AI The standing stones had not been there yesterday.
Aurora knew that because she had counted them on the way into the grove, as she always did. Seven ancient oaks, each split down the middle and petrified in the act of growing, ringed the clearing like crooked teeth. Tonight there were eight.
The new stone stood at the northern edge, black as wet coal beneath the moon. Amber light breathed through the crack running from its crown to its roots.
Aurora stopped beside it. The silver chain at her throat grew warm.
“Tell me that is normal,” she said.
Isolde drifted past her without disturbing the wildflowers. Her waist-length silver hair slid over her shoulders like pale water. “Normal is a door that remembers being a wall.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was the answer the door gave me.”
Nyx emerged from the shadow cast by the nearest oak, unfolding to their full impossible height. At six feet and more, they seemed to bend the darkness around them rather than occupy it. Their faint violet eyes fixed on the stone.
“The Veil is thin here,” they whispered. Their voice sounded like wind moving through a keyhole. “Thinner than it should be.”
Aurora touched the Heartstone pendant. The deep-crimson gem pulsed against her sternum, faintly warm, as if something on the other side had felt her hand.
The grove’s flowers leaned toward the stone.
Not toward the moon. Toward the crack.
Aurora drew Isolde’s blade from its sheath at her hip. The moonsilver dagger was slender and leaf-shaped, cold enough to bite through the leather of her glove. Its edge gave off a pale sheen.
“Where does it go?” Aurora asked.
Isolde’s lavender eyes reflected the amber light. “Down, where the hungry grow vines. Across, where the dead are served supper. Beyond, where every mouth has a price.”
“Hel,” Nyx said.
Isolde smiled faintly. “You have named the beast, and so it bares its teeth.”
Aurora looked from the stone to the two of them. “We’re going into Hel.”
“Only one part of it,” said Isolde. “The part that wears a feast as a crown.”
Dymas. Gluttony. The name had come to Aurora in fragments over the last week: from a stolen map, a demon’s dying confession, and the pendant’s increasingly insistent warmth whenever they approached a rift. Somewhere beyond the Veil, someone—or something—had opened a passage. The Wardens had not found it. If the breach widened, London would begin to bleed into places that had no business touching it.
Aurora had come to the grove for answers.
She had not expected the answer to be a doorway.
“Stay close,” she said.
Nyx made a sound that might have been amusement. “To whom?”
“To me.”
The shadow-being tilted their head. “That is not the safest place.”
“No,” Aurora said, and stepped toward the stone. “But it’s the one I can see.”
The crack widened before she touched it.
Amber radiance spilled across the clearing, turning the flowers gold. Heat rolled through the grove—not the dry heat of summer, but the breath of a vast oven . It carried the smells of grapes, smoke, butter, and something sweetly rotten beneath them all.
Aurora raised the blade.
The air in front of the stone shimmered . She could see the grove through it, warped and trembling, but behind the distortion another landscape pressed close. Rows of black vines climbed hills beneath an amber sky. Trees sagged beneath fruit the size of helmets. Far away, bells rang in a slow, uneven rhythm.
“Once we cross,” Isolde said, “the path may not remember how to bring us home.”
“Can you get us back?”
“I can get you somewhere.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” Isolde said. “It is not.”
Aurora swore under her breath and crossed.
The heat struck first. It wrapped her face and arms, heavy with spice and fermentation. Then the ground dropped beneath her boots.
She landed on a broad terrace of red stone, one knee buckling. The blade clattered against the ground but remained in her grip. Nyx flowed through after her like ink poured through water, their shape briefly breaking apart before gathering itself again. Isolde stepped across last, untouched by the heat, and the rift folded shut behind them.
The sound of its closing was soft.
A sigh.
Aurora rose slowly .
The sky was not a sky. It had no sun, no stars, no clouds—only a vast, luminous amber vault that deepened toward the horizon until it became the color of old honey. Light came from everywhere and nowhere. It gleamed on the terraces below, on the black-glass rivers winding between them, on the silver roofs of distant buildings.
Vineyards covered the slopes.
Their leaves were broad and dark crimson, their tendrils thick as ropes. Grapes hung in heavy clusters, each fruit translucent and filled with a tiny flicker of moving light. Now and then one burst without warning. A wet pop carried across the hills, followed by a sharp cry from whatever lived inside.
Aurora stared.
Something walked between the vine rows below. At first she thought it was a scarecrow, but it moved with a jerky, purposeful gait. Its body was woven from stalks and sinew. A porcelain mask covered its head, painted with a smiling mouth. It carried a basket over one shoulder.
The basket writhed.
“Don’t look too long,” Isolde murmured.
“Why?”
“Some things mistake attention for invitation.”
Aurora looked away.
The terrace extended toward a valley where enormous orchards grew. The trees were pale and leafless, their branches crowded with fruit in unnatural colors: blue-white pears, green apples veined with gold, red pods that opened and closed like mouths. Between the trunks rose elegant towers with curved roofs, all of them connected by bridges. Smoke drifted from their chimneys in ribbons of violet and pink.
Music floated up from the valley.
A plucked string. A drumbeat. Then many voices singing in a language Aurora didn’t know. The melody was festive, but something in the harmony made her teeth ache.
Nyx stood at the edge of the terrace, their outline thinning into the stone’s shadow. “There are doors beneath us.”
Aurora glanced down. The red rock was not solid. Dark seams ran through it, narrow as veins. Behind them, something moved.
“How far beneath?”
“Far enough that the sound is old.”
