Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQFQAXT2X75CSY9D9P879V

The knock came at half past midnight, three sharp raps that cut through the ambient hum of Brick Lane traffic. Eva's cat Ptolemy, sprawled across a stack of research notes, lifted his head with mild indignation. Rory was in the kitchen making tea—proper tea, not the herbal muck Eva insisted would "cleanse her chakras"—when she heard it. She froze, kettle suspended over a mug. Nobody visited Eva's flat at this hour. Nobody visited Eva's flat, full stop. Most people didn't know it existed. She set the kettle down and moved through the cramped living room, careful not to disturb the precarious towers of books and scrolls that seemed to breed when no one was looking. Through the peephole, she saw nothing but the grainy fisheye distortion of the landing. "Who is it?" she called through the door. Silence. Then, in that lazy French accent that still lived somewhere in the back of her nervous system: "Surely you're not going to make me stand in this corridor like some desperate suitor, chérie." Rory's hand stilled on the first deadbolt. Her chest did something complicated—a skip, a sink, a twist all at once. She hadn't heard that voice in eight months. Eight months, two weeks, and four days. Not that she was counting. "Go away, Lucien." "I'm afraid I can't do that." She closed her eyes. Behind her, she could feel Ptolemy's judgmental stare. "It's past midnight. Whatever this is, it can wait until morning." "It cannot." A pause. When he spoke again, his tone had shifted—the casual urbanity peeled away to something underneath, something that sounded almost like it cost him. "I would not have come if it could wait. Please." That word nearly undid her. Lucien Moreau didn't say please. Lucien Moreau didn't come to flats on Brick Lane in the dead of night. Lucien Moreau existed in carefully curated spaces—exclusive clubs in Mayfair, underground establishments in Shoreditch, anywhere that allowed him to maintain the immaculate distance he cultivated like a second skin. Rory's fingers moved to the second deadbolt before she could stop them. She opened the door six inches, the chain still engaged. Lucien stood in the yellow landing light, and the sight of him hit her like a physical thing. He looked thinner, maybe. Tired. His platinum blond hair was mussed—actually mussed, which suggested either significant trouble or a significant disregard for his appearance, neither of which boded well. He was leaning on the ivory-handled cane, which he didn't always do. That was new. Or rather, it was old—he'd injured his left leg years ago, before they met—but he normally hid it with the kind of practiced elegance that made people forget he wasn't entirely steady. Right now, he wasn't bothering with the pretense. His heterochromatic eyes—amber and black, the mixed heritage of his demonic father and human mother written across his face—focused on her with such intensity she felt it like a touch. "Don't," she said quietly. "Don't what?" "Whatever you're about to do. Don't." A ghost of a smile crossed his mouth. "I haven't done anything yet." "You're here. That's the thing you do. You show up, you make it impossible to think straight, and then you disappear again. I'm not..." She stopped herself. Took a breath. The scar on her left wrist—old, crescent-shaped, small—itched. It always did when she was anxious. "I'm not doing this again." "You don't know what this is yet." "I know exactly what it is." She moved to close the door. "Good night, Lucien." His hand went up—not grabbing, just a gesture of pause. "Someone is looking for you. Someone dangerous. I came to warn you." Rory stopped. She didn't open the door wider, but she didn't close it either. "How dangerous?" "The kind of dangerous that requires more than a flat with three deadbolts and a questionable cat." Behind her, Ptolemy meowed as if personally offended. "How did you know where I was?" "I know where you always are." His voice was soft. There was no apology in it, but there was something—acknowledgment, perhaps. Regret. "Eva's flat. Work. Silas' bar. Your mother's birthday dinner in Cardiff last month. I know all of it, Rory. I've always known." She should have felt violated. Instead, she felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the fact that she still couldn't look at him without remembering the way his skin felt under her hands, the way he'd murmured her name—not Rory, but Laila, the way he called her when they were alone—the way she'd tried to make space in her life for someone shaped like him and found only sharp edges everywhere she tried to fit him. "I don't want this," she said. "I know." "I've moved on." "Have you?" He tilted his head slightly. "Tell me honestly. Have you?" Rory reached up and undid the chain. She opened the door fully, then immediately turned away before she could change her mind, walking back into the flat where Ptolemy was already