AI The first oak stood where no oak had any business standing.
Its trunk rose from the winter bracken in a column of silver-grey wood, broad enough that Aurora could not have linked hands around it with three other people. No branches stirred above. There were no branches at all. The crown had been severed or swallowed by the mist, leaving the thing to resemble a pillar carved by an axe too large for human hands.
Rory stopped six paces short.
“This is your path?”
Nyx gathered beside her, taller than the surrounding haze, a human outline cut from the dark beneath a locked door. Two violet lights regarded the oak.
“It was.”
“That answer has done nothing for my confidence.”
Behind them, Eva’s boots crushed frozen fern. The sound ended the moment she passed Rory. She lifted one foot and brought it down again. The bracken bent, though no crackle followed.
“No,” Eva murmured. “Absolutely not. I’m not going into a wood that’s already stolen the noise from my shoes.”
“It has not stolen it.” Nyx’s whisper seemed to come from the folds of Rory’s coat. “The sound arrived before we did.”
Eva stared at them.
“That was worse.”
Rory pulled the Heartstone pendant from beneath her jumper. The deep crimson gem rested against her palm, no bigger than her thumbnail. It usually held the faint warmth of skin. Now it lay cold, its inner glow reduced to a dark ember.
“No Hel portal.”
“No Hel portal here,” Nyx corrected.
“That distinction was also worse.”
The compass in Eva’s hand spun without pause. Its needle flashed beneath the glass, circling west, north, east, then dipping as if the direction it sought lay under their feet.
Rory glanced back. Richmond Park remained behind them: bare trees, white sky, grass stiff with frost. A stag stood on the distant slope, watching. Its breath clouded its antlers. London traffic pressed a dull iron hum against the horizon.
Between one blink and the next, the stag vanished.
The road noise went with it.
Rory closed her fingers around the pendant.
“All right. Stay close. Touch nothing that speaks first.”
Eva shoved the compass into her pocket.
“What if it speaks second?”
“Use judgement.”
“You brought me. Your judgement’s under review.”
Nyx slipped through the oak.
The trunk accepted them without ripple or resistance. Their silhouette thinned, smeared across the bark and disappeared.
Eva gripped Rory’s sleeve.
“They could have warned us.”
“They did. In their own maddening way.”
“Rory, that tree’s solid.”
Rory drew the Fae-forged blade. The leaf-shaped dagger cleared its sheath with a soft metallic breath. Cold travelled through the leather grip and into her scarred wrist, sharp enough to set the crescent mark prickling. Moonlight had no place beneath the noon cloud, yet pale veins shone along the moonsilver.
She touched the tip to the trunk.
A line opened in the wood.
It ran from the moss at their feet to the mist overhead, pouring green-gold light through a cut finer than thread. The oak separated along hidden seams. Beyond it waited summer.
Eva peered through.
“That’s obscene.”
Wildflowers filled the clearing on the other side—foxglove, bluebell, poppy and blooms Rory did not know, all crowded together despite their clashing seasons. Sunlight washed them in honey. Silver pollen drifted upwards. A dragonfly as long as Rory’s hand hung over the path, wings chiming like tapped glass.
Rory sheathed the blade.
“Better than a talking tree.”
“That remains to be seen.”
They crossed together.
Warm air closed over Rory’s face. Her lungs filled with rain, apple blossom and something mineral, like coins held under the tongue. The frozen ground gave way to springy moss. The oak sealed behind them without a mark.
Eva spun and pressed both palms to it.
“No door.”
“Doors rarely show themselves to guests who have not decided whether they are leaving.” Nyx stood between two banks of flowers several yards ahead. In the Grove’s light their edges smoked, strands of shadow peeling from their shoulders and knitting themselves back into place. “Walk.”
Rory resisted the urge to test the oak with the dagger. If the Grove objected to visitors, carving at its boundary might shift them from guests to something less welcome.
