AI The Veil did not open so much as consent, yielding to the moonsilver blade with a sound like a finger circling the rim of a glass. Aurora Carter stepped through before her nerve could catch up with her boots, and the cold of Richmond Park broke off behind her as if a door had shut on winter.
For one breath she stood in the hidden grove Isolde had shown them, where wildflowers had no business blooming in December and the standing stones waited under the oaks like old teeth in the earth. For the next breath, the grove was gone .
Warmth wrapped around her, thick and sweet, carrying the scent of yeast, roasted fruit, and woodsmoke. The sky overhead was a deep, luminous amber, not the colour of sunset but of light preserved in honey . No sun marked it. No clouds crossed it. It simply was, vast and watchless, pouring down a glow that made every leaf and vine look gilded from within.
Aurora looked down. The ground beneath her feet was dark loam scattered with crushed shells that glittered faintly, as if someone had ground pearls into the soil. Behind her, the air still shivered with the passage they had made. She could not see the distortion clearly, only a suggestion of movement, like heat rising from summer pavement. Nyx saw more. Isolde saw more still. Aurora had learned not to trust everything her own eyes told her in places like this.
The Heartstone pendant lay against her collarbone, its silver chain cool at the clasp, its deep crimson no larger than her thumbnail. As she watched, a faint inner glow stirred in the gem, and warmth pulsed through it, slow as a second heartbeat.
She touched it with two fingers. “There’s a portal near.”
Nyx gathered themselves into a firmer shape at her shoulder. In solid form they stood perhaps six foot two, a humanoid silhouette cut from living shadow, edges softening where the amber light tried to define them. Their eyes were faintly glowing violet, and when they spoke, the voice came to Aurora like a whisper carried on the wind.
“More than one.”
Isolde moved past them both, silver hair spilling to her waist, pale lavender eyes fixed on the distance. The grove beyond the Veil had left no mark on her, and this new place seemed no more capable of holding her . Where Aurora’s boots pressed grooves into the loam, Isolde’s feet left nothing. Not a dent. Not a bent stem. She walked as if the world had agreed not to remember her weight .
“Dymas is generous with its doors,” Isolde said. “Few of them lead out.”
Aurora drew the Fae-forged blade a little higher in her grip. The slender leaf-shaped dagger was cold enough to ache, and its moonsilver surface still carried a trace of luminescence from the moonlight that had touched it in the grove. Isolde had given it to her, and Aurora had stopped asking questions about gifts that arrived wrapped in riddles. The weapon had already saved her once. It had cut through a magical ward as cleanly as scissors through ribbon, and it seemed to dislike demons even more than she did.
Here, that dislike felt contagious. The blade’s chill crept up her wrist, past the small crescent scar she had carried since childhood, and settled under her skin like warning.
They stood at the edge of a vineyard.
Not a vineyard as she knew it, with neat rows and earthly labour, but a sprawling abundance of black trellises climbing toward the amber sky, their timbers ancient and twisted into shapes that suggested ribs, hands, open mouths. Vines heavy with fruit looped from post to post. The grapes were enormous, dark as garnets, their skins so translucent that Aurora could see veins of brighter red moving inside them. She did not touch them. She thought better of it the moment she noticed the way the nearest cluster turned toward her, slow as a sleeping animal.
Beyond the vines, orchards spread in every direction. Trees with pale bark bore fruit that glowed faintly, some gold, some bruised purple, some the unsettling pink of a healed burn. Gardens spilled between them in riots of green and scarlet, herbs broad as swords, flowers with petals like spun sugar, low bushes clustered with berries that chimed when the air moved. The sound was delicate and wrong, as if the wind were playing a table setting.
Aurora listened.
Under the chime of berries came deeper noises: laughter rolling up from a hollow, the clatter of pans, the hiss of fat in a pan, the far-off scrape of a knife against stone. Somewhere, liquid poured and kept pouring, too long for one bottle, too eagerly for one throat. Somewhere else, someone wept in a voice too tired to be heard by anyone who wanted to ignore it.
“Stay close,” Aurora said.
Nyx’s shadow lengthened across the path. “I am close.”
“You’re dramatic.”
“I am observant.”
