AI Aurora Carter rammed her palm against the padlock and felt the metal grind into bone. The lock gave, and the iron gate swung inward with a shriek that sounded far too human.
The Heartstone pendant warmed against her collarbone.
It did not just warm. It answered. The silver chain slid over her jacket, and the thumbnail-sized gem pulsed once, twice, deep crimson and faintly lit, as if somebody had blown on coals buried in it.
She stepped through the gap in the railings and into a world that had forgotten traffic. Richmond Park's noise fell away behind her. The buses, the dogs, the distant shout of drunk teenagers, all gone. The gate shut with a polite click. Too polite.
Her torch beam cut across the grass. It found wildflowers first.
Daisies grew beside foxglove. Crocuses nodded among bluebells. The colours spilled over the ground in thick, greedy clusters, all blooming, all in the wrong places. They smelled like a florist's dustbin in summer, sweet and rotten at once.
Aurora raised the torch higher.
Three standing stones waited in the clearing. They were tall and flat, black as old oak, their surfaces carved with grain lines that looked almost like wood. No moss touched them. Rain should have softened their edges, but they stood crisp, sharp enough to cut the beam of light.
"You're being theatrical," she said, and hated the way her own voice came back thin.
Eva's message sat folded in her jacket pocket, damp with sweat. She'd taken it from the Golden Empress dispatch bag with Yu-Fei's last parcel, a delivery that should have been simple. An address that wasn't an address. A note in Eva's shaky scrawl, slipped under the parcel box before Rory had left Silas' flat: Grove. Stones. Bring the Heartstone. Don't go past the second stone. Don't trust the child in the flowers.
The unknown woman in the back booth had given the pendant, though unknown was a generous word. The woman had not shown a face. She had set a silver cup on the bar, pushed the Heartstone across the counter, and spoken in a voice like paper tearing.
Keep it, Rory. When it gets hot, you run. When it gets hotter, you pray.
Aurora checked the pendant. The glow had brightened.
Her phone buzzed.
Silas.
She answered with the screen pressed to her ear. "If you're calling to remind me about the fryer, the pilot's out."
"Where are you?"
"The Grove."
A pause. Then, low and careful, "That's not a place in London."
"It's in the map app, if you turn the brightness down and look sideways."
"Come out."
"I came for a reason."
"The reason isn't in the park."
The line crackled, and underneath it came a sound she recognised. A child humming. Not a recording. Too wet, too close, the lips shaping each note like they were standing inside Silas' bar.
Aurora pulled the phone away.
The humming stopped. The screen filled with static, then Eva's face appeared in the reflection, pale, mouth open, eyes wide. No image, only the dark reflection of the clearing behind her, and there, between two stones, a black rectangle. A door. Thin as a match.
The phone battery dropped to one per cent.
The screen went dead.
Silence pressed in. Aurora counted breaths. One. Two. Three. The rule Evan used to count, the one she had learned to break, but this wasn't Evan. This was worse because this knew how to wait.
She turned the torch toward the stones.
There were four.
Her throat tightened. She swept the beam back and forth, over each flat black surface, the grain, the empty air around them. Three stood where they had stood. The fourth had appeared at the edge of the flowers, tall enough to hide behind. No footprints. No disturbance in the grass.
The pendant heated against her skin.
Aurora reached into her bag and took the small box cutter Yu-Fei used for opening cartons. The blade was clean, bright, ordinary. She felt steadier for an ordinary thing.
"Hello?" she called.
The word moved away from her mouth and did not echo .
From the flowers came a soft rustle. A bare foot pushed through petals. The toes were small, white, too straight. A child sat up between the crocuses, facing the wrong way at first, as if the torch had arrived before the body.
The child wore a blue dress and no shoes. Its hair hung in black strips, damp. The humming started again, just a thread of sound, not enough to tell tune, enough to make the flowers lean.
"Laila," the child said.