The path wound between standing stones shaped like oak trunks. Bark patterns ran over their surfaces, though the grooves gleamed with quartz. One leaned towards Rory as she passed. Not much. An inch, perhaps. Enough to make her move towards the centre of the path.
Water chuckled somewhere beyond the flowers. Birds called in notes that climbed and climbed without resolving . Beneath those sounds came a slow thud.
Rory halted.
Eva collided with her shoulder.
“What?”
The thud came again, deep in the soil. Flowers trembled . Pollen rose.
Nyx turned their violet gaze towards the ground.
“The Grove remembers a forest older than roots.”
Rory waited for the next beat. It travelled through her boots and climbed her bones.
“That’s a heartbeat.”
“Many things beat.”
“Useful as ever.”
The path narrowed. Flowers brushed Rory’s coat, turning their faces after her. Tiny eyes opened at the centre of a white bloom. She looked back. The eye closed, leaving a knot of yellow stamens.
Eva had seen it too. She reached for Rory’s hand, stopped herself and hooked two fingers through Rory’s belt loop instead.
“If I get eaten by a daisy, burn the whole park.”
“The park would object.”
“Good.”
They moved deeper.
The sky changed first. Warm blue remained above the clearing behind them, but through the trees ahead hung a darkness crowded with stars. No gradual dusk joined the two. Day ended at a clean vertical edge, as though someone had lowered a velvet curtain through the wood.
Rory crossed beneath it.
Night settled over her skin, cool and damp. She looked back. Eva stood in sunshine less than an arm’s length away, her face gilded on one side. Rory reached through. Her hand entered noon; warmth stopped at her wrist.
Eva caught her fingers.
“You’re freezing.”
“You’re not.”
“That’s not how shade works.”
Nyx passed across the border. Their form sharpened beneath the stars until Rory could make out long hands, the line of a chin, the suggestion of clothes from another century. For one breath a pale human face showed through the shadow: hollow cheeks, a dark beard and eyes full of firelight.
Then the Shade closed over it.
Rory held Nyx’s gaze.
“Aldric?”
Every star above them winked out.
Nyx became a hole in the world.
“Do not use that name here.”
The voice brushed the nape of Rory’s neck, though they stood several paces away.
Eva stepped through the wall of night and tucked herself close to Rory.
“What name?”
“One the Grove was not offered.”
Nyx turned. Stars returned in clusters, blooming between black leaves.
Rory followed without pressing. The hand at her side remained cold long after she had left the daylight.
Trees crowded the path now, their trunks white and smooth as bone. Ribbons hung from the branches. Hundreds of them. Some had faded to grey threads; others shone with wet, rich colour. Words covered each strip in different hands and inks.
Eva leaned towards a blue ribbon.
“‘Let my daughter remember my face.’”
The ribbon snapped around her wrist.
She swore and jerked back. The silk tightened, blue sinking into her skin like dye drawn into water.
Rory’s dagger flashed free. One stroke severed the cloth. The cut ends released a shriek in a child’s voice and flew into the canopy.
Silence dropped.
Every ribbon turned towards them.
No wind stirred. Still they lifted, pointing like narrow fingers. Words crawled over their surfaces.
Nyx swelled across the path, their shadow spreading to cover Rory and Eva.
“Lower the blade.”
Rory kept the dagger between herself and the trees.
“It grabbed her.”
“She read a petition aloud. The Grove mistook that for an answer.”
Eva rubbed her wrist. Blue letters remained under the skin, already fading.
“What did I promise?”
“Nothing. The blade interrupted the bargain.”
A hiss passed through the branches. The ribbons streamed towards Rory, stopping at the edge of Nyx’s shadow.
The Heartstone warmed against her chest.
Rory froze.
One pulse .
Then another.
The faint beat inside the crimson gem matched the rhythm under the earth.
“Nyx.”
“I feel it.”
“This isn’t a Hel portal.”
“No.”
The pendant grew hotter. Rory dragged it out by its chain. Crimson light spilled between her fingers, staining the white trunks with the colour of open flesh.
