AI The Heartstone pendant burned against Aurora's chest.
She pressed her palm to the crimson gem, and the warmth pulsed in answer, a heartbeat matching her own. Three days since it arrived in a plain envelope, no stamp, no name. Three days of it growing hotter, more insistent, until she could no longer ignore its summons.
"You're certain?" Nyx's voice curled from the shadow beneath the fire escape, where they had waited since dusk.
"Certain enough to walk into whatever this is." Aurora didn't look at them . The pendant's glow had begun to show through her thin blouse, a faint crimson bloom against the black fabric. "You said the Veil weakens at solstice. We're three days out."
"Solstice weakens the Veil." Nyx solidified beside her, violet eyes catching the streetlamp's glow. "It does not tear it open. Something pulled that stone through, Rory. Something with intent."
"Then we find out what." She stepped off the curb, and the alley swallowed her.
The passage between worlds had no door. Only a shimmer in the brickwork where the mortar had gone grey and soft as wet clay. Aurora reached out, and her fingers sank halfway through, cold as grave -dirt, before the wall hardened again. She pulled back, flexing her hand. The crescent scar on her wrist ached, a phantom memory of childhood stitches.
"Left," Nyx said.
She turned. The alley behind Silas' bar stretched into darkness, but to her left, where the Golden Empress delivery van usually idled, the brickwork breathed. In. Out. In.
Aurora walked through.
The air tasted of copper and something sweeter, overripe fruit left too long in summer heat. She stumbled, caught herself against a wall that wasn't brick but something porous and warm, pulsing faintly like living tissue. Her palm left a print that slowly filled back in, erasing her touch.
"Welcome to Dymas," Nyx whispered, their form flickering between solid and shadow. "Realm of Gluttony. Prince Belphegor's domain."
"How do you know this?"
"I was trapped between realms for three hundred and eighty years." Nyx's voice carried no bitterness, only the flat observation of fact. "I learned the geography of the spaces between."
The corridor opened into a cavern that shouldn't exist. Aurora gasped, and the sound died in the thick, honeyed air. Above them, the ceiling soared into amber twilight, a sky of perpetual sunset painted across stone that curved like the inside of a vast, inverted bowl. Below, the ground stretched into impossible distance, terraced gardens climbing and descending in spirals of green and gold and crimson.
Vineyards. Orchards heavy with fruit she didn't recognise. Trees bearing blossoms and ripe berries simultaneously, their branches groaning with abundance.
"Everything here is edible," Nyx said, drifting closer to examine a low-hanging branch. Their fingers passed through the leaves, and for a moment, Aurora saw them as they truly were, a silhouette of living shadow, reaching for something just beyond mortal perception. "Or so the stories claim. The helbound chefs who work Belphegor's kitchens, they say the ingredients taste of memory. Your first kiss. Your mother's voice. The moment before you die."
Aurora plucked a small, pear-shaped fruit from a nearby bush. It felt warm, almost feverish, and smelled of cinnamon and something darker, like burnt sugar. She didn't eat it. Some hungers, once fed, never stopped.
"Why bring me here?" she asked Nyx . "The pendant, it's from Dymas. But why me?"
The Shade was silent for a long moment. When they spoke, their voice had changed, layered with harmonics that made Aurora's teeth ache.
"Because you carry a name that opens doors, little mortal. Because three hundred years ago, a sorcerer named Aldric tried to summon something from this realm, and failed, and I have wondered ever since what he sought. Because the pendant chose you, and pendants of Heartstone do not choose randomly."
"What is a Heartstone?"
Nyx's form rippled, uncertainty made visible. "I don't know. The Wardens speak of them in whispers. Stones that pulse near Hel portals, that bind the bearer to... something. Someone. The last bearer I knew went mad in a fortnight. Claimed the stone was singing her name."
Aurora touched the pendant again. It pulsed once, sharply, like a heartbeat in answer.
They walked deeper, and the gardens grew wilder. Flowers with too many petals opened and closed in slow rhythm, their centres dark as pupils. Aurora heard music, distant and layered, like a hundred feasts happening simultaneously. Laughter. The clink of crystal . The wet sound of something being carved .
"Chefs," Nyx said, not looking at her . "Helbound souls, contracted from Earth. They compete here, you know. Culinary tournaments with stakes beyond gold. Losers become ingredients."
Aurora's stomach turned. She thought of Yu-Fei Cheung's kitchen, the Golden Empress, the careful knife work and precise timing. She thought of Evan, who had once called her cooking "adequate," a word that had cut deeper than any blade.
"There's a path," Nyx said. "The main thoroughfare to Belphegor's court. We could follow it, see what the Prince of Gluttony has planned for solstice. Or..." They gestured to a narrow defile between two walls of flowering hedge, where the amber light grew dimmer, shot through with violet.
"The Veil is thin here. I can slip through, find where the pendant's signal originates. You would follow, or wait, or return to your London and pretend this was a dream."
Aurora looked at the defile. She looked at the gardens, beautiful and terrible, abundance without end. She thought of the flat above Silas' bar, the delivery routes, the careful life she had built from the wreckage of another.
She thought of the pendant, warm against her skin, calling her name in a language she almost understood.
