AI The knock came soft, almost polite, the kind that assumed the door would open because the world was built to accommodate it.
Aurora stared at the three deadbolts like they’d betrayed her first. Eva had installed them with grim satisfaction and a lecture about the city swallowing girls whole. Rory had rolled her eyes at the time. Tonight, with Brick Lane’s wet noise pressing in through the cracked window and the curry house’s spices breathing up through the floorboards, the bolts looked like a promise she couldn’t afford to break.
Ptolemy, Eva’s tabby, lifted his head from a mound of photocopied pages and blinked at her, unimpressed.
“Don’t start,” Rory murmured, already moving. Her socked feet found the sliver of clear linoleum between book stacks. She slid the chain free first, then the top bolt, then the middle, then the bottom, each metallic click sounding too loud in the cramped flat.
On the other side of the door, she expected Eva—hair in a messy knot, arms full of new books, talking before the door even opened. Or a neighbor with a misdelivered parcel. Or, if the city wanted to be cruel, someone from her past with the wrong name.
She opened the door anyway.
Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hall as if he’d been poured there and allowed to set. Tailored charcoal suit, crisp lines, slicked-back platinum hair catching the dim stairwell light. One eye amber, the other black, both fixed on her with that unnervingly calm attention that had always made her feel pinned and seen at once.
His ivory-handled cane rested lightly in his gloved hand. His posture suggested ease, but his breathing didn’t. There was a tightness at the corners of his mouth, a fraction of pallor beneath his perfect grooming, and something darker at his left side—a wet smear on his suit jacket that the hall’s weak bulb couldn’t quite disguise.
Rory’s fingers tightened on the door edge until the wood bit her skin.
For a moment, her body forgot the last six months and remembered a different corridor, a different door, his hand braced above her head, his voice in her ear speaking her name like it belonged to him.
Then the memory sharpened into what came after: silence. Disappearance. A message that never arrived. Questions left to rot in her throat.
“You’ve got a nerve,” she said, because if she didn’t speak first she might do something unforgivably stupid, like step aside and let him in as if he’d never left.
Lucien’s gaze dropped briefly, not quite apologetic, not quite anything she could grab and shake. “Rory.”
He said it gently . Of course he did. Everything about him was designed to slide under armor.
“You don’t get to call me that.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “Not after—”
“After I vanished,” he finished, as if he’d been practicing the sentence. “Yes.”
Ptolemy chose that moment to stroll into the hallway between Rory’s ankles, tail high, as if he were the host and Lucien the late guest. The cat sniffed Lucien’s polished shoe, then sneezed and recoiled like he’d encountered a smell only cats could interpret. His ears went sideways.
Lucien’s mouth twitched. “I see I’m still popular.”
Rory didn’t smile. Her eyes kept snagging on that dark stain on his side. Blood. Real, mundane blood, not ink or shadow or some supernatural glamour. She hated that she noticed. Hated that the part of her that had cared once lunged forward, feral and immediate.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Lucien’s gloved hand tightened on the cane. “A place to sit for five minutes. And a glass of water, if you have it.”
“Try the curry house downstairs,” Rory said, and the lie tasted bitter. The curry house would call the police, or worse, ask questions. And Lucien didn’t look like a man who could afford questions tonight.
His shoulders rose with a controlled breath. “Someone followed me.”
Rory’s stomach sank , the way it did when a delivery address changed mid-ride and she knew the night had shifted into something else. “Someone,” she echo ed, refusing to be the first to ask for names.
Lucien’s mismatched eyes held hers. “Not human.”
That should have made her shut the door. That would have been sensible. That would have been what her mother would call having her head screwed on. But her flat above Silas’ bar had taught her something ugly and useful: sensible didn’t keep you alive in London’s underbelly. Sensible just meant you died surprised.
She glanced down the stairwell. The building smelled of damp plaster and cumin and old cigarettes. She heard the distant rush of traffic and a burst of laughter from below. Nothing else. No footsteps . No whispers. No scrape of claws.
“What did you do?” she asked, because there was always a cost with Lucien.
His jaw flexed. “My job.”
“Right,” Rory said, the word sharp enough to cut. “Information. Fixing. Making people’s problems disappear. Including me, apparently.”
