AI The shimmering distortion of the Veil sealed behind Rory with a wet snap, severing the damp chill of Richmond Park.
Heat filled her lungs. Air thick as syrup coated her tongue with notes of burnt sugar, roasted marrow, and overripe figs bursting on hot stone. Beneath the collar of her jacket, the Heartstone Pendant throbbed against her sternum. The thumbnail-sized crimson gem radiated a sharp warmth through its silver chain, an inner ember answering the rift at their backs before subsiding to a steady, muted glow as Rory took three steps forward.
She swept straight, shoulder-length black hair off her damp neck and tipped her chin up.
An expanse of warm amber sky stretched overhead, unbroken by clouds or sun. Golden light poured from every direction at once, bathing terraced hills that rolled outward into infinity. Vineyards wrapped the slopes in emerald ribbons. Beyond the hills, orchards of copper-barked trees gave way to manicured gardens so vast her bright blue eyes lost their borders in a haze of saffron mist.
Nyx solidified beside a twisted grapevine, drawing up to their full six-foot-two height. Without a directional sun, their humanoid silhouette drank in the ambient gold, edges fraying into tendrils of living smoke. Violet eyes gleamed within the dark void of their face. When they spoke, the sound brushed Rory's ears like a whisper carried on an autumn wind.
"No sun. Darkness hides inside the roots here. Everything on the surface exists to be seen, and eaten."
Isolde glided past them both. Silver hair spilled down to her waist, catching the honeyed radiance until each strand shone like spun glass. Rory's scuffed boots sank half an inch into the pitch-black loam, leaving deep treads, while the moss beneath Isolde's bare feet remained upright and untouched. The Half-Fae paused at the edge of the terrace, pale lavender eyes scanning the horizon.
"A gilded cage needs no iron bars when the prisoner starves for the bait."
Rory rubbed the small crescent scar on her left wrist, studying the rows of vines flanking their path. Crushed mother-of-pearl paved the walkway, crunching beneath her heels like crystallized sugar.
"Keep your hands to yourselves, then. We came to cross the border, not sample the menu."
They descended the pearl path into the thick of the vineyard. Up close, the flora defied mortal botany. Stalks thick as a man's thigh coiled around trellises carved from veined alabaster. Sap pulsed beneath the bark in visible, rhythmic waves, pumping upward into clusters of grapes the size of goose eggs. Rory leaned within a foot of a hanging bunch, squinting through the taut violet skin of the fruit. Inside each orb, topaz liquid swirled around a single seed shaped like a miniature, ticking gear.
A drop of nectar wept from the bottom of the cluster. It struck a broad leaf below with a hiss, releasing a plume of spiced vapor.
A sharp breath pulled the vapor straight down Rory's throat. Moisture pooled under her tongue. Her stomach knotted with a violent, hollow cramp, starved raw despite the meal she had eaten in London an hour ago. Her right hand twitched, fingers curling toward the plump cluster. The skin of the fruit shone, promising warmth and an end to every ache in her bones.
She slapped her palm onto the hilt at her belt.
Even through leather, the Fae-Forged Blade bit into her skin with winter frost. Rory drew the slender, leaf-shaped dagger an inch from its scabbard. Moonsilver caught the ochre light, refusing to warm. Perpetual chill raced up her fingers and shocked her mind clear. She shoved the blade home, jaw tight, and stepped back onto the pearl gravel.
"The air is drugged. Even the weeds pull at your gut."
Nyx melted from solid form into a flat ribbon of shadow, skimming over the mother-of-pearl before rising between two towering stone urns twenty paces ahead.
"Not poison. Desire, distilled into pollen. Mortals breathe this for an hour and chew through their own tongues when the platters run dry."
Isolde drifted beside the stone urns, tilting her head toward a low aqueduct running parallel to the path.
"Water quenches thirst. In Dymas, every stream teaches the throat a deeper drought."
Rory peered into the carved channel as she caught up. No water ran over the smooth basalt bed. Instead, a thick claret current surged downhill, frothing rose-pink against the curves and saturating the air with the sharp bouquet of fermented cherries, cloves, and warm blood-orange peel. Small, six-legged crabs with shells of clear rock candy clung to the stone walls, snapping pincers at frothy bubbles as the current rushed toward the valley floor.
They followed the aqueduct through an archway of braided brass vines into an ancient orchard. Here, the scale of the landscape shifted from cultivated rows to wild, towering opulence.
Trees soared sixty feet overhead, their trunks twisted like pulled taffy in shades of bronze and mahogany. No leaves grew on the upper boughs. Thousands of bell-shaped blossoms hung upside down, their petals thick and waxy as clotted cream. As a warm gust rolled down from the terraced hills, the orchard came alive with sound. Glass-skinned pomegranates knocked against one another on lower branches, chiming in resonant minor chords. Beneath the chimes thrummed a deeper vibration rising through the soles of Rory's boots—the distant, percussive roar of ten thousand cleavers striking butcher blocks in unison.
