AI The last oak stone hummed beneath Aurora’s palm.
It had bark, grain and knots, yet cold seeped from it with the clean bite of metal. Six more stood around the grove, their trunks cut off at twice her height and their roots buried among wildflowers. Foxgloves leaned into winter crocuses. Bluebells crowded sunlit buttercups. Richmond Park lay beyond the ring, stripped by December, but no season ruled inside Isolde’s grove.
The Heartstone kicked against Aurora’s chest.
She snatched her hand from the oak.
“That’s new.”
Nyx rose from the stone’s shadow. Darkness gathered into shoulders, arms and a long, narrow head, then two violet eyes opened within the silhouette.
“It has found something hungry.”
“Comforting.”
Aurora pulled the crimson stone from under her jumper. It rested against her thumb, no larger than the nail, but each pulse pushed heat into the crescent scar on her wrist. The silver chain trembled .
Isolde crossed the clearing without bending a blade of grass. Her silver hair slid over her shoulders and brushed the flowers, though none stirred. She stopped beside Aurora and studied the Heartstone through pale lavender eyes.
“A door may sleep for an age and still remember the hand that locked it.”
“Is that hand mine?”
“The key seldom resembles the locksmith.”
“Straight answers. One day, just to see how it feels.”
Isolde placed two fingers against the oak. Amber light bled through its grain.
“One day is a crooked thing in this grove.”
Nyx’s outline frayed towards the widening glow.
“And worse beyond it.”
The light split the standing stone from crown to roots. No crack formed. Its two halves peeled apart like curtains, revealing a strip of amber sky and a road paved with cream-coloured slabs. Warm air poured into the grove, thick with roasted pears, smoke, wet soil and a spice Aurora couldn’t name. It coated the back of her tongue with sweetness.
She stared through the opening.
On the other side, vines climbed terraces that rose towards the horizon in enormous green steps. Their leaves shone like polished emeralds. Bunches of grapes hung beneath them, each fruit as large as a plum and lit from within by threads of gold. Beyond the terraces sprawled orchards, copper-roofed halls and slender towers shaped like uncorked bottles. The warm amber sky had no sun. Light filled it from edge to edge.
Something vast rang in the distance.
The note rolled across the vineyards and made the flowers around Aurora’s boots close their petals.
“Where are we looking?”
Isolde’s reflection appeared in the Heartstone, though not in the amber opening.
“Dymas. The table at which appetite learned its name.”
“Hel.”
“One room of it.”
Aurora let the pendant fall. It struck her sternum and beat there like a second heart.
“I thought Hel would have more fire.”
Nyx extended one hand through the threshold. Their fingers thinned into black ribbons, tugged towards the road by a wind Aurora couldn’t feel.
“Fire is honest. This place prefers seasoning.”
She drew the Fae-forged blade from the sheath at her lower back. The leaf-shaped moonsilver dagger chilled her palm through the leather grip. Its edge caught the amber light and returned a pale blue gleam.
Isolde’s mouth tightened.
“Hide the moon at a prince’s feast.”
“Belphegor?”
“The mouth wears a crown here.”
Aurora tucked the blade beneath her coat but kept her hand on its hilt.
“Any chance the mouth is elsewhere?”
“A prince owns much that he does not inspect.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“It wasn’t.”
Nyx stepped through. Their body stretched across the threshold, lost its edges, then snapped back into shape upon the cream road. They looked down at their feet.
Aurora waited.
“Well?”
Nyx crouched and pressed their palm to the paving.
“The stone is warm. It has a pulse .”
“Everything has a pulse today.”
“The road’s runs towards us.”
Aurora looked at Isolde.
The Seer lifted one bare foot over the boundary.
“Those who linger between bites become crumbs.”
“Fine.”
Aurora crossed.
Heat wrapped around her, not the dry blast she expected but a damp, fragrant pressure . Her skin prickled beneath her coat. Behind her, Richmond Park framed itself within the split oak: grey grass, bare branches, a slice of weak winter daylight. Isolde glided through after her. The standing stone closed, and Earth narrowed to a silver line before vanishing.
Silence took its place.
Not true silence . Leaves whispered on the terraces. Fruit clicked against fruit. Far below, water burbled through unseen channels. Yet the sounds left a hollow around the three of them, as if the realm listened while pretending to work.
Aurora turned back. The road continued into a wall of vines. No oak, no shimmer, no mark in the air.
“Can you reopen it?”
Isolde regarded the leaves.
“A door viewed from the banquet is not the door viewed from the rain.”
“Can you reopen it?”
“When it consents to remain a door.”
Aurora pinched the bridge of her nose.
Nyx drifted to the verge. A tendril of their form brushed one of the luminous grapes.
The fruit split.
Clear juice welled from its flesh and rose in a perfect sphere. Instead of falling, it floated towards Nyx’s face. They recoiled. The droplet stopped, quivered , then shot at Aurora.
