AI The doorway opened between two oak stones with the sound of a knife drawn across silk .
Aurora stepped back.
A moment earlier, the space between the stones had held Isolde’s grove: knee-high wildflowers, silvered grass, and Richmond’s old trees standing watch beyond the clearing. Now the air shimmered like heat above tarmac. Through it stretched a vineyard beneath an amber sky.
Not sunset. Not dawn. The colour lay everywhere, rich and warm as honey held to a flame.
The Heartstone pulsed against Rory’s chest.
Once.
Twice.
Then it began to beat.
“That,” she said, gripping the pendant through her jumper, “is new.”
Beside her, Nyx leaned towards the opening. Their tall silhouette blurred at the edges, darkness feathering from their shoulders in tendrils that the grove’s wind failed to stir. Two violet eyes narrowed in a face without features.
“The stone recognises what lies beyond,” they whispered.
“Dymas,” Isolde said.
Her bare feet rested among the wildflowers without bending a single stem. Waist-long silver hair shifted over her pale gown, though the air had gone still. She looked through the doorway with an expression Rory could not read. Not fear. Isolde wore fear too gracefully for that. It looked closer to distaste.
Rory loosened the Fae blade in its sheath at her hip. Even through leather, moonsilver breathed cold against her palm.
“You’re certain?”
“I am incapable of certainty.” Isolde’s pale lavender eyes flicked to her. “But I cannot lie, and the place beyond is the dominion of Gluttony.”
“Comforting distinction.”
“Comfort is often the first course.”
Nyx’s whisper curled past Rory’s ear. It might have been laughter.
Behind them, the grove bloomed in impossible defiance of December. White campion nodded beside bluebells and summer roses. Beyond the ancient oak stones, Richmond Park lay under a hard grey sky. Rory could still smell wet earth and distant rain, but the open doorway breathed warmth over her face—warmth carrying scents so dense she could almost taste them.
Roasted pear. Charred meat. Cinnamon. Yeast. Something sharp and green, like crushed basil. Beneath all that ran a sweeter note, cloying and faintly rotten.
Rory swallowed.
“How long have we got?”
“In the grove?” Isolde asked. “Or outside it?”
“Yes.”
“A wise answer to the wrong question.”
Rory gave her a flat look. Isolde smiled.
The doorway trembled . For an instant the vineyard beyond broke into overlapping images: laden vines, an empty field, ranks of white bones half-buried in black soil. Then the amber world settled again.
“Right,” Rory said. “Before it changes its mind.”
She stepped through.
The Veil caught at her skin.
It was not resistance so much as remembrance. Cold rain on Cardiff pavements. Her father’s papers spread across the kitchen table. Eva’s hand around hers at Paddington. Evan’s fingers closing too hard over her wrist.
The crescent scar on her left wrist burned.
Rory tore herself forwards and stumbled into heat.
The air struck her like the open mouth of an oven. She sucked in a breath thick with spice and growing things. Behind her came a whisper as Nyx crossed, their form stretching into a long black smear before gathering itself upright. Isolde followed last. The Veil shimmered around her silver hair, reluctant to release it.
The doorway snapped shut.
There were no oak stones on this side.
Rory turned in a slow circle. “Of course there aren’t.”
They stood at the edge of a vineyard that rolled to the horizon in geometric green ranks. Each vine grew from a low pillar of rose-coloured stone. The leaves shone as though lacquered, broad enough to wrap around her torso. Grapes hung in heavy clusters: purple, gold, opalescent white, and a deep red that looked uncomfortably arterial.
No sun marked the amber sky. Light simply existed.
Far away, pale towers rose above terraced orchards. Bridges curved between them with no visible supports. Waterfalls poured upwards from a valley, silver streams climbing into bowls suspended in the air. Birds with four wings wheeled around those impossible fountains, their calls chiming like glasses touched at a toast.
Wonder hit Rory before caution could stop it.
“Oh,” she breathed.
One of the climbing waterfalls broke into a cloud of glittering droplets. The winged birds dived through it, emerging in bursts of green flame.
Nyx became very still. “Beautiful places are hungry too.”
Rory glanced at them. “You practise saying things like that?”
“I have had a long time to practise.”
Isolde walked ahead, leaving no mark in the powdery gold dust between the vines. Rory’s trainers sank half an inch with every step.
“Wait,” Rory called. “Do we have any idea where we’re going?”
“The path knows.”
“There isn’t a path.”
At Isolde’s next step, the vines shifted.
Leaves folded inward with a papery sigh. Rose-stone pillars slid apart, exposing a narrow lane paved in dark hexagonal tiles. It led downhill towards a distant grove of trees whose branches sagged with blue fruit.
Rory stared at Isolde.
The seer looked back. “Now there is.”
They followed.