Rory slowed her pace, threading between roots that arched above the black soil like the ribs of sunken ships. Bulbous truffles split open at the crown nestled in the dirt, glowing with chartreuse spores that drifted upward like embers.
"Listen to that rhythm."
She tilted her ear toward the valley. Fast, bright violin strings wove beneath the chimes and the distant chopping, punctuated by the roar of open furnaces.
Nyx shifted half-solid beside a bronze trunk, violet eyes narrowing at a gap in the orchard canopy.
"Look below the ridge."
Rory stepped out onto a natural balcony of white marble jutting from the hillside. Isolde joined her on the left, weightless on the stone.
The orchard dropped away into a sprawling basin carved into concentric amphitheaters of pale granite and gleaming copper. Gardens filled the outer rings—acres of violet cabbages the size of carriage wheels, ponds shimmering with golden oil where scaled eels leaped through hoops of tame fire, and glass conservatories steaming under the amber sky.
Movement drew Rory's gaze to a terraced grove a hundred yards below their perch.
Two dozen figures in pristine white double-breasted coats worked among trees bearing fruit that burned like miniature lanterns. Even from the ridge, Rory made out the flash of long curved knives. A man at the front sliced a glowing melon from its stem. The severed vine whipped back, spraying luminescent juice across his sleeves. He did not flinch or wipe his face. He tucked the blazing fruit into a wicker pannier and sprinted toward towering brass doors built into the canyon wall, where plumes of cardamom-scented smoke billowed from colossal chimneys.
A bronze bell mounted above the brass doors swung once.
The toll rolled across the basin, heavy enough to rattle the loose gravel at Rory's feet. Down in the grove, every white-coated figure froze, then doubled their pace, scrambling over terraced walls with manic urgency, baskets clutched to their chests.
"Earthborn."
Nyx's wind-whisper voice carried a cold edge as shadow tendrils coiled around their wrists.
"I taste the mortal salt under all that saffron and rendered fat. Helbound souls, contracted to the kitchens."
Isolde folded slim hands before her waist, silver hair lifting in the spiced updraft rising from the canyon.
"They signed away their breath for mastery of the blade and the pan. Now they harvest fruit that blisters the skin, racing a clock with no hands, serving Prince Belphegor's endless table."
Rory watched a woman in a stained apron stumble on the stone steps below, catching herself on bleeding knees to shield a basket of crystalline fungi before hurrying through the brass doors. Rory rested her thumb against the cold moonsilver hilt at her hip. Her stomach no longer growled; the sweet, rich air coated the back of her throat like warm tallow.
"There's a path winding down the east wall, away from the kitchens. Move."
She turned from the marble railing, descending a narrow stair cut into rugged obsidian rock. As they rounded a bend screened by towering stalks of ruby-red sugarcane, the path widened into a secluded circular courtyard.
Rory halted, throwing an arm out. Nyx dissolved into the shade of the cane stalks, while Isolde glided to a stop beside a fountain spouting thick golden honey.
A banquet table forty feet long occupied the center of the courtyard, draped in damask linen unmarked by a single stain. No diners sat in the gilded chairs. No servants stood watch. Platters of hammered electrum and porcelain towered end to end, groaning under a feast prepared minutes ago. Whole peacocks roasted in their iridescent plumage rested beside pyramids of dark plums, bowls of pearls fizzing in spiced wine, and spun-sugar castles rotating on clockwork pedestals. Steam curled upward from crusty loaves split down the middle, oozing butter flecked with gold leaf.
Rory stepped onto the checkered flagstones, keeping five paces clear of the linen. Bright blue eyes darted from the untouched goblets to a stone archway on the far side of the courtyard, where dense foliage swallowed the continuation of the trail.
"No guards. No guests. Just hot bread sitting out in the wild."
Isolde skirted the honey fountain, keeping her gaze fixed on the dark archway ahead rather than the steaming platters.
"A snare needs no huntsman beside it once the spring is set."
Nyx reformed at the foot of the table, leaning their shadowy visage over a porcelain tureen filled with shimmering violet broth. No reflection met them in the liquid.
"Wards woven into the salt. Take one sip, sit in one chair, and the linen binds you to the wood until bone shows through your wrists."
Rory gave the banquet a wide berth, pressing close to the rustling sugarcane. Each stalk hummed a low, resonant note where her jacket brushed the red rind. At her chest, the Heartstone Pendant rested cool and quiet against her skin, the portal far behind them now.
"Single file past the fountain. Watch the flagstones."
She drew the moonsilver dagger into her palm, letting its chill bite into her calluses as she led the way beneath the stone archway. Beyond the threshold, giant vanilla orchids arched over a sunken stair, their pale, fleshy petals twitching toward the warmth of her bare skin as she stepped between them.