AI The last oak stood where no oak ought to have grown.
Its trunk split into three pillars, each broader than a doorway and bleached silver beneath strips of peeling bark. Knots puckered the wood like closed eyes. Six more oaks formed a broken ring around it, their roots sunk into soil hardened by frost, though no snow lay on the ground.
Aurora stopped between two of them. The crescent scar on her left wrist prickled beneath her sleeve.
“Those aren’t standing stones.”
Isolde’s silver hair drifted past her waist, stirred by wind that touched nothing else. “Stone remembers the mountain. Wood remembers the seed. Which would you trust to guard a door?”
“Neither, if the door leads where you live.”
The corner of Isolde’s mouth curved.
Behind them, Nyx detached from the shadow of a thorn thicket. They gathered height until a lean humanoid silhouette stood among the winter trees, violet eyes hovering in a face without features.
“Your suspicion does you credit, Aurora Carter.”
“Rory.”
“A shorter name will not make the path kinder.”
She glanced back towards Richmond Park. Bare branches meshed across a pearl-grey sky. Beyond them, the city sat hidden under distance and morning mist, though traffic muttered at the edge of hearing. A horn sounded. Tyres hissed on wet road.
The ordinary noises helped.
Then something chimed inside the ring.
Not metal. Not glass. The note held the wet depth of a fingertip drawn around a wineglass, but beneath it came a second sound: leaves opening, hundreds at once.
Rory pulled the Heartstone from beneath her jumper. The thumbnail-sized crimson gem rested in her palm, warm enough to flush her skin. Its inner glow swelled and ebbed in a slow rhythm.
Nyx bent over it without touching.
“This is no gate to Hel.”
“The pendant disagrees.”
“The pendant remembers Dymas. Memory may answer memory.”
“That cleared everything up.”
“Answers rarely clear. They tend to uncover.”
Isolde passed between the oaks.
She left no mark in the soft earth beyond them.
Rory reached beneath her coat and closed her fingers around the Fae-forged blade. Cold moonsilver bit through its leather sheath. She followed.
The air changed on her first step.
Winter vanished from her lungs. Warmth slid across her cheeks, carrying scents of crushed mint, rain, and something sweet she could not name. The ground dipped under her boot, not with mud but with a thick cushion of moss . Sound stretched. The distant traffic dropped into a deep groan, slowed beyond recognition, then snapped off.
Rory turned.
The oak boundary remained behind her, yet Richmond Park had gone. Between the trunks hung a vertical skin of grey light, faintly rippled, like a reflection disturbed by breath. Her own shape appeared within it half a heartbeat late.
Nyx crossed. The grey surface clung to their shoulders in silver threads.
They shuddered into solid form, long limbs edged by smoke.
“The Veil dislikes me.”
“Mutual?”
“I remember when it was thinner.”
A seam opened in Nyx’s chest, revealing no flesh, only a violet depth scattered with dim sparks. It closed as their outline settled.
Rory’s grip tightened around the dagger.
Isolde had walked ahead. Wildflowers bent around her bare feet without breaking. Their petals wore colours Rory knew—blue, gold, scarlet—alongside shades her eyes struggled to hold. One bloom shifted from green to the ache of an almost-remembered name. Another opened towards her, showing rows of tiny white stamens that clicked together like teeth.
“No picking,” Isolde called.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“The flowers were.”
Rory stepped away from the clicking bloom. Its stem followed her, nosing at the air.
The grove spread far beyond any clearing Richmond Park could have contained. Hills rolled beneath a sky washed in pale lilac. There was no sun. Light collected on every leaf and blade of grass, shining outward from within. Ancient trees rose from the slopes in twisting tiers, their branches heavy with white fruit and copper-coloured blossoms. Water streamed upwards along one trunk, ran beneath the bark, then sprang from its highest fork in glittering ropes.
Each drop chimed as it fell into the sky.
Rory stared until the Heartstone gave a sharp pulse against her palm.
“What is this place?”
“My exile.”
Isolde did not look back.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“Questions have roots. Pull one and you may dislike what comes from the soil.”
Nyx glided past a cluster of blue ferns. Their leaves folded as the Shade’s darkness crossed them, then opened with soft sighs.
“This pocket was cultivated,” they whispered. “Not born.”
The path ahead resembled pale gravel, but when Rory put her weight on it, the pieces shifted beneath her boot. Hundreds of tiny shells turned their spiral faces towards her. They hummed a low chord.
She stepped onto the moss instead.
“Cultivated by whom?”
“The Courts,” Isolde answered. “Before their gardeners quarrelled with the seasons.”
