AI The Heartstone pulsed against Aurora’s skin as she stepped through the split oak.
One boot sank into Richmond’s rain-soaked leaf mould. The other crushed grass that released the scents of pepper and warm honey. She crossed the threshold, and the rain vanished.
Amber light covered rows of vines. They climbed white stone frames and spilled down hills too round, too abundant, their branches bowed beneath fruit the colour of garnets. Beyond them, orchards crowded the horizon. Trees with copper bark carried silver pears; others bore dark globes split by seams of gold. Channels of bright liquid threaded between the fields, running uphill as readily as down.
There was no sun. No cloud either. The warm sky simply glowed.
Aurora drew a breath and tasted roast plum, crushed coriander, fresh bread. Beneath those lay a slick of meat fat and a tang of wet iron.
“Tell me that’s pollution.”
Nyx poured through the opening behind her, a ribbon of black that gathered into a tall humanoid shape. Their violet eyes opened above the vineyard.
“You have smelled London.”
“London never smelled like pudding.”
Isolde crossed last. The grass bent around Aurora’s boots and sprang back beneath Nyx’s feet, but nothing moved under Isolde. Her silver hair hung over her travel-stained cloak, and the red soil took no impression of her steps.
She studied the vineyard with her head tilted, listening to something Aurora could not hear.
“Eat nothing,” Isolde said. “Drink nothing. If a chair offers itself, remain standing.”
“And if the food offers itself?”
“Refuse with better manners than it refuses you.”
Behind them, Richmond remained visible through the split oak: a small green window filled with rain and the black tracery of winter branches. Nyx looked back at it. Their outline thinned at the edges.
“The Veil has closed its eye.”
The green window folded into a line. The line vanished. Aurora’s pendant cooled, its crimson glow sinking beneath the silver chain.
She slipped a hand into her jacket and closed her fingers around Isolde’s dagger. Cold bit her palm through the cloth. The familiar sensation steadied her more than the sight of the weapon would have done.
“Right,” she said. “No sightseeing, then.”
They followed a path of crushed red stone between the vines. Each step released a different smell. Rosemary. Nutmeg. Burnt sugar. Once, disconcertingly, the clean steam of Yu-Fei’s ginger broth. Aurora stopped and looked down. The stones beneath her boots gave no clue as to why they had chosen that memory .
A cluster of grapes hung beside Nyx’s face. Their bodies were translucent, their skins stretched around seeds that contracted and swelled.
Nyx leaned closer.
“These grapes have hearts.”
One of the seeds bumped against the skin.
Aurora caught Nyx’s sleeve before their fingers reached the fruit. The shadow-stuff felt solid under her hand, cool and finely grained, like polished slate.
“Don’t.”
“I was only going to listen.”
“You can listen from over here.”
A distant peal of laughter rolled across the vineyard. Glassware answered it, then the quick chop of knives. Aurora turned towards the sounds. Nothing moved among the vines except leaves lifting to show their silver undersides.
There was no wind.
The path descended. Stone walls emerged from the soil on either side, at first no higher than kerbs, then taller than Aurora. Reliefs covered them: sheaves of wheat, baskets of fish, cups passed between upturned hands. As the walls rose, the carvings changed. The hands grew larger. The cups smaller. Beneath a banquet table, rows of open mouths waited with their tongues extended.
Isolde ran two fingers above the stone without touching it.
“Have you been here?” Aurora asked.
“Not this house.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Nyx gave a whisper that might have been a laugh.
The building had sunk into the hill, or the hill had spent centuries swallowing it. Its doorway stood below the vineyard, framed by columns carved to resemble bundles of reeds. Every reed ended in a spoon. The door itself had rotted away, leaving an arch full of amber threads.
Nyx approached first. Their body lost its edges, becoming a column of smoke. They drifted into the arch.
The threads sang.
Nyx snapped back into solidity. A line of gold light crossed their chest, and shadow leaked from it in black petals before the opening sealed.
“Not a lock,” they whispered. “An appetite.”
Aurora examined the lattice. It covered the arch from floor to keystone, fine enough to resemble cracks in old varnish. Where it touched the stone, tiny runnels had been worn away.
“Can we go round?”
“The hill has better manners than the door,” Isolde said. “It will swallow without singing.”
“So that’s a no.”
Isolde’s lavender gaze settled on Aurora’s jacket.
“A leaf may pass where a hand is bitten.”
Aurora drew the Fae blade. Moonsilver caught the amber light along its leaf-shaped edge. Cold travelled through her glove and found the crescent scar on her left wrist.
“You could have said, ‘Use the knife.’”
“And denied you the pleasure of translation?”
Aurora pressed the tip to one of the threads.
The whole lattice tightened. Somewhere beyond the arch, a hundred chairs scraped across stone.
She sliced downwards.
The ward parted with the shriek of steel drawn across a plate. Amber filaments curled away from the blade, shrivelling into sparks that smelled of caramel. Nyx caught one on their palm. It opened a tiny mouth before going out.
They stared at it.
“Still hungry?” Aurora asked.
“No longer for that.”
Steps led down beyond the arch. The air cooled with each one, and the vineyard’s sweetness gave way to yeast, smoke and the mineral breath of deep cellars. Aurora counted thirty-nine steps. At the bottom, she looked up and saw amber sky above her.
No stairwell. No doorway. Only sky.
Nyx followed her gaze.
“Stop counting.”
“I had already decided that.”
The passage opened into a banqueting hall longer than any building had a right to be. Its columns supported nothing. The same roofless sky stretched overhead, while walls panelled in dark wood rose on either side. Tables ran between them in three rows, their far ends dissolving into golden haze.
