AI The standing stones were not on any map of Richmond Park.
Rory had run through this section of the park a hundred times on deliveries, cutting between Ham and Petersham in the rain, and she knew the old oaks by their lean. These five were new. Or they had been waiting to be noticed. Six feet tall and twice as wide, bark still living over what should have been stone, lichen glowing faintly even in the daylight. The air between them shivered like heat off pavement.
"The Veil is thin here," Isolde said.
She stood a step ahead of Rory and Nyx, her silver hair catching what little sun made it through the canopy, reaching all the way to her waist. She left no mark in the damp leaf mold when she walked. Rory had stopped trying not to stare at that.
Nyx rippled at Rory's shoulder, six-two of living shadow pulled into something roughly human-shaped for convenience. Their eyes were that faint violet glow that Rory caught in her peripheral vision more than head-on.
"It is torn," they whispered, and their voice was wind through a keyhole. "A little mouth. Hungry."
Rory's hand went automatically to the pendant at her throat. The Heartstone, deep crimson and no bigger than her thumbnail on its silver chain, was warm. Not body-heat warm. It pulsed, a slow thud against her skin like a second heartbeat.
"It's doing the thing," she said. "The portal thing."
Isolde turned. Her eyes were pale lavender, too light and too old for her face.
"That which was given without a giver opens doors without keys," she said. "Are you certain you wish to borrow yesterday to pay for tomorrow, bright-eyed Rory?"
"Can you ever just say yes or no?"
"I cannot lie," Isolde said, with a small, sad smile. "So I must speak around the edges."
Rory glanced at the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, white against her skin, then tightened her fingers around the strap of her bag where the Fae-forged blade sat cold against her hip even through canvas. Moonsilver. Isolde's gift. It never got warm, not even when she held it.
"Rules?" she said.
"When we step through, do not eat unless I eat first," Isolde said instantly, all riddle gone from her voice. "Do not promise. Do not thank anyone. And whatever sky you see, do not look too long."
Nyx extended what might have been a hand. The shadow thinned until Rory could see the trees through it.
"Together," they whispered.
Rory took it. It felt like cold smoke holding the shape of fingers. She took Isolde's hand with her other - Isolde's skin was cool and dry, like paper - and stepped forward between the oaks.
The shimmer swallowed them.
Sound dropped out first. Not silence, but the absence of London . No planes, no distant traffic on the A307, no dogs barking. Then the light changed.
Rory's stomach lurched , not from falling but from being rearranged . The air that hit her lungs on the other side was too sweet, too heavy, perfumed with roasting sugar and salt and something like fresh blood under it . She gasped and let go of both hands.
They stood on a hillside.
The sky was amber. Not a sunset amber, but a permanent, warm, late-afternoon amber that seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if the sky itself were a low lamp. No sun. No clouds that she recognized, just slow-moving currents of light that pooled and thinned like cream in tea. The light touched everything and made it look edible.
"Oh," Rory said.
Below them stretched what she could only call a country made of appetite. Terraced vineyards rolled down in perfect , impossible geometry, vines heavy with grapes the size of plums, black and green and a translucent gold that caught the amber light. Beyond that, orchards where trees bore too many kinds of fruit at once - Rory saw lemons and pomegranates on the same branch, and something that looked like a pear but split open to show seeds that glowed. The air vibrated with bees the size of her thumb. And further still, low and wide and shining, a city of open kitchens and long tables, where columns of steam rose and never seemed to dissipate.
It smelled like every good meal she had ever been in the same room as, layered one on top of the other until it was almost unbearable. Her mouth watered.
"Dymas," Isolde said quietly. "The gullet of Hel. Belphegor's table."
"The wardens do not monitor so deep," Nyx murmured, solidifying a little more. Their form drank the amber light. "The Veil is thick here. Too thick to heal. It has scarred over."
Rory's pendant was hot now, pulsing fast against her collarbone. She pressed her palm over it.