“What did they quarrel about?”
“Ownership.”
A small creature broke from the grass.
Rory drew the dagger. Moonsilver flashed, cold light washing over her fingers.
The creature froze on the path. It stood no taller than a rabbit, with the narrow body of a fox and six delicate legs. Translucent skin showed a lattice of gold bones. Ferns grew along its spine in place of fur, each frond curled tight. It lifted a head without eyes and sniffed.
The Heartstone warmed.
The animal’s ferns unfurled.
Tiny crimson fruits hung beneath them.
“Oh.”
The word escaped Rory before she could smother it.
The creature sprang forwards and pressed its smooth brow to the pendant. Heat leapt through the chain. Images flooded the gem’s polished surface: amber skies, long tables sagging beneath silver platters, orchards whose branches bowed under impossible fruit. A horned figure raised a goblet somewhere beyond a curtain of flame.
Rory jerked the pendant away.
The creature shrieked.
Nyx’s arm lengthened into a spear of darkness between them. The animal bounded backwards, all six feet striking the ground in a rippling sequence, and vanished inside a flower no bigger than a teacup. The petals snapped shut. A faint scrabbling travelled down the stem.
Rory’s heart hammered against her ribs.
“What did it show me?”
Isolde crouched beside the flower. “A hunger.”
“I saw Dymas.”
“You saw what the stone carried through the Veil.”
“The pendant’s never done that.”
“The pendant has never entered soil where memories grow legs.”
Nyx’s violet gaze remained on the closed flower.
“That thing recognised Hel.”
“No.” Isolde brushed one finger over the petals. “It recognised a door.”
The pendant throbbed once more, hotter now. Rory shoved it beneath her jumper, though the heat seeped through her clothes.
“Brilliant. I’m wearing a doorknob.”
She slid the dagger into its sheath. The blade resisted for a fraction of a second, its cold point tugging towards the flower, then settled.
They moved deeper.
The ground climbed, but Rory felt no strain in her calves. With each step, the boundary behind them appeared no farther away. The silver oaks remained close enough to touch, their trunks framed between branches, yet the group had crossed a stream, rounded three hills, and passed beneath an arch made from the ribs of something vast.
The bones hummed when Nyx went under them.
They stopped.
Symbols had been carved into every rib. Some resembled antlers, some open hands, some mouths stitched with lines. The marks crawled when Rory shifted her gaze. One symbol repeated near the base of each bone: a circle split by a jagged slash.
She crouched.
“That looks like the Veil.”
Nyx joined her. Their fingers hovered above the carving, bending thin trails of shadow around it.
“A wound through it.”
“A rift?”
“The shape predates the Wardens’ signs.” Their whisper roughened . “I saw it once before.”
Rory looked up. “Where?”
Nyx’s body blurred at the edges.
“On the floor of a cellar in 1643.”
The air beneath the arch grew cold. Not the clean cold of the dagger, but cellar cold —damp stone, stale ash, earth packed over graves.
Isolde stood on the other side of the ribs. She watched Nyx with her pale lavender eyes.
“The circle took Aldric.”
“The men inside it took Aldric.” Nyx’s hands curled. “The circle merely failed to give him back.”
Rory straightened. “You think whoever made this was connected to your summoning?”
“Time copies old handwriting. It does not prove the same hand held the pen.”
A knock sounded from inside the largest rib.
Three slow taps.
Rory stepped away.
A second set answered from the bone opposite. Then another, farther up the arch. The knocks multiplied until something seemed to run through the skeleton above them, striking from within each hollow curve.
“Move.” Isolde’s voice cut clean through the noise.
They crossed.
The moment Rory cleared the final rib, the knocking stopped. Silence pressed against her ears. She turned, and the arch had become a row of living trees with pale bark, none marked or bent.
“Is that normal?”
“Here?” Isolde plucked a copper blossom and crushed it between her fingers. It dissolved into a flock of sparks. “No.”
“Useful distinction.”
Ahead, a lake filled the hollow between the hills.
Its surface stood upright.
A sheer wall of black water rose from the ground and climbed beyond the treetops, narrow at its base and widening as it ascended. Silver fish swam through it. Their bodies passed in and out of view, flickering behind reflections of places that were not the grove: a candlelit ballroom, a battlefield under red rain, a child asleep beneath a kitchen table.
Rory approached until damp cold touched her face.
Her reflection appeared.
The woman in the water wore Rory’s face but not her clothes. A dark gown clung to her body, threaded with amber light. A crown of bare branches circled her black hair. The Heartstone rested against her throat, swollen to the size of a fist.