She ducked.
It curved over her shoulder and hovered before Isolde.
“No.”
The sphere burst into steam.
A child’s laugh rustled through the vineyard.
Aurora spun, blade half drawn. No one stood between the rows. The vines shifted against the breeze, leaves turning their pale undersides towards the road.
“That wasn’t the grape.”
“No.” Nyx’s voice moved through the air like grit across glass. “The roots laughed.”
They left the road.
The soil received Nyx’s feet without a mark, though their solid form carried weight . Aurora followed between the vines. Heat gathered beneath the canopy. The grapes cast gold freckles over her hands and face, while tiny winged things moved inside the fruit—white specks with too many legs, circling the seeds.
She bent closer.
One speck pressed a hand against the translucent skin.
Aurora jerked back.
“People?”
Isolde passed beneath a knot of branches. Her bare feet left no print in the dark earth.
“Not people. Not now.”
“What were they?”
“Guests who asked for one taste more.”
Aurora looked along the row. Thousands of grapes sagged from the vines. Their inner lights shifted, specks crawling from fruit to fruit through the stems.
Nyx became smoke from the waist down and slid over a ditch of glossy black water.
“Don’t drink anything.”
“I’d reached that conclusion.”
Aurora jumped the ditch. Her boot landed in soft soil, and a shudder travelled through the ground. The nearest vine twisted towards her. Tendrils stroked the air beside her cheek.
The Heartstone thumped.
All the vines turned at once.
Leaves scraped together. Grapes knocked like teeth.
Nyx’s arm lengthened across the ditch and hooked around Aurora’s waist. They hauled her onto a square of exposed rock as green tendrils lashed over the spot where she had stood.
Isolde raised one hand.
“Enough.”
The vineyard froze.
A tendril remained curled around Aurora’s ankle, its tip no thicker than thread. She cut it with the Fae blade. The moonsilver passed through without resistance.
The severed end struck the ground and wriggled. Ruby sap leaked from it, filling the air with the smell of hot bread.
Across the terraces, something inhaled.
Every bunch of grapes swelled.
Aurora wiped the blade on her jeans.
“Did I upset it?”
“You introduced it to pain.”
“Has no one pruned the place?”
“The gardeners prune people.”
A row of bells sounded beyond the ridge. One, then another, then dozens, each with a different note. The vines loosened around the rock.
Nyx released Aurora and tilted their head.
“Kitchen bells.”
“How can you tell?”
“I remember kitchens.”
For a moment, their violet eyes dimmed. The shadow around their face drew tight, exposing the suggestion of a man’s features beneath: a narrow nose, sunken cheeks, a mouth shaped around an old word. Then the dark swallowed it.
Aurora sheathed the dagger.
“Let’s hope the cooks are less interested in pruning.”
They climbed.
The terrace ended at a low wall built from green glass bricks. Shapes lay trapped inside each block: spoons, rings, animal bones, a brass key, one human tooth threaded on red silk . When Aurora passed, the tooth rotated to follow her.
She kept moving.
Beyond the wall, the land dropped into a valley crowded with orchards. Trees marched in spirals around pools of milk-blue water. Some bore pears with red skins and silver leaves. Others carried clusters of tiny cakes in pleated paper cases, their icing opening and closing like gills. Birds with knife-thin wings darted among the branches and sliced pieces from the fruit as they flew.
Farther down stood a kitchen complex large enough to swallow a railway station. Copper roofs overlapped in scales. Chimneys twisted into the amber sky, pouring out streams of green, pink and black smoke that braided themselves into pictures: a boar, a goblet, a grinning face, a hand dropping salt.
Figures moved in open-sided galleries. Some had horns. Some had tails. Others looked human until they turned their heads too far or lifted pots with six arms. Knives flashed. Flames leapt from stone ovens. Long tables carried dishes from one hall to another on hundreds of jointed legs.
Aurora forgot the heat for a breath.
“That’s…”
“A monument to waste.” Nyx stood at her shoulder, their outline stirred by the rising smoke.
“I was going to say impossible.”
“Impossible things make poor servants. This place puts them to work.”
A flock of glass birds swept over the valley. Their wings chimed. Sunless light fractured through their bodies and scattered rainbows across the trees. Aurora followed them until they settled on the antlers of a white stag beside one of the blue pools.
The stag lowered its muzzle to drink.
Its reflection did not.
The creature in the water lifted a woman’s face, opened its eyes and watched Aurora from across the valley.
She gripped the pendant.
The Heartstone had stopped pulsing.
“Why did it go cold?”
Nyx turned from the kitchens.
“It didn’t.”
“It did.”
They touched one black fingertip to the crimson gem. Steam curled from the contact.
“To you, perhaps.”
Isolde took Aurora’s wrist and turned her palm upwards. The crescent scar had darkened to wine red. Fine lines spread from it, tracing the veins beneath her skin.