threading between her ankles in search of sympathy. She heard the door close behind her, heard the soft click of deadbolts being re-engaged. Lucien moved through the cramped space with the careful grace he always maintained, despite the cane, and set it against the arm of the worn sofa. "Sit," she said, not looking at him. "Tell me who's looking for me and why." Instead of sitting, he moved to the kitchen where her tea had gone cold. He picked up the mug, smelled it, and set it back down with the faintest expression of distaste. "His name is Valentyn Marchenko," Lucien said. "Ukrainian. Operates in the shadow markets of Eastern Europe, but his reach extends into London now. He collects people—talented people, people who see things others don't. Six months ago, he acquired a file on you." "A file on me?" Rory turned to face him fully now. "Why would he have a file on me?" "Because there are few humans in this city who've demonstrated an ability to navigate supernatural complications without training, without heritage, and without losing their minds. You're useful. More than useful." His black eye reflected the kitchen light like an animal's. "Invaluable." "And you're telling me this why? Why not contact me through proper channels, through—" She stopped. Understanding bloomed, slow and terrible. "You tried. Before coming here." His jaw tightened. "Four times. Two phone calls—your number's no longer in service. Two messages through Eva. Neither were passed along." Eva. Of course Eva hadn't passed them along. Eva, who'd watched Rory piece herself back together after their last terrible conversation. Eva, who'd held her through the nights when she couldn't stop checking her phone for messages that weren't coming. "I told her to keep you away," Rory said quietly. "Yes. I know." He moved closer, not close enough to touch, but close enough that she could smell him—expensive cologne, something woody and sophisticated that didn't belong in a flat above a curry house. Close enough that she felt the familiar gravity of him, the way he'd always pulled at her like he was something celestial and she was just matter caught in orbit. "I'm not here because Eva failed. I'm here because waiting six months for you to change your mind stopped being a viable strategy when Marchenko's people started asking questions at the restaurant, at the bar." "At—Lucien, you have to leave. If they're watching me—" "They're not yet. But they will be. And they won't care that I ended things, or that I was the reason you left my flat in tears that night, or that I've spent every day since trying to keep my distance like you asked." His voice cracked slightly on that last part, which shocked her into silence. Lucien Moreau's voice didn't crack. It was another carefully maintained facade. "They'll use you because they think you matter to me. And if they discover that I've spent eight months maintaining a protective distance while simultaneously being unable to let you go, they'll see you as a liability worth removing." "Then it sounds like you shouldn't be here." "No," he agreed. His amber eye met hers, and she saw in it the whole complicated history between them—the first night in his Mayfair apartment, the way she'd pretended not to care that he was half-demon and half-broken in ways she still didn't fully understand; the fight about her future, about whether she could have one that included him; the way she'd tried to be the person he needed and discovered she was losing herself in the attempt. "It sounds like I shouldn't be here at all. And yet." "And yet," she repeated softly. "And yet," he confirmed. Ptolemy meowed and jumped onto the armchair, entirely unimpressed with the weight of the moment. Rory found she needed something to do with her hands, so she moved past Lucien back toward the kitchen, where she began making fresh tea with the practiced rhythm of someone performing a familiar ritual. She measured out loose leaf into the pot with exaggerated care. "You can stay," she heard herself say. "Until morning. And then you're going to tell me everything about Marchenko, everything about what's coming, and everything about why now instead of any of the thousand other moments you could have chosen." Behind her, she could feel his surprise like a shift in air pressure. "And Lucien?" She poured hot water into the pot, steam rising in delicate spirals. "Don't think this means anything has changed. Don't think this fixes things." "I wouldn't dream of it," he said quietly. But when she finally turned to look at him, she caught him looking at her like it was the first time all over again—like she was something rare, something he might lose if he blinked. Like his entire, careful, meticulously controlled world hinged on the space between them. She set down the teapot with more force than necessary. "Don't look at me like that." "Like what?" "Like I matter to you." "That," he said softly, "is the one thing I cannot control."