Something flared behind his amber eye—anger, regret, or something he’d learned to keep in a pocket. “I didn’t disappear you.”
“You disappeared on me,” she shot back, and felt the old pain finally crack its shell. “One day you’re in my kitchen drinking tea like you belong there, and the next you’re gone. No note. No explanation. Eva thought you’d killed me or—” She stopped, breathing hard, because the hallway suddenly felt too narrow for the weight of what she hadn’t said.
Lucien’s gaze flicked over her face like he was memorizing the changes. Her straight black hair was shoved behind her ears, her bright blue eyes too tired, the crescent scar on her left wrist pale against the sleeve of her jumper. She’d been the girl he’d leaned close to and said, You’re cleverer than you pretend to be.
“You shouldn’t have been in my kitchen at all,” Rory added, quieter, and that was the closest she could get to admitting the truth: that she’d wanted him there. That she’d liked how he filled spaces, how he made the world feel sharpened and inevitable.
Lucien shifted his weight . The movement pulled his jacket, and the stain bloomed. He hissed, barely audible.
Rory’s body moved before her pride could vote. She caught the door with her foot so it didn’t swing, then reached out and took his forearm just above the glove. He was warm—too warm—and tense as wire.
“Don’t touch me if you’re going to slam the door after,” he murmured.
“I’m touching you because you’re bleeding on Eva’s building,” Rory snapped, hauling him forward. “And if you drip on her notes, she’ll actually kill you.”
That earned her a real, brief smile. It made her chest ache in a way she hated.
She pulled him into the flat and kicked the door shut behind him. The bolts went back in, one by one, her hands shaking just enough to make the metal click twice. Lucien stood in the tiny entryway, taking in the chaos of books and scrolls as if it were a crime scene.
“It’s worse than I imagined,” he said.
“Eva likes to live in a paper avalanche,” Rory replied, and then, because she couldn’t stop herself, “Sit.”
He angled his cane, but his hand trembled , the first crack in his composure she’d ever seen. It scared her more than the blood.
Rory cleared a space on a chair by sweeping a stack of notebooks onto the floor. Ptolemy darted away, offended by the disruption. Lucien lowered himself with careful control, but when he settled, his breath hitched.
“Let me see,” Rory said.
“No.”
She stared at him. “You turn up at my best friend’s flat unannounced, half-dead, and you’re saying no like you still get to make rules.”
His black eye held her like a weight . “If you look, you’ll be involved.”
“I’m already involved.” She crouched and reached for his suit jacket.
He caught her wrist—not hard, but firm enough to freeze her. His gloved fingers circled the crescent scar on her left wrist, and the contact sent a stupid jolt through her, hot and immediate. He looked down at the scar as if he’d known it was there all along.
“You never told me about this,” he said softly .
Rory’s throat tightened. “You never asked.”
His thumb moved once, a small stroke over the old mark, and it felt intimate in a way that had nothing to do with skin. She hated her body for responding. She hated herself for remembering the way he used to touch her like he was learning her.
She yanked her hand back. “Take your jacket off.”
Lucien watched her for a beat, then, with a resigned exhale, shrugged out of it. Underneath, his shirt was soaked at the side, clinging to his ribs. The wound looked like a long slash, jagged at the edges, as if something had torn rather than cut.
Rory swallowed bile. “What did that?”
Lucien’s gaze flicked toward the window, though the curtains were drawn . “Avaros steel.”
The words sat in the air like cold smoke. Rory’s mind supplied what Eva’s notes had said: Avaros. Demon realm. Blood bargains. Things that didn’t heal right.
“You’re half—” Rory began, then stopped. She already knew what he was. She’d always known, even before he’d told her, because human men didn’t have eyes like that. Human men didn’t walk into a room and make it feel like the temperature had shifted.
Lucien’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
Rory stood abruptly and crossed to the kitchenette, which was barely a counter wedged between shelves of binders. She yanked open cupboards until she found Eva’s first aid kit. Her hands were clumsy. Anger made them clumsy.
She filled a glass with water anyway and shoved it toward him. “Drink.”
He took it, his fingers brushing hers. Barely a touch. It landed like a spark.