Aurora’s stomach clenched.
“That wasn’t there before.”
“The stone has tasted the air of its first home.”
“Its first home is spreading up my arm.”
“A guest wears the scent of the house, or the house mistakes her for meat.”
Nyx’s gaze snapped towards the orchard.
“Down.”
Aurora dropped behind the glass wall. Isolde folded beside her, silver hair pooling without picking up dirt. Nyx collapsed into the wall’s shadow and vanished.
Hooves struck the cream road.
A procession climbed from the valley: three black oxen with gilded horns, hauling a wagon shaped like a covered serving dish. Steam leaked from beneath its silver lid. Two tall creatures walked alongside, their bodies wrapped in stained linen, faces concealed by bronze masks with narrow snouts. Each carried a hooked pole hung with bells.
Aurora pressed her back to the warm glass. Inside the brick beside her shoulder, the human tooth chattered against its silk thread.
One masked creature stopped.
Its snout turned towards the wall.
Aurora held her breath. Heat pooled under her collar. The scar on her wrist burned, but she kept her hand closed around the blade’s grip.
The creature lifted its pole. The bells gave a soft, questioning jingle.
From somewhere among the vines came the child’s laugh.
The masked head swung towards it.
Both creatures left the road and strode into the vineyard. The oxen continued uphill without them, drawing the silver dish. Something inside struck the lid once. The metal jumped in its frame, and a rich smell rolled over the wall—rosemary, charred fat and rain on stone.
Nyx emerged beside Aurora as the wagon passed.
“It is alive.”
“The oxen?”
“The meal.”
Aurora peered over the wall. The silver wagon crested the ridge and disappeared. Its tracks closed behind it, each wheel mark filling with cream-coloured stone.
She looked down at the valley again.
The woman’s face had vanished from the pool. The white stag stood between two silver-leaved pear trees, watching the road. One glass bird perched between its antlers and rang a single clear note.
Beneath it, hidden until the light shifted, a narrow stairway descended into the earth. Its steps glowed dull crimson, the same shade as the Heartstone. No cooks crossed near it. No smoke drifted over it. Even the spiralling orchard trees bent away from its mouth.
Aurora held up the pendant. Warmth returned, beating against her palm in time with the red steps.
“There.”
Nyx’s shadow stretched down the wall towards the stairway.
“A passage under the kitchens.”
Isolde looked from the pendant to the waiting stag.
“The fullest table hides its hunger underneath.”
Aurora climbed over the wall and lowered herself into the orchard. Silver leaves brushed her hair. Their surfaces reflected not her face, but a grey winter sky and the bare oaks of Richmond Park.
She plucked one loose.
The leaf melted into cold water between her fingers.
Nyx flowed down beside her. Isolde stepped from the top of the wall and came to rest on the grass without crushing it.
The stag moved aside.
Up close, its hide carried faint lines like script, each hair a tiny stroke of ink. Its black eyes held the kitchen fires, though the halls lay behind it. Aurora passed within reach of its antlers. The creature breathed against her cheek, its breath scented with apples and woodsmoke.
The face in the pool spoke through the stag’s closed mouth.
“Payment.”
Aurora stopped at the first crimson step.
“For using the stairs?”
“For being seen.”
Nyx gathered into solid form, violet eyes narrowed at the pool.
“What does it take?”
The stag lowered its head towards Aurora’s wrist.
Isolde caught its antler. The script across its hide writhed.
“A scar is a memory the body refuses to swallow. Choose another coin.”
The stag stamped once. A crack opened in the grass, and tiny white flowers pushed through.
Aurora took the loose silver chain at her neck and pulled it over her head. The Heartstone tugged towards the stairwell with enough force to lift from her palm, but she closed her fingers around it.
“You’re not having this.”
The woman’s face surfaced in the milk-blue water.
“Not offered. Not wanted.”
Aurora searched her pockets. Phone. Keys. Two pound coin. A crumpled receipt from the Golden Empress. She unfolded the receipt, its paper softened by days in her coat.
FORTY-THREE PRAWN DUMPLINGS, it read in Yu-Fei’s blocky handwriting.
Aurora held it out.
“A record of hunger. Sounds local.”
The stag sniffed the receipt. Its lips drew back from square human teeth.
Then it took the paper.
The ink lifted first, curling off the surface in black threads. The stag chewed the blank slip, and the crimson steps brightened one after another, leading down beneath the orchard.
Aurora slipped the pendant back over her head and placed one boot on the first step.
The stone gave beneath her weight like firm flesh.
She looked at Nyx.
“Still think the road was the worst part?”
Their smile appeared as a thin violet cut in the dark.
“The road only had one pulse .”
Isolde joined them at the stair. Amber light caught in her lavender eyes as she gazed into the red-lit passage.
Aurora drew the Fae blade. Its cold steadied her grip.
Together, they descended beneath the orchards while the bells of the kitchens rang through the soil above them.