AI Rory touched the pendant when the air changed.
One moment, Richmond Park smelled of wet leaves and horse dung, the last of the daylight thinning between the oaks. The next, the cold had vanished. Warmth pressed against her skin, damp and fragrant, carrying the sweetness of crushed grapes and something spiced, almost metallic.
The Heartstone pulsed beneath her coat.
“Tell me that’s normal,” she said.
“It is normal,” Isolde replied.
She stood three paces ahead, silver hair spilling to her waist, pale lavender eyes fixed on the ancient stones. She had crossed the boundary without leaving a mark in the mud. Not even the hem of her dress seemed to disturb the grass.
Nyx slid from one shadow to another beside Rory. In the dying light, their solid shape towered over her, a humanoid silhouette edged in violet. Their eyes glimmered faintly.
“Normal,” they whispered, “is a door that knows your name.”
Rory looked at the stones.
There were seven of them, though she was certain there had been six when they entered the grove. They rose from the earth like broken teeth, black and furred with moss. Beyond them, the clearing had opened into a distance that could not possibly fit inside Richmond Park.
An amber sky stretched over rolling hills. Not sunset amber, not the orange haze of London pollution, but a deep, warm color like honey held before a flame . Beneath it, rows of vines climbed hillsides in precise green waves. Orchards crowded the valleys, their branches heavy with fruit that glowed in blues, reds, and colors Rory had no name for. Far off, towers and domes rose from the landscape, their surfaces gleaming as though glazed.
A breeze moved through the grass.
Every blade bent toward them.
Rory tightened her grip on the moonsilver dagger hidden beneath her jacket. Its leaf-shaped blade was cold against her ribs, colder than the air had any right to be. Isolde had given it to her with the warning that it could cut through wards and demons alike. Rory had accepted it because declining gifts from a three-hundred-year-old half-fae seer seemed like the sort of mistake that became a family curse.
Behind them, the Grove waited in silence . Ahead lay a road of pale stone.
“Where are we?” Rory asked.
Isolde’s gaze remained on the amber horizon. “Where hunger wears a crown, and grapes remember every hand that picked them.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It answers the road.”
Nyx’s head tilted. “Dymas.”
The name seemed to thicken the air.
Rory had heard it before, in fragments. A place beyond the Veil. One of Hel’s realms, ruled by Prince Belphegor. She had imagined fire, chains, black fortresses. She had not imagined vineyards.
The Heartstone pulsed again, stronger this time. Heat spread through the silver chain and into her throat.
“What happens if we go back?” she asked.
Isolde finally looked at her. “You may return by the door through which you came.”
“May?”
“The door may not remain.”
Rory stared at the stones. A shimmer trembled between them, faint as oil on water. Through it she could see the grove, the wet grass, the dim branches of Richmond Park. Somewhere beyond that, London continued unaware. Cars moved. People bought coffee. The world held together.
Behind her, something chimed.
It came from the far side of the amber fields: a bright, delicate sound, followed by another, then a hundred more. Bells, perhaps. Or knives striking crystal .
Nyx moved closer. The edges of their body blurred into the surrounding shade.
“We are being noticed,” they said.
“By what?”
Their whisper stirred the hair at Rory’s ear. “Everything.”
She stepped through the stones.
The warmth closed around her like bathwater. For an instant, her body seemed to stretch in two directions. Her scarred wrist burned. The crescent-shaped mark, pale from childhood, flared beneath her sleeve.
Then her boots struck the pale road.
The stone was warm. It gave slightly under her weight , not like mud but like the surface of bread . A faint tremor traveled through it and vanished into the hills.
Isolde followed, soundless. Nyx came last, their shadow spilling over the threshold a moment before the rest of them. The shimmer snapped shut behind them.
Rory turned.
The seven stones stood in a narrow circle amid the amber grass. The grove was gone . No trees. No rain. No London. Only a patch of darkness between the stones, smooth and empty as a sealed eye.
“Excellent,” Rory said. “The door’s gone.”
“It has not gone,” Isolde said. “It has become elsewhere.”
“That is worse.”
“It often is.”
The road led downhill between vineyards. The vines grew from dark red soil and twisted around silver trellises. Clusters of grapes hung among the leaves, each one as large as a plum. Their skins shone translucent. Inside one, Rory saw a tiny flicker of movement.
She stopped.
“Don’t touch them,” Isolde said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was observing.”
“The fruit is observant also.”
Rory leaned closer despite herself. Something pressed against the inside of the grape. A pale shape, curled and jointed. It unfolded a finger—or a root, or a hand—and tapped once against the skin.
She stepped back.
The vine shuddered.
All along the hillside, grapes turned toward her.
A rustle passed through the leaves like a collective breath.
Nyx placed one long, shadow-black hand over the nearest cluster. The fruit recoiled from them. Leaves folded inward, trembling.
“Souls,” they murmured. “Or memories wearing the shape of souls.”
