AI The Heartstone struck against Aurora’s ribs like a second pulse .
She caught the pendant through her jumper and squeezed. Heat seeped between her fingers. Not skin-warm. Fever-warm.
Three ancient oaks stood ahead, their trunks bleached the colour of bone beneath Richmond’s winter moon. Their branches had knitted together over centuries, forming an arch that framed nothing but fog and waist-high wildflowers. Frost silvered the grass outside the ring. Within it, poppies, foxgloves and bluebells crowded one another in impossible bloom.
Isolde passed between the trees without bending a stem.
Aurora checked the ground behind the seer. No crushed grass. No footprint in the soft earth.
“Still hate that.”
Isolde’s silver hair slipped over one shoulder as she looked back. Her pale lavender eyes caught more moonlight than they should have.
“The earth remembers some feet. Others, it chooses to forget.”
“That cleared up nothing.”
“It cleared up exactly what it meant to.”
Nyx flowed past Aurora as a tall seam of darkness, their edges bleeding into the shadows of the oaks. Two violet points hovered where a face ought to have been.
“The opening is close,” they whispered. Their voice stirred the dead leaves without touching the living flowers. “The Veil tastes thin.”
Aurora loosened the Fae-forged blade in its sheath. Cold leaked through the leather and numbed her palm. Isolde had given her the dagger an hour ago—or three hours, or seven minutes. Time in the grove refused to sit still long enough for counting.
The Heartstone pulsed again.
Beyond the arch, the fog creased.
Aurora stepped closer. A shimmer hung in the air, faint as heat over tarmac, stretching from root to root. The woodland behind it warped. One oak appeared to lean left and right at once. In the distortion’s centre, a hairline crack shone amber.
“Is that it?”
Nyx raised one long hand. Their fingers passed into the shimmer and broke apart into threads of smoke.
“It is a wound,” they breathed. “Whether it is ours to enter remains in dispute.”
“By whom?”
“The wound.”
Aurora glanced at Isolde.
“Is everyone from the supernatural side of things allergic to direct answers?”
“A direct road still carries travellers to crooked places.” Isolde moved beside the crack. “And a straight answer may put your head beneath the axe before your ears have understood the question.”
“Right. Allergic.”
The crack widened with each throb of the pendant. Amber light poured across the flowers, turning red poppies black and bluebells the colour of old bruises. A scent slipped through: roasted pear, hot sugar, yeast, damp soil. Aurora’s empty stomach clenched hard enough to hurt.
She had eaten before leaving Silas’s bar. Chips, half a burger, and the corner of a sausage roll Eva had abandoned on a plate. The memory felt borrowed.
Nyx drew back from the rift.
“Dymas.”
Isolde watched the amber light crawl over her fingers.
“The table with no final course.”
“Gluttony.” Aurora swallowed. Her mouth had flooded with saliva. “Prince Belphegor’s realm.”
“His orchard. His cellar. His kitchen.” Isolde’s gaze settled on the pendant beneath Aurora’s fist. “His appetite.”
The rift opened another inch. Through it lay a sky the colour of firelit honey.
Aurora pulled out the dagger.
Its moonsilver blade gleamed like ice beneath water. The crack quivered away from it.
“What happens if I cut the Veil?”
“The blade cuts wards,” Isolde replied. “Not consequences.”
“Useful distinction.”
Aurora slid the dagger’s tip into the crack.
The Veil resisted. Pressure climbed through her wrist and elbow, as if she had thrust the blade into gristle. Her crescent scar blanched. She tightened her grip and drew the dagger down.
The world tore without sound.
The oak arch vanished. Amber swallowed the grove, the moon and the cold. Aurora pitched forwards and landed on warm stone.
Air rushed into her lungs, dense with spice and fermenting fruit.
She rolled onto one knee, blade raised.
A road spread beneath her, formed from slabs of creamy stone veined with gold. No mortar filled the gaps. Dark vines threaded between them, bearing clusters of glassy grapes that chimed whenever they touched. The sound travelled down the road in ripples, thousands of tiny notes answering one another through the distance.
Nyx spilled from the rift and gathered into humanoid shape. Isolde followed, upright and composed, her silver hair lifting in a wind Aurora couldn’t feel.
The tear sealed behind them.
Where Richmond’s grove had stood, a wall of colossal vines climbed towards the amber sky. Their trunks twisted together, thick as towers, and leaves the size of sails overlapped above root hollows dark enough to hide houses.
Aurora turned in a slow circle.
“Bloody hell.”
Terraced vineyards rolled across hills in every direction. Some vines grew from black soil, others from red sand or beds of crushed pearl. Fruit hung in colours she had no names for: green edged with blue flame; white berries filled with crawling sparks; plump violet globes that opened and closed like sleeping eyes.
Farther down the slope, orchards rose in ordered rows. Trees carried peaches beside pomegranates, silver-skinned apples beside long spirals of citrus. Their branches groaned under the weight . Whenever a piece of fruit fell, the soil opened and swallowed it whole.