Aurora's hand went to the pendant. The name was old, used only on paperwork, only before Cardiff, before London, before the bad name Evan had learned to make her answer to. She did not move.
"You're not Eva's joke."
"Child in the flowers." The child tilted its head. The movement was smooth, one joint too loose. "You came with the stone."
"I came looking for Eva."
The child smiled. Its teeth were there, small, white, too many in the back. "Eva gave you the message. Eva gave you the box. Eva gave you the stone."
The torch beam jumped. The fourth standing stone was gone . The three remaining stones stood closer together than before.
The pendant flared.
Heat spread across her chest, sharp enough to sting. Aurora looked through the gap between the stones. The thin black rectangle from the phone had opened wider. A door of iron and snow sat in the rock, its handle a loop of white frost. The cold from it touched her face and smelled of a graveyard after rain.
"Portal," she breathed.
The child stood. It unfolded upward without using its hands, joints stacking one above another, the dress lengthening as if made from the same dark cloth as the standing stones.
"You hear it singing," it said.
"Who?"
"Hel."
The word did not land like a myth. It landed like a name on a bill, familiar and due. The pendant pulsed once for each syllable.
Aurora ran.
The grass grabbed her trainers. The flowers smeared colour across her jeans. Behind her, the child did not chase. It only spoke, calm, patient.
"The second stone, Laila. You said you'd never cross."
She reached the gate. The iron bars were there, black and solid, but the latch was gone . The padlock had vanished too, leaving only smooth metal where it should hang. She threw her shoulder against it. The gate did not move.
The clearing had stretched.
She turned, torch beam shaking. The stones were near again. All three. All waiting. The door between them had opened a hand's width. White snow spilled out of it, not falling, floating toward the pendant like mist toward a mouth.
The child stood by the first stone. Eva's coat hung on its shoulders now, green wool, too long for small arms.
Aurora pressed the pendant with both hands, as if she could push heat back into the gem. It would not cool.
"Take it," Eva's voice said from the door.
The torch beam caught movement beyond the iron. A hand reached through, fingers long, nails chipped with red polish. Eva's ring, the one she sold after leaving Evan, sat on the middle finger.
Aurora took one step back.
Eva's hand stretched further, the wrist black at the edges, veins like threads of frost. The voice came again, soft, kind, wrong.
"Rory. It has you."
The child laughed, and the sound came from the door.
Aurora looked down. The silver chain around her neck had loosened. The Heartstone hung free, swinging, its glow now the colour of a wound.
She cut the chain with the box cutter.
The blade passed through the links and struck nothing.
The pendant lifted from her chest.
The door yawned wider. The child's mouth opened too.
Aurora hurled the box cutter into the dark.
The blade struck Eva's wrist and vanished without blood.
The hand curled around Aurora's throat. The skin was cold, dry, like old snow. The child's fingers closed on the other side, small, patient, certain. The pendant pulsed hot once, then cold, then the chain broke fully and the red light flew into the door.
Aurora pulled Eva's coat sleeve free and swung the empty weight into the child's face.
The child shrieked, and the shriek came from the stones.
The hand around her throat jerked backward. The gate behind her slammed open with a bang that rattled her teeth. Beyond it, London noise flooded in, buses, barking, ordinary voices, ordinary air.
Aurora lunged.
The hand did not let go. It yanked her back into the clearing, and her trainers skidded across wet grass. The gate swung shut an inch from her face. The child stood on the grass beside her, smiling with Eva's mouth.
The pendant glowed deep inside the door.
The stones began to move.
Aurora drove her elbow into the hand's wrist, not to escape, not yet, but to make it loosen , and the cold fingers twitched. She clawed at the gate's bars, found the latch from the outside, and pulled it over Eva's fingers.
The metal bit down.
Eva screamed without lungs.
The child pointed at the pendant, now rising in a line of red fire. The door began to close.
Aurora grabbed the silver chain around her neck. It came away.
In her palm, the Heartstone screamed.