Rory stopped.
The reflection did not.
It raised its left hand.
Across the wrist, the small crescent scar had split into a red mouth.
“Isolde.”
The seer came to stand beside her. In the lake, Isolde’s reflection wore iron chains around her neck and wrists. Her silver hair had been shorn to her jaw. Blood darkened her lips.
“What does yours show?”
“A lie wearing tomorrow’s coat.”
“You can’t lie.”
“The water can.”
Nyx remained several paces back. Their shadow pooled around their feet as if anchored there.
Rory glanced towards them. “What do you see?”
“Nothing I will feed by naming.”
The fish turned as one.
Hundreds of silver heads faced Rory from within the vertical water. Their mouths opened. Human voices spilled out, layered and broken.
“Laila.”
The name struck her harder than the cold.
Evan’s name for her. His private hook, softened at the edges so other people mistook it for affection .
She stepped back.
The reflection reached through the surface.
Its hand emerged first, dry and warm, fingers spread towards Rory’s face. The crescent wound in its wrist gaped wider. Inside lay an amber sky.
Rory drew the Fae blade and slashed.
Moonsilver cut the wrist without resistance. The severed hand fell onto the grass, where it shattered into black water. The lake rippled from bottom to top. Each false reflection broke apart, faces stretching across the waves.
The fish screamed.
Nyx swept forwards, expanding until their darkness covered Rory and Isolde in a curved shield. Drops struck the Shade and hissed into steam. Wherever they landed on the grass, white mushrooms erupted, swelled, and burst in clouds of grey dust.
“Don’t breathe,” Rory snapped.
Isolde flung out both hands. Copper blossoms tore free from the nearby trees and spun around them, gathering into a bright, snapping ring. The dust touched the petals and burned blue.
The wall of water folded in on itself.
For one impossible instant, it became an ocean suspended above the grove, its dark underside crowded with pale shapes. Then it collapsed without a splash, pouring into a crack in the ground thinner than string.
The last fish vanished tail-first.
Air rushed back into the hollow.
Rory bent with one hand braced on her knee, dagger held clear of her body. Black droplets crawled along the moonsilver blade, gathering at its point. They fell. Each drop struck the moss and whispered her name.
She wiped the blade on her coat.
“Your home has issues.”
Isolde stared at the empty hollow.
“My home did not make that lake.”
Nyx lowered their shield. Pieces of their silhouette had turned translucent where the water struck, exposing violet fractures beneath.
Rory reached towards them, then stopped short of contact.
“Are you hurt?”
“Hurt belongs to flesh. I am diminished.”
“You’re flickering.”
“A cruder description. Accurate.”
The Shade drew themselves tighter. Darkness stitched across the fractures, leaving faint purple seams.
Rory faced Isolde. “You brought us through a boundary you claimed to understand. We’ve met a fruit-backed door sniffer, your old bones tried Morse code, and a wall of water used my ex’s pet name. Start giving me answers that contain nouns.”
Isolde’s gaze moved to the Heartstone beneath Rory’s jumper. Its crimson light showed through the fabric.
“The grove had seven paths when I woke.”
“And now?”
“Eight.”
“That was almost useful.”
“There should never be eight.”
A note sounded across the hollow.
The same glass-deep chime they had heard at the oak boundary, but louder. The flowers closed. The upward-flowing streams froze in place. Far off, copper leaves turned their dull sides towards the sound.
A path appeared where the lake had stood.
Black roots knitted themselves into steps leading down through the crack. Amber light breathed below, warm and rhythmic . With every pulse , the Heartstone answered against Rory’s chest.
Nyx leaned over the opening. Their shadow recoiled from it.
“Hel.”
“Dymas,” Rory murmured.
Scents rose from the depths : baked pears, charred meat, wine rich with spice. Beneath them lurked sulphur and the sweet rot of fruit left in a sealed room.
Music drifted up. Strings, drums, applause.
Then a woman laughed.
Rory knew that laugh .
Not from London, Cardiff, or any memory she could reach. Recognition moved through the Heartstone instead, an intimate jolt that left her teeth aching.
She crouched at the first root-step. Carved into its black surface lay the circle split by a jagged line.
Isolde seized her shoulder.
Her fingers felt colder than the moonsilver blade.
“The eighth path was not grown for feet.”
Rory held the pendant out. Crimson light spilled between her knuckles and painted all three of them blood-red.
“What was it grown for?”
The applause below stopped.
A single place setting clinked in the silence : plate, knife, fork, glass.
Isolde’s grip tightened.
“For an invitation.”