Aurora’s first steps scattered white petals from the nearest table. They had not been petals a moment before. She watched a bowl of cherries darken, split and flower, each stone unfolding into a five-pointed blossom. A roast bird turned on its platter to present an uncarved side. Steam drew itself into feathers above a soup tureen, held the shape of a swan, then collapsed when Nyx passed.
Music came from a gallery of empty chairs. A bow moved over the strings of a viol with no hand to guide it. Drumskins dimpled. Somewhere, a piper missed a note and began the phrase again.
The smells changed as Aurora walked.
Her mother’s kitchen filled her nose: boiled ham, parsley, the metallic steam of an old Cardiff saucepan. Then Yu-Fei’s broth returned, rich with ginger and rice wine. Her mouth watered so hard her jaw ached.
A covered dish stood at the next place setting. Its lid lifted by the width of a finger.
Inside, a bread roll cracked its crust. Butter ran into the split.
Nyx stopped.
The edges of their face drew inward. For an instant, Aurora saw the suggestion of human features within the shadow: a narrow nose, a mouth parted in surprise.
“I had forgotten that bread,” they whispered.
The lid rose higher.
Aurora touched the cold flat of the dagger to Nyx’s wrist.
“What was it called?”
Nyx remained still.
“I don’t remember.”
“Good. Don’t let it remind you.”
Their violet eyes lifted from the dish. Aurora walked on, keeping the blade against their wrist until the scent thinned behind them.
“The food is listening,” she said.
“Everything here listens,” Isolde answered. “The food has merely learned to answer.”
A ladle clattered beyond an open service door. Someone swore in French.
The kitchen contained no fire, yet copper pots steamed over black ranges. Their lids danced. Knives rose from chopping boards, divided leeks into green coins and laid themselves down again. Sacks along one wall shifted as their contents breathed.
A broad man in chef’s whites moved between the ranges. His linen cap sagged over one ear, and his moustache had been waxed into points. Aurora could see the bricks through his shoulders, though his hands looked solid enough around the handle of a cleaver.
He brought it down through a joint of meat.
“Customers stay out of my kitchen.”
“We’re not customers,” Aurora said.
His knife paused. He looked at their empty hands, then at the uncovered tables behind them.
“Then you haven’t been seated. Keep it that way.”
Red cord circled both his wrists. It ran down his sleeves, across the floor and into a narrow drain packed with rice and old bones.
Aurora pointed her dagger towards it.
“Your contract?”
“My education.” He turned the joint over. Fat whispered against the board. “I had a restaurant in Lyon. I had a star. I had a solicitor who charged by the hour and read by the sentence.”
“How long have you been here?”
“One banquet.”
“The hall looks older than that.”
“So does the banquet.”
He plunged a ladle into a pot. The surface bulged against it, and he struck the pot until it settled.
Nyx examined the cords around his wrists.
“Belphegor’s table?”
The chef’s moustache drooped.
“The Prince owns the table. The table owns the service. The service owns the rest of us. If you want a diagram, order one.”
A bell sounded in the hall.
Every pot stopped rattling. The knives lay motionless. Far beyond the service door, a chair leg drew across stone with a long, patient scrape.
The chef resumed chopping.
“White tiles,” he said.
Aurora looked down. The kitchen floor was laid in squares of black and white, most of them dusted with flour or scattered with crumbs.
“What about them?”
“You were going to ask for the old garden. Everyone who refuses the first course does.” He nodded towards a low door at the rear. “Take the tiles without crumbs.”
“And the others?”
“They feed the floor.”
Aurora tested the nearest white tile with her boot. Clean. The black one beside it held three sesame seeds. As she watched, one seed sank out of sight.
She stepped onto the white tile.
“Single file,” she said. “And don’t kick anything.”
“An excellent rule for most of existence,” Nyx whispered.
They crossed the kitchen one clean square at a time. Isolde came between them, untouched by the flour that coated the floor. Once, Aurora put her boot too near a black tile. Something beneath it sighed. Nyx caught her elbow and lifted her clear without disturbing a grain.
The low door opened at Isolde’s touch.
Beyond it, water sang.
The old garden lay in a circular chamber open to the amber sky. Glass trees grew from beds of dark earth, their transparent trunks filled with coloured sap. Crimson climbed one. Green descended another. Their branches carried fruit that held weather: snow turning inside a pale apple, lightning crawling through a pear, rain speckling the interior of a plum.
Bees moved among the branches. Their wings were flakes of mica, and gold pollen dusted the air behind them. Where it landed on Aurora’s sleeve, tiny white flowers opened and closed.
Nyx held out a hand. A bee landed on the tip of one finger, explored the shadow and found nothing to pollinate.
“At last,” they whispered, “something here is disappointed in me.”
Aurora brushed the pollen from her sleeve and crouched beside a channel of running water. It flowed uphill between the trees, carrying star anise, blue petals and small silver fish. The fish swam against the current without moving their tails.
One of the glass roots arched out of the soil.
Aurora raised the Fae blade, but the root did not strike. It pressed itself to the ground, uncovering a strip of white tiles beneath the earth.
Isolde looked along the exposed path. Her expression softened into something close to delight .
“A garden that dislikes muddy feet.”
“Finally,” Aurora said, straightening, “a bit of this place I understand.”
Above them, fruit knocked together with the clear music of crystal glasses. She stepped over the root and followed the white tiles between the glass trees, keeping the cold dagger loose in her hand.