Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQJHTAYPZSJ9VNXKHD60SE

The three deadbolts on Eva's front door clicked in succession, steel tumblers falling into place with the kind of finality that usually meant safety. Rory had been the one to throw them—Eva was in the shower, singing off-key to Arctic Monkeys, water running so loud that Rory hadn't heard the footsteps on the stairs. Not the postman. Not the curry delivery. The silhouette through the frosted glass was too tall, too still, casting a shadow that seemed to drink the dingy hallway light. The smell of cardamom and cumin from the restaurant below clung to the stairwell, but suddenly the air tasted different. Sharp. Expensive. Dangerous in a way that made the small crescent scar on her left wrist throb with remembered adrenaline. She pulled the door open. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing, his ivory-handled cane tilted against the jamb, his charcoal suit unwrinkled despite the climb up three flights of narrow stairs that always smelled of turmeric and mildew. He looked exactly as he had six weeks ago in the rain outside the British Museum, and nothing like him at all. His left eye—amber, warm, treacherous—fixed on her immediately. His right eye, black as the Avaros realm he half-called home, seemed to absorb the very color from the hallway's bare bulb. His platinum hair was slicked back with the usual precision, not a strand out of place, but there was something frayed at the edges of him, some exhaustion in the set of his shoulders that the tailoring couldn't hide. "Rory," he said. His voice was low, accented with Marseille vowels that always curled too intimately around the hard consonants of her name. She should shut the door. She should call for Eva, who was currently shampooing her hair with that peppermint stuff that stung the eyes, oblivious to the fact that a half-demon fixer had breached the three deadbolts of her sanctuary. Rory should do a lot of things, but her hand betrayed her, gripping the doorframe until her knuckles matched the white of Lucien's cane handle, the scar on her wrist burning like a brand. "You're not holding a vindaloo," she said. Cool-headed. Intelligent. That was her. Not the girl who had fled Cardiff with a suitcase and a crescent-shaped reminder of childhood clumsiness, not the woman who had spent six weeks trying to excise the memory of his mouth on hers from her nervous system. "No," Lucien said. He didn't smile. He rarely did, not the real kind, but the corner of his mouth twitched as if remembering how. "May I come in?" "Eva's flat. Not mine." As if that explained anything. As if the boundary mattered when he was already leaning into her space, smelling of bergamot and something sulfurous, demon-smoke from the Avaros realm. "You can't just—after six weeks, Luc, you don't get to just show up at my best friend's door and—" "I wouldn't have come if it weren't necessary." "Necessary." The word tasted like ash and old heartbreak. She stepped back anyway, because the landing was narrow and because some part of her, the part that had survived Evan and every other thing that had tried to cage her, wanted to see what he would do with the invitation. Wanted to see if he would cross the threshold like he had crossed into her life six months ago—unannounced, inevitable, devastating. He entered, cane tapping once against the worn floorboards. Three deadbolts. She didn't lock them behind him. The flat was exactly as the codex described: cramped, every surface a landslide of occult texts, Eva's research scrolls spilling from the coffee table onto the threadbare rug like parchment waterfalls. Ptolemy, Eva's obese tabby, lifted his head from a stack of grimoires near the radiator, assessed Lucien as either a potential threat or a remarkably warm heat source, and went back to sleep with the dismissive air of a cat who had seen too many supernatural interventions. Lucien navigated the clutter with the precision of a man used to carrying secrets in crowded rooms, but as he turned toward the window that overlooked Brick Lane, his cane caught the edge of a scroll. It unraveled, hissing across the floor, revealing intricate diagrams of ley lines that Eva had been mapping for her thesis. They both bent to retrieve it, hands colliding. Rory jerked back as if burned. Lucien straightened slowly, the scroll in his hand, his heterochromatic eyes unreadable. "You cut your hair," he said, not looking at the parchment but at her shoulder-length black hair, the ends sharp and new. "Last week." She moved to the kitchenette, putting the Formica counter between them, needing the barrier. "You didn't come here to discuss my haircut." "I came because you're in danger." "Always the broker." She touched the crescent scar on her wrist, the childhood bicycle accident, though now it felt like a sigil marking her as claimed territory. "Is this business, then? Another job for the Frenchman? Because the last time we—when you kissed me outside the museum in the rain, when you said my name like it was the only word you knew in English—" "Don't." The word cracked like his cane against marble. His eyes narrowed, amber and black both flashing with that dangerous, inhuman light. "Don't reduce it to logistics. Not when I've spent six weeks convincing myself that staying away was the kindness you deserved. The safety you needed." The air left the room. Rory gripped the counter edge until her palms hurt. Outside, a bus rattled past on Brick Lane, carrying commuters home to dinners and normal fears, to relationships uncomplicated by demon courts and shadow realms. She thought of Evan, of the way cruelty had worn a handsome face in Cardiff, the way he'd controlled her until she ran. Lucien had never been cruel, only distant, only protective in ways that had felt too familiar, too much like bars on a window. "Kindness," she repeated. "Is that what you