He drank in controlled sips, and Rory forced herself to focus on the mundane: the sound of swallowing, the wet glint on his lower lip, the way his throat moved. She looked away before her mind could turn it into something else.
When she turned back, he was watching her with that same unnerving steadiness.
“What?” she demanded.
“I thought you’d slam the door,” Lucien said.
“I considered it.”
“And yet.”
Rory tore open an antiseptic wipe with her teeth. “And yet I’m not a monster.”
Lucien’s mouth curved, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You have every right to be.”
That stopped her. She held the wipe suspended, staring at him.
“I don’t want your permission,” Rory said slowly . “Or your pity. I want to know why.”
Lucien’s gaze dropped to his injured side, as if the wound were easier to face than her. “Because staying near you was dangerous.”
“That’s your excuse?” Rory’s laugh came out thin. “You didn’t even let me decide. You just—what, you vanished to protect me? How noble.”
His amber eye flashed. “Yes.”
The single word hit her harder than any elaborate apology could have. It wasn’t because it sounded heroic. It was because he meant it, and the certainty in his voice made her feel suddenly small, like he’d been moving pieces on a board and she was one of them.
“You don’t get to decide what I can handle,” Rory said, voice trembling now. “I left an abusive ex, Lucien. I moved to London with a backpack and a phone number. I deliver food for a restaurant that probably launders money and I live above a bar that attracts things that aren’t human. I can handle danger.”
Lucien leaned forward, his face sharpening, and for a moment Rory saw something beneath the polished surface—a feral edge, a hunger, a darkness that was not metaphorical. His black eye seemed to drink the room.
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said, low. “Not because of me.”
Rory’s chest rose and fell too fast. She pressed the wipe to his wound before she could think better of it.
He didn’t flinch at the antiseptic. He flinched at her touch.
Rory kept her hand steady anyway. The wound was warm, too warm, the skin around it faintly ridged as if something in him resisted healing. She dabbed carefully , jaw clenched , aware of how close she was—close enough to smell him beneath the blood and expensive soap. Something like smoke and spice. Something she’d thought she’d forgotten.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, hating herself for the softness that leaked through.
Lucien’s gaze fixed on her face. “Yes.”
It wasn’t the wound he meant. She knew it, because she felt the echo of it in her own ribs.
Rory tied a bandage around his torso, her fingers working quickly , efficiently. She was good at practical things. Deliveries. Routes. Locks. Bandages. She could patch holes. She couldn’t patch whatever they’d done to each other.
When she finished, she sat back on her heels, suddenly exhausted.
Lucien’s gloved hand lifted, hesitated, then lowered again to rest on his knee. He looked like a man fighting the urge to reach for something he didn’t deserve.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Rory’s throat tightened until the words had to force their way out. “For leaving?”
“For not telling you goodbye.” His voice was quiet. “For letting you think you were nothing more than a convenient connection.”
Rory’s eyes burned, and she hated that too. She blinked hard. “You made me feel —” She stopped, because admitting it would give him too much. Would give him her throat again.
Lucien’s gaze softened, and that softness was dangerous. “I know.”
Rory pushed to her feet, needing distance. She went to the window and tugged the curtain back a fraction. Brick Lane’s wet street glimmered below, neon and puddles and people hurrying under umbrellas, unaware of half-demons bleeding in upstairs flats.
“You said someone followed you,” she said, forcing her voice back into its usual cool channel. “Are they here?”
Lucien stood, slower now, but steadier. “Not yet.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I didn’t come because I wanted to reopen wounds,” he said. “I came because I had nowhere else I could go without putting more people at risk.”
Rory turned to face him. “So I’m the safest option?”
His eyes held hers, steady as a vow. “You’re the one person I trusted to slam the door in my face if you had to.”
Rory’s breath caught. In the cramped flat, with Eva’s notes stacked like fortifications and Ptolemy glaring from atop a pile of scrolls, Lucien looked less like a myth and more like a man who’d finally run out of places to hide.
“What do you need?” Rory asked, and the question hurt because it was the beginning of letting him back in.
Lucien hesitated. Then he reached up and, with deliberate care, peeled off his glove.
Rory’s eyes dropped to his bare hand. There were faint, intricate marks along his knuckles, like old burns or tattoos that had healed wrong. His fingers flexed once, as if testing whether he still owned them.
