AI The tear in the Veil hung between two brick walls, narrow as a door left ajar.
Rory could see it only because the Heartstone was warm against her chest. Its crimson surface glimmered beneath her collar, a steady, faint pulse . Beyond it, the air bent like heat above a road, though the night was cold enough to sting her cheeks.
Nyx stood beside her in a shape the darkness had almost managed to make human. They were taller than Rory by a head, their edges wavering where the lamplight from the alley touched them. Violet eyes floated in the shadow of their face.
“Is it stable?” Rory asked.
“It is open.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” Nyx’s voice brushed the air, a whisper carried on the wind. “It is not.”
Rory tightened her grip on the moonsilver dagger. The Fae-forged blade lay cold in her hand, its slender leaf-shaped edge pale beneath the streetlamp. She had no intention of putting it away. The last time she had trusted a doorway that shimmered , she’d spent a week questioning her sense of distance and once found a beetle in her tea that had not been there a moment before.
This doorway smelled of rain, crushed grapes, and something rich roasting over a fire.
“Can you tell what’s on the other side?”
Nyx leaned toward the tear. Their shadow stretched along the bricks, slipping into the distortion. “A great deal of warmth .”
“Any traps?”
“I cannot tell.”
Rory glanced behind them. The alley ended in a locked service gate. Beyond it, London rattled on, buses grinding through wet streets, a siren winding away toward the river. The noise made the narrow opening ahead feel less like a passage than a dare.
She thought of the pendant’s heat, of the way it had pulled her here with each step. Of the places in the world that were supposed to stay separate. She thought of the stories people told when they wanted to make fear sound like wisdom.
Then she stepped through.
For half a second, the world pressed in from every side. Cold brick vanished beneath her fingertips. The air thickened, dense and sweet, and the sound of the city dropped away so abruptly that her ears rang in the silence .
Her boot struck soft ground.
Rory stumbled, caught herself, and turned.
The tear hung behind them in a wall of darkness—not brick now, but a smooth rise of black stone furred with pale moss . Through the opening, she saw a slice of alley and the yellow streetlamp beyond. The sight steadied her. London still existed. It had not been a dream or a trick of shadow.
Nyx emerged beside her. Their form rippled as they crossed the threshold, then settled.
The opening narrowed.
“Wait,” Rory said.
Nyx reached for it. Their hand passed through the shimmer without touching anything. “The Veil closes.”
“Can you reopen it?”
“Perhaps.”
The tear sealed with a sound like a held breath released.
Rory stared at the blank stone. Her pulse knocked hard once in her throat, then eased. She turned and took in the place that had swallowed them.
The sky was amber. Not sunset amber, not the thin gold of city light reflected in cloud, but a deep, glowing colour that seemed to fill the whole vault above them. It made the far horizon look burnished. No sun showed through it. No moon either. The light came from everywhere and nowhere, soft enough to blur shadows without erasing them.
They stood on a terrace of dark stone overlooking a valley. Vineyards spread down the slopes in precise, impossible rows, their leaves dark green and glossy, each vine trained over a trellis of bone-white wood. Between the vineyards lay orchards heavy with fruit. Some of it shone like polished copper. Some hung in clusters the colour of bruises. Farther off, gardens climbed toward a ridge, bright with flowers too large to belong to any ordinary season.
Rory’s mouth had gone dry.
“Dymas,” Nyx said.
She looked at them. “You’re certain?”
“I know its taste.”
Rory’s gaze moved back to the valley. “You’ve been here?”
“Not this way.”
It was not an answer, but she had expected that. The pendant warmed against her skin, its pulse quickening. Hel. The realm beyond the Veil. Dymas, where everything grew and ripened and was made into something to eat.
A breeze moved over the terrace. It carried the scent of earth, wine, woodsmoke, and spiced meat. Rory’s stomach gave a small, unwelcome twist.
“What do you hear?” she asked.
Nyx tilted their head.
At first Rory heard only the wind combing through the vines. Then came a far-off swell of voices. A murmur, rising and falling, too distant to separate into words. Somewhere below, metal rang against metal in a steady rhythm. The sound might have been tools at work, or a great kitchen in full stride.
Rory stepped to the terrace’s edge. A stairway descended along the slope, cut into the stone and edged by low lanterns whose flames burned blue. Beyond the stairs, a narrow path wandered between the vineyard rows.
The air felt warm on her face, but the stone beneath her palm remained cool. Something in the place pressed against her senses. Not hostility exactly. More like appetite—vast, patient, and impossible to ignore.
“Stay close,” she said.
Nyx’s eyes glimmered. “I am always close.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It was meant as comfort.”
“Work on it.”
They took the stairs.
At the foot of the terrace, Rory passed beneath an arch tangled in grapevines. The leaves brushed her shoulders, soft and damp. Tiny beads of moisture clung to their undersides, each reflecting a different colour: green, blue, gold. One dropped onto her wrist. It tasted sweet when it touched her skin, though she hadn’t put it in her mouth.
The vineyards were silent up close. Their rows ran straight down the slope, then curved around a stand of cypress trees in a loop that should not have fit the land. Rory looked back. The path behind them seemed shorter than the distance they had walked .
“Did we turn?” she asked.
“No.”
She kept walking, but marked each fork with a nick from the dagger’s point in the pale wood of the trellis. At the next bend, the first mark appeared ahead of them, though it should have been behind .
Nyx noticed her pause. “The land is not obliged to keep the same shape.”