Beyond the orchards stood copper-roofed buildings with chimneys shaped like upturned goblets. Smoke streamed from them in ribbons—scarlet, turquoise, cream—and flattened beneath the amber sky. Bells rang from that distant city, not in hours but in patterns . Three clear notes. A pause. Seven low peals. Then a chorus of cheers rolled over the hills.
“Competition?” Aurora lowered the blade a fraction.
Isolde tilted her head towards the sound.
“Knives race where crowns grow bored.”
“Chefs,” Aurora murmured. “Those kitchens.”
A second cheer rose. It carried something beneath it: a scream cut short by applause.
Nyx’s form tightened. In Richmond, they had merged with every patch of darkness. Here, the shadows resisted them. Each pool of shade held a bronze rim, and when Nyx’s feet touched one, it shrank from them.
“The light has teeth,” they whispered.
Aurora looked up.
No sun occupied the sky. Amber radiance came from the air itself, warm against her face and cold beneath her clothes. High overhead, pale shapes drifted in vast schools. At first she mistook them for clouds. Then one flexed translucent fins and exposed a ribcage full of lanterns.
Another answered with a hollow call.
The note rolled through Aurora’s bones. Grapes rang on the roadside vines. The colossal leaves behind them folded tight.
Isolde watched the creatures pass.
“The first vintners called them caskwhales. They drink storms before the rain can sour the harvest.”
“You’ve been here?”
“No.”
“You knew what they’re called.”
“I have seen a cup without drinking from it.”
Aurora gave her a flat look.
“Vision. Fine.”
She tucked the Heartstone outside her jumper. The crimson gem glowed beneath its polished surface, and heat pulsed towards the road ahead.
Nyx bent over the nearest vine. One grape chimed against their knuckle.
“Do not eat anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
The grape’s skin split.
Warm steam curled from its flesh, carrying the scent of buttered toast. Not ordinary toast. Her mother’s kitchen in Cardiff rose inside the smell: rain ticking against the window, school shoes damp by the radiator, Jennifer humming while she scraped burnt edges into the sink.
Aurora stepped back.
The split grape sealed itself.
“Those things pull memories.”
“Not memories,” Isolde corrected. “Hunger knows which masks to wear.”
Aurora shoved the pendant beneath her jumper.
They followed the road downhill.
With each bend, the landscape rearranged itself. A vineyard vanished behind a low ridge and returned on the opposite side, its rows now running vertically into the sky. A brook crossed the path, thick and dark as balsamic vinegar, carrying tiny boats made from curled leaves. Beetles in white aprons stood aboard them, poling against the sticky current.
One beetle lifted a ladle at Aurora.
“Visitors!” Its voice came out piping and sharp. “Three mouths, six hands, one shadow short of regulation!”
Nyx’s violet eyes narrowed .
The beetle peered at them, then scratched a line onto a strip of bark.
“Two mouths, then.”
“Where does this road lead?” Aurora crouched at the bank.
“Depends which way you digest it.”
Isolde’s mouth curved.
Aurora pointed the blade at her without looking away from the beetle.
“Don’t encourage him.”
The beetle drove its pole into the brook. The leaf boat spun.
“Market uphill, ovens downhill, palace inward, pits beneath. No refunds past the second gate.”
“What second gate?”
But the current swept the beetle under a bridge made from interlocked wishbones. Its piping voice faded among the clicking bones.
“Useful little chap.”
Nyx crossed the brook without touching the bridge. Their body stretched over the dark liquid, but pale bubbles rose beneath them. Each bubble held a distorted face. Open mouths pressed against the membranes.
Nyx recoiled and snapped back into solid form.
Aurora stared into the stream.
Hundreds of faces moved below the surface, turning in the same slow direction as the current. One struck the surface beneath her reflection. The bubble burst with a wet gasp.
“Hungry,” a man’s voice croaked from the spray.
The stream smoothed.
Isolde stepped onto the wishbone bridge.
“Do not give them names. Dymas fattens names until they no longer fit their owners.”
Aurora crossed after her, boots making the bones chatter. Halfway over, the bridge flexed like a ribcage taking breath. She jumped the last step and landed on the opposite bank.
The road narrowed as it entered the orchard.
Branches arched overhead and shut out the amber sky. Fruit glowed among dark leaves, casting pools of coloured light across the path. Some whispered as the group passed.
“Salt,” sighed a pear with human teeth marks.
“More,” muttered a cluster of figs.
A red apple laughed in Evan’s voice.
Aurora stopped.
The laugh came again—soft, contemptuous, shaped to fit the old flat in Cardiff and its locked bedroom door.
“You always make a drama out of nothing.”
Her grip clamped around the dagger. The moonsilver blade shone.
The apple puckered, its skin drawing into the suggestion of a face.
“Put that down, Rory.”
Aurora cut the branch.
The blade met no resistance. Wood, sap and the enchantment inside them parted in one clean stroke. The apple hit the road and burst.