“I need,” he said, and his voice roughened, “to stay here tonight.”
Rory’s heart thudded, loud in her ears. The flat was one bedroom. One couch. One narrow corridor of space between them. The forced closeness of it hit her all at once, intimate and inevitable, and her body betrayed her with a pulse of heat.
“And if I say no?” Rory asked, even though she already knew she wouldn’t.
Lucien’s gaze dropped to her mouth, just for a beat, then lifted again to her eyes. “Then I’ll leave.”
He meant it. That was the maddening thing. He could be manipulative, yes, and secretive, and built of shadows and charm—but he wasn’t begging . He was asking . Giving her a choice this time.
Rory swallowed. She crossed the room and reached for the deadbolts again, not to open them but to check them, to ground herself in metal and mechanism. All three were locked.
When she turned back, Lucien was still there, waiting with a patience that felt like penance.
“You sleep on the couch,” Rory said. “No wandering. No mysterious phone calls. No—” She gestured vaguely, because she didn’t have a word for demon trouble. “Whatever this is.”
Lucien inclined his head. “As you wish.”
Rory scoffed, because of course he’d choose the most infuriating words. “And in the morning,” she added, “you tell me everything.”
His amber eye gleamed. “Everything?”
Rory held his gaze, refusing to look away. “Start with why you left. Then tell me who’s hunting you. Then tell me why you came here instead of disappearing again.”
Lucien’s expression shifted, something unguarded slipping through. “Because I didn’t want my last sight of you to be a closed door.”
The words landed softly , almost nothing, and yet Rory felt them like a hand at the back of her neck.
She should have answered with anger. She should have reminded him of all the nights she’d replayed his last smile until it curdled. Instead she found herself standing too close, close enough to see the faint silver at his lashes, the way his black eye seemed to pull at the light.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Lucien’s bare hand lifted slowly , careful, as if approaching a wild animal. He didn’t touch her face. He didn’t presume. He only stopped with his fingers hovering near her wrist, near the scar.
“I’m here,” he said.
Rory’s breath shook. She hated the tremor. She hated how much she wanted to believe him.
Outside, somewhere in the building, a door slammed. Footsteps on the stairs, then silence.
Lucien’s head turned slightly , listening with a focus that was not human.
Rory felt her skin prickle. She didn’t ask what he heard. She didn’t want to know.
She reached out before she could stop herself and took his bare hand, not tenderly , not yet, but firmly enough to make it real.
“If you lie to me again,” she said, voice low, “I will bolt this door and you will never see me.”
Lucien’s fingers closed around hers, warm and steady. His gaze didn’t waver. “Then I won’t lie.”
Rory nodded once, as if sealing a contract she hadn’t meant to sign. She released him and stepped back, forcing space between them before she did something reckless like lean in, like let her mouth find his and answer months of silence with something she couldn’t take back.
Ptolemy chose that moment to leap onto the couch and circle, tail flicking, staking a claim. Lucien watched the cat, then looked at Rory.
“Your friend’s guardian,” he murmured.
“Her tyrant,” Rory corrected, but her voice softened despite herself.
Lucien’s gaze lingered on her, the quiet between them filled with old heat and fresh hurt and the undeniable fact of his presence in Eva’s messy little sanctuary .
Rory turned away first, heading for the kitchenette to wash the blood from her hands. The water ran cold over her fingers, and she stared at the red swirling down the drain, trying to convince herself it was just a wound, just a night, just a temporary problem.
Behind her, she heard the soft tap of Lucien’s cane as he moved toward the couch, and then his voice, gentler than she wanted it to be.
“Rory,” he said.
She kept her hands under the water. “What.”
A pause, as if he were choosing words carefully because he knew how easily she could break again.
“Thank you,” Lucien said.
Rory shut off the tap and stood still, palms wet, shoulders tight.
She didn’t answer. Not because she didn’t feel it—she did, painfully—but because gratitude was a door too, and she’d already opened one tonight. She wasn’t sure she could survive opening another.
Still, when she finally turned, she found him watching her the way he always had: like she was worth the risk.
And that, more than the blood, more than the knock, was what made her heart feel dangerous in her chest.