"Both," she said. "You slip through, find the source. I'll follow the path, see what Belphegor wants. We meet at the court, or wherever your search leads."
Nyx studied her, violet eyes unreadable . "You don't fear me."
"I fear what I don't understand." Aurora adjusted her bag, felt the weight of the Fae-forged blade at her hip, cold even through the leather. Isolde's gift, given with riddles she hadn't solved. "You're a variable . Variables can be managed."
"And if I don't return?"
"Then I'll find another way through." She smiled, and it felt strange on her face, a muscle she rarely used. "I've survived worse than shadows, Nyx. I've survived Evan."
The Shade's form flickered , something almost like respect passing across their featureless face. "The defile leads to the kitchens first. Watch for the tasting spoons. They're sentient, and they report to Belphegor's steward."
"Sentient spoons."
"Everything in Dymas is hungry, Rory. Even the utensils."
Nyx dissolved into shadow, and Aurora was alone with the gardens.
She walked.
The path widened, became a road of packed earth that smelled of yeast and fermentation. On either side, helbound figures moved through the gardens, their forms flickering between solid and translucent, bound to this place by contracts they could not break. Some harvested fruit with mechanical precision. Others sat at long tables, eating and eating, their faces slack with pleasure, never speaking, never stopping.
Aurora passed a woman in a chef's whites, her skin grey and translucent, who looked up with eyes like milk. "You're new," the woman said, and her voice was the sound of a knife being sharpened . "The Prince will want to taste you."
"I'm not on the menu."
The woman smiled, and her teeth were too sharp, filed to points. "Everyone's on the menu, darling. The question is only when."
The road climbed, and the gardens gave way to architecture. Not buildings, exactly, but grown things, structures of living wood and crystallised sugar, spires that twisted like soft-serve ice cream, domes that pulsed with inner light. At the centre of it all, visible now above the terraces, a throne of bone and gold, and upon it, a shape that might have been a man, swollen to impossible size, skin stretched tight over a body that had consumed without limit.
Prince Belphegor. The stories said he had once been a mortal, a nobleman who had sold his soul for the perfect feast. Now he was something else, something that wore his memories like a suit, hungry always, satisfied never.
Aurora felt the pendant burn hot against her chest, and she knew, with the certainty of dreams, that he had felt her too. That the stone was a beacon , and she had lit it simply by crossing the Veil.
She reached the base of the throne's approach, a staircase of marble that steamed with warmth , and stopped. The helbound chefs had gathered, dozens of them, their milky eyes fixed on her. At their head, a figure in black, human-shaped but wrong in proportion, limbs too long, joints bending backwards.
The steward. Nyx had warned her.
"You carry the Heartstone." It wasn't a question . The steward's voice was smooth, oiled, the sound of a door closing forever. "The Prince has waited three centuries for one to find its way to Dymas. Do you know what he intends, little morsel?"
"I know you're afraid of me."
The steward's smile didn't reach its eyes. "I'm afraid of nothing in this realm. I am afraid of what comes through it." It stepped closer, and Aurora smelled it, the scent of old meat and older sins. "The Veil weakens at solstice. Your kind, the Wardens, you patrol the rift points, keep the barriers sealed. But three days from now, the barrier thins. And something is pushing through, something that has waited since before my master's fall. The Heartstone pulses because it recognises its kin."
Aurora's hand found the Fae blade at her hip. Moonsilver, cold as winter, capable of cutting magical wards. She didn't know if it would work against a Prince of Hel, but she knew she wouldn't go quietly into any feast.
"What does it want?"
The steward laughed, and the sound was wet, obscene. "To taste what your world has become. To consume what the Fae have hidden. To unmake the Veil and let the hunger flow both ways." It extended a hand, fingers too long, nails like yellowed bone. "The Prince offers a bargain, Heartstone-bearer. Come to his court. Eat of his table. Speak with him. And in exchange, he will tell you what the stone truly is, and why it chose you, and what price you will pay for its gifts."
The pendant burned. Aurora felt it now, the pulse matching her heartbeat, the warmth spreading through her chest like wine, like poison, like promise.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you walk back through the Veil, and the stone goes with you, and whatever is pushing against the barrier finds another door. Another bearer. Another way in." The steward's smile widened. "The hunger doesn't care who feeds it, little morsel. Only that it feeds."
Aurora looked up at the throne, at the swollen shape that watched her with eyes like dying stars. She thought of Isolde's riddles, the ones she hadn't solved. She thought of Nyx, slipping through shadows, searching for answers. She thought of the flat above Silas' bar, and Yu-Fei's kitchen, and the careful life she had built.
She thought of Evan, who had taught her that love could be a cage, and that the only way out was through.
"I'll come," she said. "But I eat on my terms. I speak when I choose. And if your Prince tries to make me his, I'll carve his name into his own bones with this." She drew the Fae blade, and it sang in the amber light, moonsilver gleaming , cold and bright and utterly unafraid.
The steward's smile faltered. For just a moment, something like fear crossed its wrong, elongated face.
"Bold," it whispered. "Foolish. But bold." It turned, gesturing to the staircase. "The Prince will see you now, Heartstone-bearer. Pray you don't choke on what he offers."
Aurora climbed, and the pendant burned, and behind her, the gardens of Dymas grew silent, waiting, hungry for what came next.