call vanishing? You said my world and yours didn't mix. You said the Avaros court would use me against you. You said a lot of things, Lucien, but you never asked what I wanted. You decided for me, just like—" She stopped, shaking her head. "Just like Evan?" His voice was soft, deadly soft. He knew about the abuse; she had told him once, drunk on wine and trust. "Is that what you think? That I'm him?" "No." The denial was immediate, visceral. "But you left. And I was alone again. In a city where the only person I know is Eva and the man downstairs who owns a bar full of things that go bump in the night." He turned fully then, leaning on the cane in a way that suggested pain—old injuries from his father's realm, or the weight of the thin blade concealed within the ivory. "What do you want, Aurora?" She hated when he used her full name. It sounded like a binding spell. "I want you to leave." He didn't move. The charcoal suit was impeccable, tailored to his 5'11" frame, but she saw the tension in his shoulders, the way his free hand whitened at his side. "There's a contract out. A demon from Avaros, high-ranking. They know about the delivery job you did for Yu-Fei last month—they know you carried more than dim sum in that insulated bag." Rory blinked. The Golden Empress. The package she'd slipped into the locker at King's Cross, not asking questions because she needed the rent for Silas's flat, because she was tired and it was raining and Yu-Fei paid in cash. "I don't—" "They think you're my human," he said, and the possessive pronoun landed between them like a gauntlet thrown down in challenge. "My claimed mortal. In Avaros, that makes you currency. Collateral. If they take you, Rory, they don't just hurt you. They use you to hurt me. And I—" He stopped, jaw tight, the demon showing through the polished veneer. "I cannot allow that. Not again." Ptolemy jumped down from the books with a heavy thump, winding between Lucien's legs, oblivious to the danger in his words or the ancient blood in his veins. Rory crossed her arms, protecting the scar, protecting her heart. "I'm not yours, Lucien. You made that perfectly clear when you walked away." He closed the distance in three strides, navigating Eva's chaos with supernatural grace, kicking aside a stack of books without looking. He stopped just short of touching her, close enough that she could see the flecks of molten gold in the amber eye, the absolute void in the black one. Close enough that the bergamot scent overwhelmed the curry house smells, the dusty air, everything. "That's the complication, isn't it?" he said softly. "I pushed you away to keep you safe. And in doing so, I left you exactly where they could find you. Unprotected. Alone." His hand lifted, not to her face, but to her wrist. His thumb traced the crescent scar, feather-light, a touch that burned and healed simultaneously. She didn't pull away. She hated herself for not pulling away, for leaning into the touch like a plant toward sun. "You remember," she whispered. "You told me it was a bicycle accident. Cardiff. Age seven. You were crying because you thought you'd ruined your mother's birthday party." His thumb lingered on the pale, healed skin, pressing once over her pulse point. "I remember everything about you, Rory. The way you take your tea. The way you lied to Evan on the phone that day in the café, cool as ice. The way you taste. That's the problem. That's why I stayed away—because wanting you makes me vulnerable, and vulnerability gets people killed in my world." "And now?" "Now I can't." His voice dropped, rougher, the demon showing through in the timbre. "Because if they take you, if they harm one hair—" He stopped, jaw tight, his hand sliding down to twine his fingers with hers, covering the scar completely. "I won't lose you to my own stupidity again. I was wrong. I should have stayed. I should have fought for you instead of running from the feeling." She looked up at him, at the man who spoke four languages and carried a sword in his cane and had walked out of her life with the same precision he used to navigate rooms. She saw the fear there, ancient and human despite the inhuman eyes. She saw the hope, rarer and more fragile. "You should have asked," she said again, but weaker, trembling. "I know." "Six weeks." "I know." "You're an idiot." "Yes." She reached up, not touching his face, but gripping the lapel of his charcoal suit, the expensive wool bunching under her fingers, pulling him down to her level. He came easily, or perhaps he was already leaning in, dropping his cane. It clattered against the counter—ivory on Formica—and his hands found her waist, not gentle, not careful, but desperate, spanning her ribs with a possessiveness that felt nothing like Evan's cage and everything like coming home. He kissed her like she was the only solid thing in a realm of shadows, and she met him with the ferocity of someone who had survived Cardiff, survived the loneliness of the flat above Silas's bar, survived six weeks of missing him. She kissed him back until they were both breathless, until Ptolemy meowed indignantly from the floor, until the three deadbolts on the door seemed suddenly insufficient to keep the world out, and insufficient to keep them in. When they broke apart, his forehead rested against hers, his heterochromatic eyes closed, his breathing ragged. "I'll fix this," he promised. "The contract. The danger. I'll fix it." "You'd better," she whispered, her fingers still tangled in his suit, her scar pressed against his palm. "Because I don't run anymore, Lucien. Not for you. Not from you. But you don't get to leave me again." Outside, Brick Lane glittered with evening lights, the curry house sending up scents of coriander and heat. Inside, surrounded by Eva's books and the weight of things finally said, Rory held onto the half-demon who had finally stopped running, and prepared to fight.