The path reacted.
Roots bulged beneath the moss. Flowers shut. The ribbons curled tight against their branches while the forest’s deep heartbeat quickened , no longer a patient beat but three hard blows that shook dust from the leaves.
Ahead, something answered.
A red glow appeared between the trees.
Eva’s fingers returned to Rory’s belt loop.
“Tell me that’s Isolde.”
“Isolde’s eyes are lavender.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Nyx moved towards the glow, each step pouring darkness over the moss. The ribbons shrank from them. Rory followed, pendant held clear of her body, dagger low beside her thigh.
The red light did not belong to fire. It came from fruit.
A tree stood in a round hollow, alone beneath a sky the colour of pearl. Its boughs sagged under translucent apples. Each contained a tiny moving scene: a woman shutting a front door; a soldier sinking into brown water; two boys sharing stolen cake beneath a table; an old man opening a letter and folding to his knees.
Hundreds of lives turned inside the fruit.
Eva released Rory.
“Oh.”
The word emerged stripped of humour.
She stepped towards the nearest branch. An apple no larger than a plum held a sunlit kitchen. A little girl with dark plaits stood on a chair, flour to her elbows, while a younger Eva stole currants from a bowl. A woman moved past the window, laughing at something beyond the fruit’s curved edge.
Eva’s breath caught.
“Mum.”
Rory seized the back of her coat before she could touch it.
The apple split.
Clear juice ran from the crack, and the woman inside turned towards them. Her face pressed against the skin of the fruit. She opened her mouth.
Eva fought Rory’s grip.
“Let go.”
“That isn’t her.”
“She looked at me.”
“So did the flower.”
The woman struck the inside of the apple with both fists. No sound escaped. The fruit swelled around her, growing from plum-sized to the weight of a clenched heart.
Nyx swept one hand across it.
Shadow swallowed the branch. When they withdrew, the apple hung whole and small again. The kitchen scene had vanished. In its place, a mouth chewed in darkness.
Eva stumbled into Rory.
“What is this place?”
A voice answered from beyond the tree.
“A cup for what the world spills.”
The words carried no echo , yet each leaf repeated them in a papery whisper .
Silver hair appeared first, flowing between the trunks to a woman’s waist. Isolde Varga crossed into the hollow barefoot. Moss rose to meet her soles and sank unmarked after every step. Her gown had the pale green sheen of a moth’s wing. Lavender eyes moved from Eva’s stained wrist to Rory’s naked blade, then settled on the Heartstone.
The pendant burned once in Rory’s palm.
Isolde’s expression tightened.
Nyx drifted between her and the others.
“You knew we had crossed.”
“The Grove tasted iron, grief and a night that refused its grave .”
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed .
Rory slid the blade back into its sheath, though she kept her hand on the hilt.
“And me?”
Isolde approached. Apples reflected in her eyes, each one carrying a different face.
“You arrived wrapped in another realm’s appetite.”
The Heartstone gave a faint pulse .
Rory held it up by its silver chain.
“You know what this is.”
“I know what has known you.”
“That sounds like a dodge.”
“A straight road does not become a lie because it avoids a sleeping wolf.”
Eva pulled her sleeve over the blue marks.
“I’ve had enough of riddles. That tree wore my mother’s face.”
“No.” Isolde stopped before her. “You wore the memory. The tree only gave it skin.”
Eva’s mouth hardened.
“Why?”
“Fruit seeks a hand. Memory seeks a wound. The Grove grows both.”
The apple above Eva’s head shifted. The mouth inside it stopped chewing and smiled.
Rory drew Eva two steps away.
“We came for answers about the Veil. Rift points have opened where none were marked. My pendant reacts to them, and now it reacts here.”
Isolde looked towards the roots of the fruit tree.
The earth rose and fell.
Once.
Twice.