That answer chilled her more effectively than the heat.
Isolde walked toward the valley. As always, she left no footprints in the dust. “The prince’s kitchens are beyond the orchards.”
“Prince Belphegor,” Aurora said.
“The sleeper who never sleeps,” Isolde replied. “The host who eats every guest, though seldom with his teeth.”
“Helpful.”
“I am always helpful.”
“You’re rarely clear.”
“Clarity is a lantern. Most people use it to illuminate the wrong room.”
Aurora followed, keeping the blade ready. The pendant’s pulse had settled into a steady rhythm. Warm. Warm. Warm.
Not a warning, exactly.
A direction.
They descended the terrace along a stairway carved into the rock. Each step bore a shallow engraving: a bowl, a goblet, a pair of hands. As Aurora passed, the symbols filled with amber liquid. The liquid spilled over the edges and ran uphill.
She stopped.
The drops gathered at her boots, climbing against gravity in thin red threads.
Nyx’s shadow stretched over them. The liquid recoiled.
“Don’t touch it,” they said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You thought about it.”
“I thought about whether it was blood.”
“It is.”
The threads slipped back into the carvings.
Aurora kept walking.
The air changed as they descended. It grew denser, almost chewable, crowded with scents that pulled at memories she had not summoned in years: her mother’s kitchen in Cardiff, burnt toast and black tea; the Golden Empress after closing, ginger and hot oil clinging to her clothes; the stale sweetness of the flat above Silas’s bar.
Her stomach tightened.
She had eaten nothing since morning.
A sound came from the vines to her left.
A child’s laugh.
Aurora turned.
The rows stood silent beneath their heavy leaves. A few grapes trembled on their stems.
“Rory,” Nyx said.
The laugh came again, closer.
She lifted the blade. Moon-silver, even beneath the amber sky, it gave off a pale, cold gleam. The nearest vine curled toward her, its tendril uncoiling over the path.
Isolde’s hand closed around Aurora’s wrist. Her fingers were cool. “What you hear is not what calls.”
The tendril stopped inches from Aurora’s coat.
A grape swelled at its tip. The translucent skin stretched, and behind it a tiny face pressed outward. Its eyes opened.
Aurora jerked back.
The fruit split with a wet snap. A burst of hot liquid struck the stone. The little face vanished into steam.
Beyond the vines, something began to clap.
Slowly.
Once. Twice. Three times.
The scarecrow figure had turned toward them. Its porcelain mask was blank now, the painted smile erased. More shapes emerged between the rows—dozens of them, carrying baskets, knives, silver trays. Their heads tilted in unison.
Isolde released Aurora’s wrist. “We should not be late.”
“Late for what?”
“The first course.”
The figures started up the hill.
Aurora’s pulse kicked hard. She glanced toward the valley. The path ahead narrowed between the vines, while behind them the creatures spread across the terrace. No way back. No obvious way forward except through the dark rows.
“Run,” she said.
They ran.
Aurora kept one hand on the dagger and the other over the pendant as she plunged between the vines. Leaves slapped her shoulders. Their undersides were warm and damp, lined with tiny teeth that clicked shut when she passed. The ground gave under her boots like soft earth, though every few steps something hard shifted beneath it.
Nyx moved beside her without sound, sometimes solid and sometimes only a streak of darkness slipping from one shadow to the next. Isolde glided ahead, silver hair streaming behind her, never once stumbling.
The pursuit followed.
Baskets rattled. Blades scraped stone. The clapping became a storm.
Aurora saw an archway ahead, built from black wood and crowned with antlers. Beyond it lay an open road winding through the orchards toward the distant towers.
The gate was sealed by a veil of red light.
A ward.
She skidded to a halt. “Isolde!”
The seer turned. “A locked mouth cannot swallow.”
“That’s your advice?”
“It is also a description.”
The figures burst from the vines behind them.
Aurora raised the Fae blade. Its cold ran up her arm, sharp and immediate. She struck the red light.
The ward split with a sound like a scream.
A narrow opening appeared.
“Through!” she shouted.
Nyx swept past first, their body stretching thin enough to slide through the gap. Isolde followed. Aurora turned long enough to see the masked creatures charging between the vines.
One raised a silver platter.
On it sat a human heart, still beating.
Aurora drove herself through the opening.
The ward snapped shut behind her.
For a moment, there was only silence .
Then the orchard exhaled.
Trees towered over the road, their pale limbs twisting together far above. Their fruit glowed softly in the amber gloom . Some had faces. Some had hands. One enormous pear opened a blue eye as Aurora passed beneath it, tracking her with quiet interest.
The creatures on the other side pounded against the ward, but none crossed.
Aurora bent over, breathing hard. Sweat ran beneath her collar. The pendant was burning now, no longer warm.
Ahead, beyond the orchard, a city of kitchens and towers waited under the endless amber sky.
A bell rang.
The sound rolled through the branches and into her bones.
Nyx came to stand beside her. Their violet eyes watched the distant roofs.
“We have been noticed,” they whispered.
Aurora straightened and wiped her palm against her coat. The Fae blade remained cold in her hand.
At the end of the road, lanterns began to flare—one after another, a line of orange lights leading toward the city.
Toward the feast.
Isolde looked at them both. “The table has set itself.”
Aurora stared down the road. Somewhere in those towers lay the source of the rift, and perhaps the reason her pendant had been given to her. Somewhere ahead, something was waiting to learn whether she could be consumed.
She started walking.
“Then let’s make it choke.”