"Someone's watching some rift points, though, right?" she said, trying for her normal voice. Cool-headed, Eva always called her, which really meant good at sounding calm when she wasn't. "This doesn't feel monitored. It feels -"
"Invited," Isolde finished.
The grass under Rory's trainers was not grass. It was soft and gave too much, like moss that had been bred for bare feet. Each step released a puff of scent - thyme, then butter, then iron. Wildflowers bloomed year-round in Isolde's grove, but here everything bloomed and fruited at once, obscenely fertile, branches groaning. It was beautiful and wrong in the way a banquet laid for a funeral is wrong.
They started down the hill because there was nowhere else to go and because standing still felt like being noticed . As they moved, Rory noticed the cooks.
They were far at first, figures between the rows. As they got closer she saw they were human. Most of them. A man in whites that had once been chef's whites but were now stained to a map of old meals, his forearms covered in thin, precise burn scars, turning a spit that held something too long to be a pig. A woman with her hair shaved close, cracking what looked like ostrich eggs one-handed into a bowl big enough to bathe in. None of them looked up at first. Their movements were too practiced, too fast, the efficiency of people who had been doing one thing for a very , very long time.
"Helbound," Nyx whispered, seeing where Rory looked. "Contracted. From Earth. They came for the recipe that would make them immortal. Now they are the recipe."
The woman with the eggs finally glanced up. Her eyes were completely white, filmed over, but she smiled with small, sharp teeth.
"Guests," she said, in an accent Rory thought might have been French fifty years ago. "Fresh palates."
"Not for you, Mireille," Isolde said, and the way she said it - gentle, but using a name - made the woman flinch and return to her bowl.
"How do you -" Rory started.
"I listen where time pools," Isolde said. "This one traded three years of summers for a perfect soufflé. She has been whisking it since 1921."
The unease that had been sitting low in Rory's belly turned solid and cold. The sweetness in the air was suddenly cloying . She tugged her jacket tighter even though it was warm, the kind of warmth that doesn't ask permission, that coats the skin.
At the bottom of the terrace, a low wall of stacked salt blocks marked a boundary. On the other side, a fig tree had grown through an old iron gate, splitting it. Its fruit was swollen and split, weeping pink juice that ran down the bark and attracted flies that glittered like bottle glass.
Isolde stopped and knelt. Where she touched the ground, no print.
"Here," she said. "The grove and this place kissed, once. The stone remembers."
Rory crouched beside her. There, half-swallowed by roots, was another oak standing stone, identical to the ones in Richmond Park, but here its surface was carved with shallow figures - people eating, people feeding each other, people with their mouths sewn shut.
She reached out without thinking, scarred wrist exposed, and the Fae-forged blade at her hip went ice cold, a warning shiver.
"Rory, don't," Nyx said, but low, too late.
She touched the carving of a woman holding a round fruit.
The hill rang.
It was not a sound at first but a felt thing, a deep bell tone that traveled up through her bones from the ground itself. The amber sky rippled. All the distant cooking sounds stopped at once. In the sudden quiet Rory could hear her own breath and the frantic thud of the Heartstone and, far off in that low city of feasts, something very large shifting its weight and taking an interest.
The fig tree above them rustled even though there was no wind, and a dozen ripe fruits dropped at once with soft, heavy thuds. They split when they hit the salt, spilling pulp and wasps.
Isolde stood in one smooth motion and pulled Rory to her feet. Her lavender eyes were wide.
"What you awaken will want tasting," she said.
Nyx was already coming apart, shadow stretching thin and wide, throwing them both into sudden shade.
"We must go up," they whispered, and now their whisper had an edge. "Before the Prince's table sets a place for us."
Rory's hand found the blade by pure instinct. The moonsilver left its sheath with no sound at all, and in this amber light it glowed faintly, its leaf-shaped edge drinking the sweetness out of the air around it. Cold ran up her arm, clean and real and hers.
Behind them, from between the vineyard rows, the first barefoot steps began to come toward them, quick, eager, and far too many.