Isolde glanced back. Her expression remained serene, ageless, maddening. “The loud places are safest,” she said. “Until they are not.”
Aurora considered that. “That’s not helpful.”
“Help is a dish best served when asked for plainly.”
“Can you ever just answer a question?”
Isolde smiled. “Would you believe me if I did?”
Aurora didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The compulsion on Isolde was old and absolute: she could not lie. But Aurora had learned that truth could be folded, trimmed, polished, and arranged until it pointed somewhere dangerous. A seer who spoke in riddles was still a seer. She simply made you work for your own misunderstanding.
They moved deeper.
The path narrowed between the vineyards, then broadened into a lane paved with flat stones worn smooth by centuries of feet, hooves, and things Aurora preferred not to name. The air grew warmer. It pressed against her mouth when she breathed, tasting of spiced wine and caramelised sugar and something metallic beneath, like blood on a bitten tongue.
Her stomach clenched.
Not with fear. With hunger.
She stopped at once.
It was not her hunger. She knew her own appetite, the simple animal need that came after long shifts delivering food for Yu-Fei’s restaurant, after nights spent sleeping badly above Silas’s bar, after too much thinking and too little rest. This was different. This hunger arrived dressed in longing. It whispered of comfort. Of reward. Of every empty place inside her suddenly filled with warmth .
Nyx’s form thinned at the edges. Their violet eyes brightened.
“Do not feed it,” Isolde said, without looking back .
Aurora’s fingers tightened on the dagger. “Feed what?”
“Want.”
The word fell into the amber light and seemed to sink into the soil.
Aurora looked down. Around her boots, tiny white flowers had opened in the loam, delicate and innocent, except that they were growing too quickly , spreading toward the hem of her coat. One curled around the tip of her boot, not threatening, but curious . Testing.
She lifted her foot. The flower stretched after it, root and all, then snapped back into the ground.
Unease crawled up her spine.
Ahead, the lane opened into a courtyard built around a fountain. The fountain did not run with water. A clear syrup rose in a slow central column, catching the amber light, falling in heavy ribbons into a basin carved with open mouths. The mouths drank. Aurora saw that plainly. Stone lips moved. Stone throats swallowed. The basin remained empty.
Around the fountain stood tables.
Dozens of them. Long boards, small rounds, trestles stacked with dishes, all arranged beneath pergolas wound with flowering vines. Some tables were empty. Some were not.
Aurora raised a hand. Nyx and Isolde stopped with her.
Between the tables moved figures in cook’s whites stained with wine and ash. Their faces were drawn , their eyes bright with exhaustion, their hands skilful and relentless. They garnished plates with petals, lifted silver domes, carved fruit into shapes that seemed to move before being carried away. On their wrists, just above the cuff, Aurora saw marks: thin brands, like script written in scar tissue.
Helbound souls. Contracted from Earth. She had heard enough from Nyx to guess.
The food they prepared was beautiful in a way that made her uneasy. One chef laid a roasted bird back together with a touch, and its skin crisped again as if freshly drawn from the oven. Another arranged a tower of oysters that opened on their own, revealing not flesh but tiny lights, like stars trapped in brine . A third carried a platter of dark grapes identical to those in the vineyard, except that these had been peeled , and inside each one a small red pulse beat steadily.
At the far end of the courtyard, beneath a canopy of amber silk , a dais rose from the floor. On it stood a table larger than the rest, set for one. The chair behind it was empty, but the place had been laid with terrible care. Knives gleamed. Goblets waited. A crown of blackened vine leaves rested beside the plate.
A banner hung above the chair, stitched in deep red thread with a name Aurora did not need to hear spoken to understand.
Belphegor.
The air near the dais shimmered .
Not with heat. With want.
Aurora looked away first. Her mouth was watering . Her hands were trembling. She hated both.
“We need to keep moving,” she said.
Nyx had gone very still. Their shadow had spread across the paving stones toward the nearest table, where a dish of honeyed figs sat unattended. The tips of their silhouette reached for it like fingers. They noticed, drew themselves back, and the shadow snapped into shape with visible reluctance.
“This place tastes us,” Nyx whispered.
“Then don’t let it like the flavour,” Aurora said.
Isolde’s gaze moved over the courtyard without surprise. “The prince keeps his court hungry. It is easier to rule an appetite than a soul.”