“Good to know.”
“Does it trouble you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Rory glanced at them. “Good?”
“Fear is a kind of attention.”
She didn’t argue. The valley had earned her attention.
The path brought them to an orchard. Its trees had pale trunks and broad, leathery leaves. The fruit hung low enough to touch: round, dark-red globes with a sheen like lacquer. A split one lay in the grass. Its exposed flesh was bright orange, threaded with fine silver veins.
Rory crouched. The smell was sharp and fragrant, almost like citrus with a scorched edge. She reached toward it, then stopped.
A small pale shape shifted beneath the leaves.
She rose at once, dagger up.
The shape disappeared. The branches shivered though there was no wind.
“Did you see that?”
“I saw movement.”
“Animal?”
“I do not know.”
She studied the ground. No prints marked the damp soil. No broken stems, no trail through the grass. The nearest fruit rocked gently on its branch.
Rory backed away. “We’re not sampling the produce.”
“Wise.”
They left the orchard and came upon a low stone wall. Beyond it, the land dipped toward a broad garden laid out in terraces. Flowers crowded the beds in vivid ranks, some with petals like folded silk , others with translucent cups that held their own little lights. Bees as large as her thumb wandered between them, their wings making a dry, papery hum. When Rory approached, they turned together in the air, all at once, their faceted eyes catching the amber sky.
She froze.
The swarm did not advance. It watched.
“Don’t move,” Nyx murmured.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
For several long breaths, the bees hovered. Then they drifted away in a single shining ribbon, disappearing over the garden wall. Rory let out the breath she had been holding.
A narrow channel ran along the terrace’s edge. Water moved through it uphill, drawn toward a fountain at the garden’s centre. The basin overflowed with liquid the colour of dark wine. Each splash sent a scent of cloves and smoke into the air.
Rory leaned over the channel. Her reflection looked back at her—black hair, bright eyes, mouth set in a line. The image wavered . For an instant, her reflection was smiling.
She straightened.
Nyx had seen it. “What was there?”
“My face.”
“And before that?”
“Nothing I care to describe.”
They continued.
At the top of the garden, the path opened onto a wide slope. The distant voices had grown louder. Beyond the next ridge, rows of lanterns shone in the amber dusk, marking what looked like a sprawling complex of halls and kitchens. Thin columns of smoke lifted from its roofs. Even from here, Rory could hear the clatter of pans and the rhythmic chop of knives. A shout went up, followed by laughter—bright, exuberant, almost joyous.
The scent of roasting meat rolled down the hill.
Rory’s stomach twisted again, this time with hunger. It had been hours since she’d eaten. She hated that the place could reach inside her and tug at something so ordinary.
“People?” she asked.
“Souls,” Nyx said. Their voice had thinned. “Some bound here by contract.”
Rory looked toward the lanterns. In the glow, figures moved between the buildings. One carried a tray piled high with fruit. Another pushed a cart. Their gestures were brisk and practiced. Beyond them, in a courtyard, something flashed—a line of knives, perhaps, catching firelight as a crowd gathered around a long table.
“Are they prisoners?”
“Some may be. Some may have chosen.”
“That’s meant to make me feel better?”
“No.”
A horn sounded from the distant halls. Its low note rolled through the valley and seemed to settle beneath Rory’s skin. All across the vineyards, the leaves turned toward the sound.
The Heartstone pulsed hot against her chest.
Rory lowered her eyes to the pendant. Its inner glow had strengthened, a dark red light beating in time with her heart. She curled her fingers over it.
The horn sounded again.
From the garden behind them came a faint rustle. Rory turned. At the edge of the nearest flower bed, a fruit had appeared where there had been none before: a small gold pear, its skin shining wetly. A thin black stem curled around it like a finger.
She tightened her grip on the blade.
“We’ve seen enough,” she said.
Nyx looked toward the distant halls. “We have only begun.”
“That’s why we’re leaving before the place decides to show us the rest.”
The path back to the terrace was gone .
Rory stared at the garden, at the stone walls and the uphill channel, at the vineyards beyond. She tried to remember every turn. They had come through the orchard, past the cypress, down the stairs. But the slope now ran away in the opposite direction, and the blue lanterns marked a route she had not taken.
The amber sky gave no clue to time. It might have been minutes since they crossed the Veil. It might have been a day.
Nyx’s shadow spread across the ground, long and fluid, searching the gaps between roots and stones. “There are many ways through.”
“Can you find one?”
“I can find shadows.”
“Then find us one that leads out.”
A faint, warm pulse answered from the pendant. Not ahead, but beneath them .
Rory looked down.
The channel’s dark water flowed uphill toward the fountain. Now a thread of crimson glimmered beneath its surface, running the other way—toward a narrow cleft between the garden stones. She followed it with her eyes. Beyond the cleft, the ground dipped into shadow.
Nyx saw it too. “The path has remembered.”
“Or it wants us to follow.”
“Yes.”
Rory set the dagger’s point against the stone. The moonsilver shone faintly beneath the strange sky.
“Then we’ll be careful.”
They stepped toward the cleft together. Behind them, the distant kitchens erupted in cheers. The sound swept over the vineyards, and every lantern in the valley flared gold.
Rory kept her eyes on the dark opening ahead. The air smelled of wine and woodsmoke, of warm bread and fruit split open under a knife. The world below waited with its tables full.
The pendant beat once against her chest.
This time, the rhythm was not her own.