The tiles warmed through Rory’s soles. With every dozen steps, a different note rang beneath her feet—low chimes arranged in a melody she could not quite grasp . Nyx made no sound when they moved, but the living shadow of them spilled across the stones and recoiled from the vines.
The grapes followed Rory.
She noticed it gradually. First a red cluster turned as she passed. Then three gold ones tilted on their stems. Soon every fruit along the path faced her, their translucent skins tightening around seeds shaped like tiny black pupils.
“Don’t eat anything,” she said.
“Sound counsel,” Nyx murmured.
Isolde plucked a white grape from the nearest vine.
Rory stopped. “Seriously?”
The grape’s skin split between Isolde’s fingers. Instead of juice, a thin curl of song escaped—one woman’s voice singing in a language Rory did not know. The melody ached with homesickness. It rose into the amber air and faded.
Isolde studied the empty skin. “Memories, pressed and ripened.”
“Whose memory?”
“The woman who tended this vine.”
“Where is she?”
Isolde let the skin fall. The earth opened a tiny mouth and swallowed it.
“In the wine, perhaps.”
Rory looked at the endless rows differently after that.
They moved on. The air grew warmer as the lane descended, and the scents sharpened. Somewhere beyond the vines, knives chopped in rapid unison. Metal rang on wood. A chorus shouted, then groaned. Steam drifted across the path, carrying the savour of butter and garlic.
Rory’s stomach clenched with sudden hunger.
Not ordinary hunger. This arrived fully formed, a hollowing force that seemed to scrape her ribs from within . Her mouth flooded. The nearest grapes gleamed, plump and cold, each promising relief.
The Heartstone flared hot.
She caught herself reaching.
Her fingers hovered an inch from a red cluster.
“Rory,” Nyx whispered.
She snatched her hand back. “I know.”
But she had not known. That was the problem.
The hunger vanished as swiftly as it had come, leaving sweat cold along her spine. She pressed her palm against the pendant. Its deep crimson glow seeped between her fingers.
Isolde watched the vines rather than Rory. “Desire is the road here. Appetite is the toll.”
“You might have mentioned that before I nearly drank someone’s childhood.”
“You did not ask whether the fruit would tempt you.”
“I asked if this was Dymas.”
“And I answered.”
Rory breathed through her nose. Getting angry at Isolde was like trying to cross-examine fog.
A rustle passed through the vineyard.
Not wind. The leaves turned in sequence, rows upon rows, something moving parallel to them on the far side of the vines.
Nyx dissolved.
One instant they stood beside Rory; the next they collapsed into the path’s narrow seam of shade. Violet eyes opened within it, gliding ahead.
Rory drew the Fae blade.
Moonsilver flashed pale in the amber light. The leaf-shaped dagger looked delicate enough for ceremony, but the instant it cleared the sheath, the surrounding air tightened. Frost traced Rory’s knuckles. Nearby leaves curled away.
The rustling stopped.
Three figures stepped onto the path.
They wore white kitchen coats buttoned to their throats. Tall hats rose above faces hidden behind smooth porcelain masks. Each mask bore a painted smile. One figure carried pruning shears as long as Rory’s forearm. Another balanced a silver tray crowded with tiny pastries. The third pushed an empty serving trolley whose wheels were made from knucklebones.
The smell from the pastries hit Rory: caramel, orange peel, hot chocolate, every winter kitchen she had ever loved.
The masked server bowed.
“Guests,” said a voice behind the porcelain . Several voices, in fact, layered together. Men, women, a laughing child. “You have crossed His Highness’s western vintage. Be welcomed.”
“We’re not hungry,” Rory said.
All three masks turned towards her.
The hunger tore open inside her again.
Rory tightened her grip on the dagger until cold pain bit her palm.
“Every living thing is hungry,” the server said.
Nyx rose behind the three attendants, taller than before. Their arms unspooled into hooked shadows.
The figure with the shears cocked its head.
Rory lifted her free hand. Not yet.
Attacking servants on arrival was rarely the clever option, whether the destination was a demonic realm or a restaurant in Soho. And these three had not attacked. They had only offered something calculated to make refusal hurt.
“What’s in the pastries?” Rory asked.
“Welcome.”
“That isn’t an ingredient.”
“It is here.”
Isolde drifted to Rory’s side. Her expression had gone distant, lavender eyes reflecting a place beyond the vineyard.
“The host sets a table,” she said softly . “The guest brings the knife. One shall consume what was given. One shall give what cannot be consumed.”
The three porcelain smiles seemed to widen, though Rory could have sworn they had not moved.
“Is that prophecy?” she asked.
“It has not happened yet.”
“So, yes.”
The server extended the tray. One pastry sat at its centre, smaller than the others, glazed in crimson. It pulsed in time with the Heartstone.