No flesh lay inside. Black moths boiled from the skin, each with a tiny wet mouth. Nyx swept one arm across them. Shadow caught the swarm and crushed it into a smear of ink.
Silence spread through the orchard.
Every piece of fruit turned towards Aurora.
Isolde stepped around the fallen branch.
“The trees have noticed your manners.”
“They started it.”
A pomegranate opened like a red eye. Aurora raised the dagger.
It shut.
They moved on.
Warmth pressed closer between the trees. Sweat gathered beneath Aurora’s collar. Yet the Fae blade stayed cold enough to ache in her hand. The Heartstone’s beat strengthened, no longer matching her pulse . It tugged towards a gap where thick roots enclosed a sunken courtyard.
They left the road.
Moss cushioned the ground, gold and soft as fur. Aurora’s boots sank to the ankle without leaving marks. Isolde, as ever, disturbed nothing. Nyx passed between the trunks, their silhouette fraying whenever fruit-light touched them.
The courtyard’s walls had once formed a circle. Roots had split them, and flowering vines poured through the cracks. Stone tables stood in concentric rings around a central plinth. Plates covered every table.
Aurora approached the nearest setting.
Dust filmed a silver platter. Beneath it rested the bones of a human hand arranged around a knife and fork. Each finger wore a copper ring stamped with the same symbol: an open mouth encircled by wheat.
“Helbound?” Her voice carried across the courtyard.
Nyx examined the bones without touching them.
“Contracted.”
A faint whisper moved through the empty plates.
Service.
The word travelled from table to table.
Service. Service. Service.
Isolde ran her gaze over the copper rings.
“Promises made on full stomachs. Debts collected when the cupboards emptied.”
Aurora rubbed her thumb against the crescent scar on her wrist.
“Chefs from Earth.”
“Some sought perfect flavour,” Isolde replied. “Some sought fame. Some wanted one more meal with someone dead.”
“And got this?”
“A bargain always feeds both sides.”
At the plinth, the Heartstone burned through Aurora’s jumper. She pulled it free. Crimson light spilled over carved grooves in the stone.
The markings formed a map.
Terraces, orchards and vineyards radiated from a central spiral. Seven roads wound through them, each ending at a different symbol: a chalice, a cleaver, a crown, a chained throat, a horned mask, a set of scales and an empty plate.
The pendant swung towards the empty plate.
Aurora lifted it by the chain. The gem strained sideways as though caught by a magnet.
“There.”
Roots covered the courtyard wall behind the empty-plate symbol. Through the gaps, a slab of dark green metal showed beneath bark and moss.
Nyx moved to it.
“No handle.”
Aurora joined them. The door rose twice her height, cast in one piece and carved with rows of mouths. Human, animal, demon. Every mouth had been sewn shut in metal thread.
At its centre waited a narrow, leaf-shaped indentation.
Isolde looked at the dagger.
Aurora held it up.
“You knew we’d find this.”
“I knew the blade would meet a lock shaped by longing.”
“That isn’t a no.”
“It cannot be.”
Aurora pressed the moonsilver into the indentation.
Cold shot up her arm. The door’s metal mouths opened together.
A breath rolled from the seams, carrying dust, wine and the char of banked ovens. The copper rings on the dead hand clicked against the stone tables. Deep within the wall, gears engaged one tooth at a time.
The green door sank into the earth.
Beyond it, steps descended beneath the orchard. Glass lamps lined the passage, each burning around a suspended drop of golden oil. Murals covered the walls: horned figures planting the first vines under a black sky, mortals building ovens from red stone, crowned mouths swallowing cities from silver platters.
At the foot of the steps, water reflected the lamplight.
No—a floor of wine, dark and still, filled a chamber wider than the courtyard. Stone paths rose above it in branching lines. Shelves climbed from the liquid to a ceiling lost in amber mist, packed with bottles, jars and sealed clay pots.
Labels rustled though no wind entered.
Nyx leaned into the doorway. Their violet gaze tracked the shelves.
“Something has catalogued every vessel.”
Aurora stepped down. The nearest bottles turned in their racks, labels facing her.
CARDIFF, 2007.
LONDON, 1891.
CAIRO, 32 BCE.
One squat black jar bore a fresh paper strip.
AURORA CARTER, UNFINISHED.
She stopped before it, the Heartstone hot in one hand and the Fae blade cold in the other.
“Isolde.”
The seer descended until her bare toes hovered above the next step.
“Do not open a jar that already knows your name.”
Aurora crouched beside the shelf instead. Fine wire bound the black jar’s lid. The knot matched the open-mouth symbol on the dead chefs’ rings.
Behind them, Nyx flowed through the doorway and became solid on the step.
“Footprints.”
Across the wine, a line of ripples moved along one raised path. Each appeared in the shape of a bare foot, heel to toe, though nothing stood above them.
Aurora straightened and slid the dagger in front of her.
The prints crossed the chamber, passed beneath shelves heavy with centuries, then stopped beside a small table set with three empty glasses.