringed in violet fire. Aurora leaned closer before she could stop herself.
In the water, a figure stood on a ridge beneath that alien moon.
It was her.
Not precisely . The woman in the pool had Aurora’s black hair, shoulder length and straight, though it streamed loose in a wind Aurora could not feel. She wore armour made of overlapping dark scales. Blood ran down one side of her face. Around her throat, the Heartstone blazed like a coal. Behind her, something vast unfurled wings of flame.
Aurora stumbled back.
The pool went blank. It showed only black water and the trembling reflection of pale branches.
Nyx had shifted closer. The shadows around their body drew taut, as if they had smelled a threat.
“Do not look twice,” they said.
“I wasn’t going to.” Aurora forced her hand away from the pendant. It had become so hot she could feel its shape imprinted in her palm. “Was that a vision?”
Isolde stood at the pool’s edge. Her pale lavender gaze rested on the water, unreadable .
“A reflection can show a face,” she said. “A pool can show a sky. Neither is obliged to show the truth.”
“You can’t lie.”
“No.” Isolde looked at her. “I cannot.”
Which, Aurora thought grimly, was not the same thing as being reassuring.
They continued.
The trees thinned all at once.
Aurora stepped out onto the edge of a vast hollow and forgot to breathe.
The grove opened below them in terraces, though no human gardener could have shaped it. Great roots rose from the earth like the ribs of buried giants, looping over one another to form bridges, archways, and sweeping staircases. Gardens clung to every level. There were fields of luminous grass that rolled in waves without wind; hedges sculpted into animals that blinked slow amber eyes; orchards where fruit glowed from within—violet plums, glassy green apples, red-gold pomegranates split to reveal seeds like garnets.
At the bottom of the hollow stood a city.
Not a city as Aurora knew it. There were no straight streets, no rows of brick and glass. Towers grew from living trees, their trunks braided together and lifted hundreds of feet into the shimmering canopy. Slender bridges spun between them like threads of silver. Light moved in the windows—warm amber, blue, rose—and for a moment she thought there must be people there.
Then one of the towers opened an eye.
It was vast, almond-shaped and gold, set in bark. The eye blinked once. Far below, a flock of birds erupted from an orchard in a whirl of white wings.
Aurora gripped the handle of the Fae blade through her coat.
“That,” she said carefully , “is a city?”
“A memory of one,” Isolde said.
“A memory?”
“The Courts have changed their homes many times.” Isolde’s silver hair stirred, though the air remained still . “Some places remember being loved. Some remember being ruled. This place remembers both.”
The enormous eye in the tower closed.
Wonder caught in Aurora’s chest despite everything. It was beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful. She understood, suddenly , why people stepped into old stories and never came back. It would be easy to follow those root-bridges downward. Easy to believe there would be an answer waiting in one of the lit rooms, someone who could explain the pendant, the portals, the reason a delivery rider from Cardiff now carried a demon-killing Fae knife under her coat.
Easy to forget that things with answers often wanted payment.
A thin, keening cry rose from somewhere below.
Aurora stiffened.
The sound came again, high and aching. Not an animal. A child, perhaps. It echoed through the hollow, bounced from root to root, and broke against the white trunks behind them.
“Please,” cried a voice below. “Please, I can’t find my mum.”
Aurora took a step toward the slope.
Nyx’s shadow spilled across the path in front of her, black and solid as a wall.
“Do not,” they whispered.
The cry came again. Closer this time. “Mum?”
Her instincts pulled hard enough to hurt. She saw a small figure between the terraces—a child in a red coat, perhaps, standing beneath one of the root arches. The shape raised an arm.
Aurora’s body leaned forward.
Then the figure turned its head.
Its face was smooth white bark. Where its mouth should have been, a dark seam opened from cheek to cheek.
The cry continued, but it came from the seam.
Aurora’s stomach dropped.
The thing in the red coat smiled.
Nyx lifted one hand. Darkness poured from their palm in a thin ribbon, crossing the hollow like smoke. It touched the figure.
The child-shape crumpled inward. The red coat became a spray of leaves. The bark face became a knot in the root. The sound stopped.
For several seconds Aurora could hear only her own breathing.
“Was that the grove?” she asked.
“No,” Isolde said. There was a hard edge in her voice now, something old and cold. “That was something that followed us in.”
Nyx’s violet eyes searched the terraces. “It wore the crack in the Boundary well.”
Aurora felt the Heartstone pulse again, hot against her chest.
The mist behind the standing stones came to her mind. The way it had sealed them in.
“Something followed us from Earth?”
“Perhaps.” Isolde looked toward the living city below. “Perhaps it came from elsewhere and used Earth as a road.”
A small sound ran through the branches overhead. Not bells this time.
Whispers.
Thousands of them.
Aurora could not make out words, only the shape of voices sliding through the leaves. Some laughed. Some sobbed. Some spoke in tones of intimate patience, as if they had been waiting a very long time for her to arrive.
Her fingers closed around the pendant.
The crimson stone beat once.
Then twice.
Ahead, across the hollow, a narrow bridge of pale roots led toward the city’s lowest gate. The gate stood open between two trees twisted together at the base. Beyond it burned an amber light, rich and inviting, the same colour as the sky Aurora had glimpsed in dreams she did not remember having.
The scent that drifted from it was impossible: roasted apples, warm bread, cinnamon, smoke. Hunger tightened low in her belly.
Nyx went utterly still.
“That is not Fae fire,” they said.
Isolde’s expression lost its last trace of amusement.
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
Aurora looked down at the Heartstone glowing between her clenched fingers. Its inner light had brightened, turning the deep crimson gem nearly black at the edges.
A Hel portal.
Somewhere in the heart of the grove, a door was opening where no door should be.
Behind them, the way home had vanished into mist. Ahead, the impossible city watched with its sleeping golden eye, and something on the far side of the root bridge was cooking a meal for guests nobody had invited.
Aurora drew the moonsilver dagger.
The blade came free with a whisper . Moonlight, though there was no moon above them, gathered along its leaf-shaped edge.
“Fine,” she said, more to steady herself than anyone else. “We find the door. We close it. We don’t eat anything, drink anything, or answer any disembodied children.”
Nyx’s violet gaze shifted to her. “A practical list.”
“I’m full of them.”
Isolde stepped onto the root bridge. It did not bend beneath her weight .
“Then walk carefully , little thorn,” she said. “The garden has begun to bite.”
Aurora followed her into the hollow, with Nyx’s shadows flowing at her back and the Heartstone burning like a second, furious heart.