Rory looked at the endless rows. “And people eat them?”
A sound rolled up from the valley below. Laughter, loud and drunken, followed by applause.
Isolde’s expression did not change. “People eat many things when invited to a feast.”
They continued.
The farther they went, the more the landscape revealed itself. The vineyards gave way to orchards where trees grew in impossible spirals, their roots arched above the ground like ribs. Fruit hung from the branches in bowls of polished skin. Some fruits whispered as they ripened. Others sang in thin, mournful voices. One tree bore what looked like small glass hearts, each beating at a different rhythm.
The air tasted of sugar, yeast, smoke, and iron.
Rory’s stomach tightened. Hunger had become physical here. It tugged at her from within, not a simple appetite but a hollow need that seemed to widen whenever she noticed something beautiful. The more she saw, the more she wanted to taste, touch, possess.
She clenched her jaw .
“Does everyone feel that?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Isolde.
Nyx glanced at her. “You are resisting.”
“I’m annoyed.”
“Annoyance is a kind of resistance.”
Ahead, a stream crossed the road. It ran uphill, silver water climbing toward the amber sky. Fish swam through it backward, their scales flashing with faces—old men, children, women with mouths open in silent song. When Rory approached, they turned as one and watched her.
One fish had Evan’s face.
Her breath caught.
The stream rippled. The face smiled.
Rory stopped so abruptly Isolde nearly walked into her.
“Rory,” Nyx said.
She knew it was not him. Evan was in Cardiff, or somewhere near it. Evan was human. Evan had no place here except the place her memory gave him.
That did not make the face less exact.
The fish opened its mouth. Water poured from its teeth.
“You always come back,” it said.
The words were Evan’s. The voice was not. Beneath it, she heard dozens of others repeating the sentence, rising and falling in the current.
Rory drew the Fae blade.
The moonsilver gleamed faintly beneath the amber sky. The fish recoiled. Its face warped, stretching into something smooth and eyeless.
Nyx stepped between Rory and the stream. Their form spread across the road, becoming a wall of living darkness. The backward current froze.
“Not yours,” they whispered.
The water dropped.
For one heartbeat, the stream ran normally downhill. Then it vanished into a crack in the earth, leaving behind a bed of white stones and a smell like cold ashes.
Rory lowered the dagger.
Isolde watched her with those unsettling lavender eyes. “You have crossed a river that feeds on regret.”
“I noticed.”
“Most who cross it carry more of themselves away.”
Rory slid the blade back beneath her coat. Her hand trembled once before she forced it still.
The road descended into the valley.
There, the sounds became impossible to ignore. Music drifted between the hills: flutes, drums, strings plucked by unseen hands. The melody changed whenever Rory tried to follow it. Aromas rolled toward them in waves—roasted meat, sugared citrus, saffron, charred onions, wine so rich she could taste it at the back of her throat.
A city waited below.
It sprawled around a palace of black stone and gold. Terraces overflowed with gardens. Bridges arched over canals of red liquid. Great lanterns floated in the air, each one burning with a captive star. Crowds moved through the streets: humans in elaborate clothes, horned figures with jeweled faces, creatures made of smoke and muscle, and servants carrying platters beneath silver domes.
The palace doors stood open.
Even from the hill, Rory could see the feast inside. Tables wound through vast halls, laden with food that moved, glistened, and occasionally screamed.
At the center of the city rose a statue of a man with a soft, handsome face and a mouth carved far too wide. Gold letters twisted around its base.
Rory could not read them, but she understood the meaning.
WELCOME, IT SAID.
The Heartstone burned against her chest.
A low tremor passed beneath the road. The amber sky rippled. Far above the palace, a faint distortion appeared—like heat haze, except the shape of it was vertical and jagged, a tear stretched across the heavens.
“The Veil,” Rory said.
Isolde nodded. “Wounded, but not opened.”
“Who wounded it?”
“Those who hunger for what lies on the other side.”
Nyx looked toward the palace. Their violet eyes brightened.
From somewhere within the city came a bell.
Every creature in the valley turned toward the sound.
Then the palace doors began to close.
A figure stood in the narrowing gap, too distant to make out clearly. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Crowned in something that caught the amber light.
The figure lifted one hand.
The Heartstone pulsed in answer.
Rory’s fingers closed around it through her coat. Heat flooded her palm, and beneath the warmth she felt something else: a pressure, a summons, the unmistakable sensation of being recognized .
Isolde’s hair stirred though the air had gone still.
“The prince has seen you,” she said.
Rory drew the dagger again. Its cold steadied her.
“Then we should make a good impression.”
Nyx’s shadow stretched down the road, pointing toward the closing doors.
“No,” they whispered. “We should make an unforgettable one.”
The last sliver of the palace entrance vanished.
Across the valley, the city erupted in sound. Bells rang. Horns answered. The lantern-stars flared white.
And every road leading toward the palace began to move.