Aurora looked at her. “You’ve been here before.”
“I have seen what hunger builds when it is given a throne.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” Isolde agreed. “It is not.”
Aurora bit back the reply that rose in her throat. Cool-headed. She could be cool-headed. She had survived worse than a beautiful place that wanted to eat her from the inside out. She had survived Evan. She had survived London with too little money and too many questions. She had survived the moment the ordinary world cracked open and started showing its teeth.
She studied the courtyard instead.
The shimmering distortion Nyx had noticed near the dais was not random. It followed a line from the fountain to a low archway at the courtyard’s far side, where the pergola gave way to older stone. The arch was half-buried in roots, its lintel carved with mouths again, smaller and more precise, each one closed except for a narrow vertical gap. The Heartstone pulsed against Aurora’s skin, stronger now. Warm. Insistent.
“That way,” she said.
They skirted the edge of the feast.
Twice a server turned as they passed. Each time, Nyx drew Aurora into the shadow of a vine-heavy trellis, and the shade’s form spread over them like a cloak. The first time, Aurora felt only cold. The second time, she felt Nyx’s heartbeat, if it could be called that: a faint, restless stirring against her shoulder, old and human and not quite human anymore . She did not ask. Some doors opened inward.
Isolde moved beside them, untouched by shadow and unconcerned by it. The servers’ eyes slid past her as if she were a trick of the light.
At the third table, Aurora saw a woman’s face reflected in the polished surface of a silver tray. The woman was not near the table. She stood across the courtyard, one hand resting on a carver’s knife, staring at the place where Aurora had been a moment before. Her mouth moved. No sound came from it. The tray’s reflection smiled before the woman did.
Aurora looked away.
The archway grew larger as they approached. Up close, the stone was not merely old; it was tired. Its carvings had been worn by hands, tongues, perhaps centuries of supplicants pressing mouths to the rock in hope or supplication. Iron pins had been driven into the stone at intervals, each etched with narrow symbols. Aurora recognised the intent if not the language. Wards. Monitoring marks. The kind Wardens would leave at a rift point.
One pin was cracked.
The Heartstone burned gently against her chest.
“Hel portal,” she said.
Nyx’s eyes flared violet. “Yes.”
Isolde tilted her head. “A mouth that has learned to swallow distance.”
Aurora stepped closer. The air around the arch rippled, and this time, with the Fae blade lifted before her, she could see it: a faint shimmering distortion, like breath over flame. The blade’s cold light touched the seam and made it visible in thin silver lines, a web of magic stretched across the gap. Not a doorway. A restraint. Someone had tried to bind the portal shut and failed halfway.
Beyond the web, she caught another glimpse of Dymas, or perhaps a deeper part of it. Amber light gave way to the glow of furnaces. Vineyards became vaulted ceilings black with smoke and hung with fruit like lanterns. Long tables stretched into darkness, crowded with feasters whose laughter rose and fell in perfect rhythm, too perfect , as if conducted. The smell that came through was overpowering: bread, wine, roasted meat, hot sugar, and beneath it all the sour sweetness of too much for too long.
Her stomach cramped again.
This time she recognised the hunger as a lure.
“It wants us to want,” she said.
Nyx’s whisper sharpened. “It is succeeding.”
Aurora looked at the blade. The moonsilver had grown colder still, and its faint luminescence pulsed in time with the Heartstone. She thought of the Fae Courts, of Isolde’s gift, of a weapon made to cut through magical wards and particularly effective against demons. She thought of the cracked Warden pin, the failing binding, the way the portal’s web trembled not with age but with appetite .
She did not need to force it open. She needed to stop feeding it.
“Isolde,” Aurora said. “What is the lock?”
Isolde’s pale eyes moved to hers. “What do you see?”
“A mouth.”
“Then feed it what it cannot swallow.”
Aurora stared at the arch. The vertical gap in the stone widened a fraction, as if listening . The scent from beyond intensified, honey and heat and remembered comfort. She thought of her flat above the bar, small and real. She thought of Eva’s voice on the phone, impatient and loyal. She thought of running from Evan with nothing but a bag and the stubborn refusal to become what he had wanted her to be.