At the third beat, a thin crimson line appeared in the moss. It traced a circle around the trunk before branching into delicate veins. Heat pressed through Rory’s boots. With it came the smell of roasted pears, burnt sugar, hot wine and meat glazed in unfamiliar spice.
Eva swallowed.
“That smells incredible.”
Hunger struck Rory with such force her stomach cramped. Images crowded her mind: copper pans, pomegranate seeds splitting beneath a knife, cream poured over blackberries, a banquet table disappearing beneath gold plates. She tasted salt and smoke. Her free hand lifted towards the nearest apple.
The scar on her wrist touched the dagger’s cold pommel.
Pain cleared her head.
She wrapped her fist around it.
“Don’t breathe through your mouth.”
Eva clamped her sleeve over her nose.
Nyx stretched across the red circle. Their shadow touched the glowing line and recoiled with a sound like wet cloth thrown onto coals.
“Dymas.”
The word scraped from them.
Beyond the white boughs, the pearl sky warmed to amber. Vine leaves unfurled where no vines had grown. Heavy purple grapes pushed through the moss, each one swelling until it split and released a thread of fragrant steam.
Isolde lifted one hand. The ground stilled beneath her.
“Gluttony has found a root to feed.”
Rory stared at the red-lit veins around the tree.
“How?”
“The hungry invite the feast. The feast invites the host.”
“Who invited it?”
Isolde’s pale eyes dropped to the Heartstone.
The gem’s inner glow brightened, and for an instant something moved behind its crimson surface: a vast table beneath an amber sky, its far end occupied by a shape hidden among curling steam.
Rory closed her hand over the vision.
“Who gave me this?”
Isolde reached for the pendant, then stopped before her fingers touched it. The wildflowers along the hollow’s edge folded shut. Every apple on the tree turned its hidden scene towards Rory.
“A gift may cross any threshold where a weapon would be barred.”
“That didn’t answer me.”
“It answered the question you need.”
“I’ll decide what I need.”
“Then decide before the stone decides for you.”
A crack split the hollow.
One of the tree’s roots tore from the ground, slick with red light. Beneath it opened a narrow gap. Warm amber radiance breathed through, carrying clatter, music and a roar of distant applause. Shadows passed across the opening: dancers, servants bearing platters, horned figures raising jewelled cups.
The pendant pulled towards it.
The silver chain snapped taut around Rory’s fist.
Eva caught her elbow.
“Rory.”
“I’ve got it.”
“No, it’s got you.”
Rory braced both feet. Heat climbed the chain and bit into her skin. The crimson veins spread over the back of her hand, following her pulse .
Nyx struck the gap as a wave of shadow.
Amber light punched through them.
Their body burst into tatters, flung across the white trunks. Violet eyes vanished. Eva cried out and ducked as darkness whipped over her head.
“Nyx!”
The pieces slid down bark and pooled beneath the tree, gathering without shape.
Isolde caught Rory’s wrist. Her fingers felt colder than the Fae blade.
“Open your hand.”
“If I let go, it’ll go through.”
“If you do not, it will take the door with it.”
“What door?”
Isolde drove Rory’s glowing fist against the centre of her chest.
“This one.”
The Heartstone thudded against Rory’s breastbone.
The tree answered.
All its apples cracked at once.
Voices flooded the hollow—laughter, begging, wedding vows, deathbed curses, children calling for parents long buried. The sound tore through the leaves and drove Eva to her knees. Rory’s grip loosened.
Isolde covered Rory’s hand with both of hers.
“Choose the hunger that belongs to you.”
Rory stared into the narrow amber gap. A banquet stretched on the other side, laden with every flavour the air had promised. At its nearest edge sat an empty silver plate.
Her name appeared across it in curling red script.
Aurora Carter.
The chain pulled harder.
Rory bared her teeth, forced her thumb beneath the pendant and closed her fingers around the Fae blade’s sheath.
Cold moonsilver met burning gemstone.
Steam hissed from her fist.
The pull faltered.
“Now,” Isolde breathed.
Rory opened her hand.