Rory’s pendant burned against her sternum.
She stared at the pastry. Beneath its glossy surface, something cast a tiny angular shadow—a shard, perhaps, or a key.
Discovery pushed unease aside.
“Where was that made?”
“In the kitchens beneath the First Table.”
“And where is the First Table?”
All three attendants raised their hands and pointed towards the distant towers.
As they did, the vineyard parted.
The horizon unfolded like a cloth drawn from a banquet. Beyond the orchards and upward rivers, an immense structure emerged from the golden haze. At first Rory took it for a mountain. Then she saw columns. Steps. Tier upon tier of terraces crowded with tables, pavilions and gardens. At its summit stood a palace shaped like an overturned chalice, its dark windows blazing.
A road ran towards it, laid in slabs of polished ivory.
Along that road moved a procession.
Carts heaped with fruit. Cages containing luminous beasts. Barrels large as houses, hauled by bent figures in iron collars. Chefs in blood-red aprons marched beneath banners stitched with an open mouth. Music rolled across the valley—drums, horns, and the relentless clatter of cutlery.
For one breathtaking second, Rory forgot the danger.
The scale of it dwarfed anything human. Vineyards climbed cliffs and continued upside down beneath floating islands. Orchards grew in concentric rings around blue lakes, their trees bearing lanterns among their fruit. Far below, a creature with antlers like branching coral strode through fields of scarlet wheat. Each hoofprint filled with flowers, and hooded workers hurried behind to harvest them.
Then the warm wind shifted.
It carried a scream from the procession.
The sound ended abruptly beneath the music.
Wonder curdled.
The attendant tilted the tray closer. “A taste for the road?”
Rory looked again at the pulsing pastry. The Heartstone answered with a hard, urgent beat. Whatever hid inside that sugared shell came from the same place as the pendant—or wanted her to believe it did.
She sheathed the Fae blade.
Nyx’s violet gaze sharpened in the attendant’s shadow.
Rory reached towards the tray, then slid her hand beneath the silver rim instead of touching the food. With a quick twist, she tipped every pastry onto the path.
The attendants gasped in a dozen stolen voices.
The tiles opened.
Each pastry dropped into a separate black slot, all except the crimson one. That struck the ground with a metallic crack and split apart.
A red glaze bled across the tile.
At its centre lay a sliver of black glass etched with a silver symbol: two interlocked circles divided by a vertical line.
The Heartstone stopped beating.
Rory snatched up the shard. It was colder than Isolde’s blade.
The masked figures lunged.
Nyx erupted around them.
Shadow swallowed white coats and porcelain smiles. The vineyard convulsed, leaves clapping together as if in applause. Rory heard the shears snap shut, heard the serving trolley overturn, heard voices babbling from inside Nyx’s darkness.
“Run,” Nyx whispered from every patch of shade.
Rory ran.
Isolde moved beside her without haste, bare feet never touching the chiming tiles. Behind them, Nyx flowed across the path in a black tide. The attendants emerged from it changed: arms too long, masks cracked, painted mouths spilling golden vapour.
The ivory road lay ahead, impossibly distant.
Rory gripped the glass shard and felt its etched symbol press into her skin. The Heartstone had gone cold, but the shard tugged faintly in her hand, pulling left.
“There,” she said.
She veered off the path.
The vines reared to block her. Rory drew the Fae blade and slashed.
Moonsilver met invisible resistance. Light flared blue-white along the blade, revealing a web of symbols suspended between the leaves—a ward. The dagger cut through it as though slicing wet paper .
The vineyard screamed.
Rory plunged through the opening, Isolde at her shoulder. Grapes burst around them in sprays of music, hundreds of trapped songs shrieking into the amber sky. Nyx swept after them just as the vines knitted shut.
On the other side, the ground vanished.
Rory skidded at the lip of a vast crater.
Steps spiralled down its inner wall towards a door buried far below. No palace grandeur marked it. No banners. Only ancient black stone, older-looking than the terraces, older even than the amber light. The symbol carved across that door matched the shard in her hand.
Two interlocked circles. One line between.
The crimson pendant warmed again.
Not a beat this time.
A shiver.
Deep beneath Rory’s feet, something struck the door from the other side.
Dust lifted from every step.
Once.
The vineyard behind them thrashed as the masked attendants searched for the cut in their ward.
Twice.
A crack split the black door from top to bottom, and through it breathed air colder than winter in Cardiff, carrying no scent of food, spice, or growing things.
Only ash.
Isolde looked down into the crater, her ageless face suddenly grave .
“The feast above is bait,” she said.
Rory closed her fingers around the shard. “For what?”
A third blow shook the buried door.
Nyx gathered into solid form beside her, violet eyes fixed on the widening crack.
“For whatever has been starving below,” they whispered.