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She turned off towards the woods behind her.

“Wait. I don't even know who you are, really. Why should I trust you? How do I know this isn't a trap?”

Marigold looked back, something sad flickering in her young eyes. “You don't. But you followed me in the woods. And you kept quiet about me. So perhaps you already decided to trust me.”

She had a point. And what choice did I have? Go back to August's house and wait for him to trust me or turn me in? Or follow this child into the unknown and maybe get some answers?

“My gran,” I said quickly, before she could disappear. “She left me a necklace. An hourglass pendant. It brought me here, to 1892, and now it's shattered. Can you help me get back? Can these 'others' help me go home?”

Marigold's expression shifted—something almost like pity crossing her features. “I don't know. But they'll know more than I do. They can help you understand what you are. What you can do.”

“What I am?” The words came out sharper than intended. “What does that mean?”

“Come with me and find out.” She held out a small hand, dirt-stained and callused. “But we need to go now. Before someone sees us.”

I looked at her outstretched hand. At the ruins around us. At the city behind me where August would find me gone, where Adeline might already be regretting letting me leave.

Then I took Marigold's hand—small, warm, and gripping tight—and she yanked me into the trees before doubt could catch up.

Within minutes, the city had disappeared behind us, Oxford's familiar sounds replaced by rustling leaves and the occasional chirp of unseen birds. Morning light filtered through the canopy in spectral shafts, painting the mossy ground with shifting patches of gold and shadow.

“How far are we going?” I asked, stepping over a gnarled root that seemed to reach for my ankles.

“Not far.” Marigold moved between the trees with an ease that made me feel clumsy in comparison, her too-large cloak billowing behind her. “We're almost there.”

But “almost there” stretched on. Five minutes became ten, then fifteen. The path—if it could be called that—twisted deeper into woods that grew denser with each step. And the deeper we went, the stranger things became.

The trees towered like cathedral columns, their bark braided with vines that shimmered faintly, laced with light that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. Roots curled above ground like serpents frozen mid-strike, reshaping the path as if deciding where we should place our feet. These woods weren't like the ones in my Oxford. They breathed. They watched.

“Marigold? What is this place?”

She glanced back, a knowing smile touching her lips. “Weavers' wood. One of the last places where magic still runs strong.” Her eyes gleamed in the dappled light. “Can you feel it?”

I could. The weight of it pressed against my skin, warm and alive and humming with possibility. I caught glimpses of glowing threads in the air, fine as spider silk, shimmering gold and silver before vanishing the moment I tried to focus on them.

A warm breeze carried the scent of jasmine and damp pine, and petals drifted from overhead despite it being far too late in the year for flowers to bloom. They caught in my hair, soft as whispers.

“It's beautiful,” I breathed, reaching up to catch a falling petal. It dissolved against my palm like snow, leaving only warmth behind.

“It's dying,” Marigold said quietly, and the joy drained from her voice. “Like all the magic.”

Before I could ask what she meant, before I could process the weight of “dying”, the trees opened into a clearing.

In the center stood a cluster of stones, moss-covered and crowned with pale blossoms that opened as we approached. Marigold rapped her knuckles against the rock, then pressed her palm to the rough surface.

At first, nothing. Only silence

Then the earth shuddered. The stones groaned, grinding against each other as if waking from centuries of sleep. A seam split down the center, widening slowly, reluctantly, until a passage yawned open at our feet. Cold air poured out, smelling of damp stone.

“Oh, of course. Secret door in the middle of the woods. Totally normal.”

I froze, every instinct screaming tomb, trap, grave. But Marigold squared her shoulders and stepped forward, as though the dark mouth of the earth had been waiting for her.

Marigold shot me a look. “Are you coming or not?”

I swallowed my hesitation and stepped inside.

The passage sloped downward into a chamber carved beneath the roots of an enormous tree. Its ceiling was tangled with luminous vines and twisted branches, all aglow with faint bioluminescence. Candles flickered in alcoves carved from stone, their flames unmoving in the still air.