AI The rift had opened between two of the oak stones, a seam in the winter dark no wider than a door. Rory only saw it because Isolde had told her where to look, and even then it took a long moment: a faint shimmer, like heat rising off tarmac, hanging in the frozen air at the edge of the Grove.
"The solstice thins the Veil," Isolde had said, her silver hair moving in a wind Rory couldn't feel. "Thin things tear. Tear things open. Open things are hungry."
That was the kind of answer Isolde gave, and it was true, which was worse. She couldn't lie. She could only arrange the truth so you tripped over it later.
Now the Heartstone lay against Rory's sternum, warm as a swallowed coal. She'd worn it every day since it arrived, and it had never done this. The crimson gem pulsed in slow beats, and the faint inner glow showed through her jumper like a second, slower heart.
"It likes this," Nyx whispered beside her . Their voice sounded like wind through a keyhole. "That should concern you."
"It does." Rory drew the Fae blade from its sheath at her hip. The moonsilver was cold enough to ache in her palm, and it glowed a faint milky white under the winter moon. "I'm concerned in a very organized way."
Nyx's violet eyes crinkled in what might have been a smile . In solid form they stood a head taller than her, a silhouette cut from the night itself, edges softly smoking. "Shall I go first?"
"You're the one with four hundred years of practice being terrifying."
"Nearly four hundred and eighty."
"Then go."
They stepped through together, and Isolde followed last, leaving no print in the frost.
---
The cold went first. It didn't fade so much as get peeled away, and warmth poured over Rory's face like opening an oven door. The smell hit her a breath later: caramelizing sugar, woodsmoke, roasting meat, crushed basil, something dark and winey underneath. Her stomach clenched so hard she nearly doubled over.
"Oh," she said, and it came out embarrassingly small.
The sky was amber. Not sunset amber, which is a passing thing, but a deep and settled gold that filled the whole vault of heaven, as if the world were lit from inside a jar of honey. There was no sun. The light simply *was *, thick and syrupy, pooling in every hollow.
They stood on a ridge above a valley, and the valley was one long, green, glistening excess. Vineyards rolled down the slopes in terraces so dense with fruit the vines bowed under it, grapes the size of plums, black and swollen and shining. Beyond them orchards ran to the horizon in ordered ranks, their branches heavy with things Rory had no names for: spiraled orange fruits, pale blue pods, a tree hung with what looked like pears made of blown glass . Between the rows, gardens spilled across the land in terraces of herbs and flowering vegetables, everything ripe, everything on the verge of splitting.
"It's beautiful," Rory said. She frowned. "Why does that bother me?"
"Because nothing is ever this ripe without something paying for it," said Isolde. She stood a little apart, lavender eyes half-lidded, looking at the valley the way one looks at a person who has wronged them. "Dymas does not grow. Dymas *feeds.*"
Rory took a step down the path and felt the ground give underfoot. It wasn't mud. It was soft and faintly springy, and when she lifted her boot the print it left smelled of cinnamon. She looked back. Nyx's prints were there too, but shallow and blurred, as though the earth couldn't quite decide whether they weighed anything . Isolde's path behind her was a clean stretch of unmarked ground.
"Interesting," Rory muttered. "The ground's making notes on us."
"Then let us give it little to write," Nyx breathed.
---
They followed the path down between the vines. The fruit hung at eye level, close enough to touch, and the grapes gleamed as though someone had polished each one. Rory kept her hands in her pockets, one wrapped around the blade's hilt. Somewhere close a sound rose and fell, and it took her a while to place it.
Humming. Soft, wordless, woven from many voices.
It was the grapes.
She stopped. The nearest cluster swayed though there was no wind, and the sound came from inside it, a sweet, low sighing, like a lullaby half remembered. Her mouth watered so sharply it hurt. The hand in her pocket came out of its own accord.
"Rory." Nyx's whisper was suddenly at her ear, and their cold, smoky fingers closed over her wrist, over the little crescent scar she'd carried since she was seven and fell off a wall in Cardiff. "Look at me."
She looked. Violet eyes, steady.
"Eat nothing that asks to be eaten," said Isolde, without turning, and Rory understood that this was the closest thing to a warning the seer was able to give.
"Right." Rory pulled her hand back, and it took real effort, like pulling a boot from a bog. Her heart was hammering. "Right. Thank you. That was ... I was actually going to."
"Everyone is," said Nyx gently . "That is the design."
She wiped her palm on her jeans as if the temptation could be scrubbed off. Then she noticed the Heartstone. It was hot now, hot enough to feel through two layers, and its glow had brightened until she could see the red of it on her sleeve. Whatever it was made for, it was made *here.*
---
The vineyards gave way to a kitchen garden, and the kitchen garden gave way to a courtyard, and there they found the first person.
He was sitting on an upturned crate beside a row of copper pots taller than Rory, peeling something long and violet with a paring knife. He wore a stained white apron and a chef's hat that had gone gray with age. His skin had a papery, hollowed look, like a man who had been eating for years and never once been full. He glanced up, and his eyes went to Rory's jacket, her boots, her face.
"You're from up there," he said. His accent was pure Glasgow. "Aye. You've the look. Nobody down here looks *tired * in that way."
Rory kept the blade low and out of sight. "How long have you been here?"
"Signed on in ninety-one." He laughed, a dry little sound. "Thought it'd be a grand bargain. Best kitchen in any world, unlimited ingredients, no budget. Never thought to ask what the *portion * was ." His hands didn't stop peeling. The violet skin kept unspooling in one long ribbon, and Rory realized it was longer than the fruit it came from, and still coming. "Prince likes it done properly. And it's never done. Every dish is the last one, and there's always another."
"Can we help you?" The words were out before she could weigh them.
The man's face did something complicated. "Ach, lass. Don't offer. Down here, that's a *contract.*" He nodded toward the far end of the courtyard, where a wide road ran between the orchards toward a horizon crowned with towers, tall and curved and glittering, like a table set for giants. "Go on, if you're going. But watch what you agree to. And what you eat. And *smile * less."
"Smile less?" said Rory.
"They like it. It looks like appetite."
They left him peeling. Rory glanced back once. The ribbon of violet skin was pooling around his boots, endless.
---
The road was paved in something like polished marzipan, and it hummed faintly too. Nyx walked closer to her now. In this light their body looked strange: the amber sky lay across their shoulders, but their shadow had gone long and restless behind them, stretching toward the towers as though it wanted to run ahead.
"It feels different," they said quietly. "The shadows here are... loud. Full of appetite. It is like standing in a room where everyone has turned to look at you."
"Are you all right?"
"I have not been tempted by anything in a very long time." Nyx's smoky edges rippled. "It is a peculiar sensation. I do not care for it, and I do not dislike it, and that frightens me most."
Rory nodded slowly . Ahead the towers grew, and now she could see banners on them the color of wine and figs. A bell tolled from somewhere in the valley, deep and rich and slow, and the humming in the orchards rose to answer it. From every direction came the sound of things being chopped , sizzled, poured. A feast was beginning.
The Heartstone flared against her chest, bright as a brake light.
Isolde spoke at last, softly , her lavender eyes fixed on the distant hall. "There is a door in that house that opens only for the one who does not hunger. I have seen who walks through it." She paused, and the pause was full of things she could not say . "I have not seen her come back out the same."
Rory tightened her grip on the cold blade and set her jaw. It felt good, that cold, a clean line drawn across all that warmth .
"Then I'd better not be hungry," she said, and walked on toward the towers.