Hunger could be a leash.
So could refusal.
She raised the dagger, but not toward the shimmering web. Instead she turned the flat of the blade against the cracked iron pin and pressed the cold moonsilver into the rune-work. The metal hissed. The Fae blade did not glow brighter. It grew colder, so cold that frost bloomed across Aurora’s knuckles and the air near the pin snapped with tiny silver sparks.
The portal shuddered.
The smell of the feast faltered.
A sound came from beyond the arch, not anger exactly, but the offended silence of a host whose guest has refused the first course.
Aurora pressed harder. “Nyx. The web.”
They understood. Their shadow flowed over the arch, not touching the portal’s light but shading it, starving it of the amber glow . Where Nyx passed, the shimmering lines dulled. The mouths carved in the stone closed, one by one.
Isolde lifted one hand, palm outward. She spoke no spell that Aurora could hear. Perhaps she did not need to. The wildflowers at the base of the arch leaned away from her, and the roots binding the stone went still.
Aurora felt the moment the portal’s hunger lost its grip. It was like a hook slipping free from soft flesh. The Heartstone gave one strong pulse , then settled into a steady warmth . The crack in the iron pin sealed with a thin line of frost. The magical web tightened, not with the old failing strain but with something colder and cleaner, moonsilver and refusal.
The arch closed.
Not with a bang. With the quiet click of a mouth deciding it had been offered something distasteful.
Silence rushed back into the courtyard behind them.
Aurora lowered the blade. Her breath came too fast, and only then did she realise how deeply the air had been pressing into her lungs. The taste of sugar and roast faded, leaving only the clean chill of the dagger against her palm.
Nyx reformed beside her, their edges steadier, though their violet eyes remained fixed on the sealed arch. “That will not hold forever.”
“It doesn’t need to,” Aurora said. “It just needs to hold long enough for us to leave.”
Isolde looked at her with something almost like approval. “A wise guest knows when the meal has ended.”
Aurora glanced back at the courtyard. The feast continued, but the rhythm had changed. Servers moved faster. The feasters laughed a beat too late. At the high table beneath the black vine banner, the empty chair seemed less vacant than before, as if something vast had leaned close to inspect the interruption and not yet decided whether to be amused.
She did not want to wait for the decision.
“Back through the grove,” she said. “Now.”
They turned from the arch and retraced their path along the lane of crushed shells. The vineyard seemed darker on the return, the grapes less jewelled, the leaves less eager. The orchard fruit still glowed, but the light had gone syrupy, clinging. When the berry bushes chimed, the sound was petulant.
At the place where the Veil had first consented, the air still trembled faintly. Aurora could not see it without lifting the Fae blade, but when she did, the dagger’s cold light revealed the seam: a slender distortion between the standing stones that had followed them from Richmond Park into this impossible country.
Nyx inclined their head toward it. “Home?”
Aurora considered the word. Not Cardiff. Not the flat above Silas’s bar. Not even the ordinary streets of London where she delivered other people’s dinners and pretended the night did not have teeth. Home was not a place yet. Maybe it was the act of refusing to be consumed.
She stepped through first.
Winter hit her face like a blessing.
Richmond Park lay around them in blue dusk, cold and grass-scented and blessedly silent. The hidden grove closed behind them with the softest rustle of year-round wildflowers. The standing stones stood as they had for ages, patient and uninterested in explanation. Snow had begun to fall beyond the oaks, fine and real.
Aurora looked down.
Her boots had left prints in the frost.
Isolde stood nearby, silver hair darkened by dusk, leaving no mark at all.
Nyx’s shadow pooled at Aurora’s side, thinner now, but present. Their voice came like wind through bare branches. “You did well.”
Aurora sheathed the Fae blade. The Heartstone rested quietly against her chest, its crimson glow dimmed, its warmth fading. She touched the crescent scar on her wrist, then let her hand fall.
Behind them, somewhere beyond the Veil, Dymas continued its endless feast. The amber sky, the helbound chefs, the hungry mouths carved in stone, the empty chair waiting beneath a crown of vine leaves: all of it remained, lavish and terrible, set for appetites that would never be satisfied.
Aurora turned toward the lights of London.
For the first time that night, the cold felt like a gift .