Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQJNDF6A5CHX1CQDGG3VGV

The third deadbolt clicked into place with a finality that usually brought Aurora a sense of peace. Inside the flat on Brick Lane, the air always smelled faintly of cumin from the curry house downstairs and the dusty, vanillic scent of Eva’s ancient scrolls. Ptolemy, a tabby cat with an attitude problem and a penchant for sleeping on open lexicons, stretched his paws out from his perch atop a stack of research notes. Aurora leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door, her fingers lingering on the brass hardware. She was tired. The shift at the Golden Empress had been grueling, her bike skidding through slick London drizzle, her delivery bag reeking of plum sauce and fried seaweed. She just wanted to peel off her damp clothes and disappear into the clutter. Then came the knock. It wasn't the frantic pounding of Eva forgetting her keys, nor the heavy thud of a delivery. It was three rhythmic, metallic taps. The sound of wood hitting wood. Aurora froze. She knew that cadence. It was a rhythmic signature she hadn’t heard in six months—not since a rain-slicked alleyway in Marseille where she’d told a man to go to hell and he’d simply bowed and disappeared into the shadows. She didn't move. She waited for the sound to be a trick of the wind or her overactive imagination. But then it came again. Tap. Tap. Tap. “I can hear your breathing, Rory,” a voice drifted through the door, smooth as silk and twice as dangerous. “It’s uneven. You’re agitated.” The use of her nickname pulled at a string in her chest, one she thought she’d severed. Aurora squeezed her eyes shut, her thumb brushing the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist—a nervous habit she’d never quite kicked. She took a steadying breath, straightened her shoulders, and worked the locks in reverse. Three, two, one. She pulled the door open just enough to frame him. Lucien Moreau looked exactly as he had the night she left him: infuriatingly perfect. His platinum blond hair was slicked back without a single strand out of place, despite the London mist. He wore a tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than her car, and his ivory-handled cane rested against his palm. When he looked at her, his heterochromatic eyes—one a warm, predatory amber and the other a void-like black—swept over her with agonizing slowness. “You look exhausted,” he said. “And you look lost,” Aurora countered, her voice steady despite the hammer-thrum of her heart. “The underworld is a few boroughs over, Lucien. Or did you forget the way?” He didn't flinch at the bite in her tone. Instead, he leaned slightly on his cane, the ivory handle catching the dim light of the hallway. “I find myself in need of a mind that thinks outside the boxes the rest of us are trapped in. And perhaps, I simply found the silence of my own company becoming... tedious.” “Six months, and that’s your opening line?” Aurora stepped back, not to invite him in, but to create distance. The gravity he exerted was too strong. “You don't get to do this. You don't get to show up at Eva’s place and critique the silence.” “Eva is in Camden for the night,” Lucien said, stepping across the threshold before she could protest. He moved with a predator’s grace, closing the door behind him and engaging the locks with a practiced flick of his wrist. He knew the layout of this flat as well as she did. Ptolemy let out a low growl from his stack of books, but Lucien merely glanced at the cat, and the animal immediately began grooming his paw, thoroughly intimidated. “Get out,” Aurora said, though the conviction was leaking out of her. “In a moment.” Lucien set his cane against the wall and began peeling off his leather gloves. “But first, you’re going to tell me why you haven’t slept, and I’m going to tell you why the Avaros ripples are reaching as far as the Thames.” Aurora crossed her arms, her straight black hair falling over her shoulders. “I’m not part of that world anymore. I deliver noodles, Lucien. I live above a bar. I’m a normal human with a normal, boring life.” Lucien walked toward her, stopping just outside the circle of her personal space. The scent of him—expensive tobacco, sandalwood, and something metallic that reminded her of a coming storm—filled her senses. He reached out, his gloved fingers hesitating before he tilted her chin up. “You were never normal, Malphora,” he whispered, using the name he’d given her in the height of their shared madness. “You are the only person who ever looked at the abyss and asked it for a light.” Aurora felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She hated how easily he could undo her. She hated that the sight of his mismatched eyes made her feel more alive than she had in half a year. She jerked her chin away from his touch. “Is that what this is? A recruitment drive? You need a fixer, and you remembered the girl who was stupid enough to fall for a half-demon?” Lucien’s expression shifted, the polished mask of the broker slipping for a fraction of a second. A flash of genuine hurt mirrored in the amber eye. “Is that how you remember us? As a lapse in judgment?” “I remember you leaving me in that hospital in France,” she snapped, her voice cracking. “I remember waking up and finding a bouquet of lilies and a note written in four languages, none of which said ‘stay.’” Lucien took a step closer, erasing the distance. He was taller than her by nearly half a foot, and he used that height now, looming over her until she was backed against the edge of Eva’s overcrowded dining table. Books groaned under her weight. “I left to keep you alive,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly timbre. “My father’s kin don’t take kindly to human distractions. If I had stayed, they would have used you to gut me. I thought... I thought if I created distance, you would find the peace you were looking for when you fled that man in Cardiff.” “That wasn’t your choice to make,” Rory whispered. “No,” he conceded. “It wasn't. It was the coward’s path, cloaked in the guise of nobility. I have spent one hundred and eighty-four days convincing myself I was doing the right thing. Tonight, I stopped believing my own lie.” The honesty in his voice was more dangerous than any blade hidden in his cane. Aurora looked up at him, her bright blue eyes searching his face for a sign of a trick. Lucien Moreau was a creature of deals and shadows; he didn't do vulnerability. Yet, here he was, in a cramped flat above a curry house, looking at her as if she were the only fixed point in a spinning world. Her hand moved of its own accord, her fingers brushing the fine wool of his lapel. “Why now, Luc?” “Because there is a shadow moving through the London markets that doesn't belong to any house I recognize,” he said, but his eyes weren't on the mission. They were on her lips. “And because I missed the way you look at me when you’re about to tell me I’m an idiot.” Aurora let out a jagged, watery laugh. “You are an idiot. A complete and utter bastard.” “I’ve missed you too,” he murmured. He moved then, slow enough for her to retreat, fast enough to catch her if she stayed. He didn't catch her; she met him halfway. The kiss was a collision of six months of resentment and repressed longing. It tasted of rain and desperation. Lucien’s hands came up to frame her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones with a reverence that felt like a prayer. Aurora reached up, her fingers tangling in the platinum blond hair she’d spent so many nights dreaming of, pulling him closer until there was no air left between them. He groaned low in his throat, a sound that was more demon than man, and backed her further against the table. A stack of Eva’s notes slid to the floor, fluttering like wounded birds, but neither of them cared. When he finally pulled back, just an inch, his forehead rested against hers. His breathing was as ragged as hers had been when he’d first arrived. “I shouldn't have come,” he whispered into the space between them. “I’m bringing a war to your doorstep, Rory.” Aurora reached down, grabbing his tie and pulling him back down for another brief, bruising kiss. She felt the cool metal of the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist press against his neck. “The war was already here, Luc,” she said, her voice regaining that sharp, Cardiff-honed edge. “You’re just the one who brought the map. Now, tell me everything, and if you lie to me even once, I’m locking all three deadbolts and you can find your way back to Avaros on your own.” Lucien smiled, a slow, predatory twitch of his lips that reached his mismatched eyes. He reached out and picked up a stray pen from the table, turning it over in his long fingers as he surveyed the chaos of the room. “I wouldn't dream of it,” he said. “But first, do you have any tea? Or perhaps something stronger? It’s going to be a very long night.” Aurora looked at Ptolemy, who was now watching them with judgmental yellow eyes, and then back to the man who had just dismantled her hard-won peace with a few taps of a cane. She sighed, her heart finally settling into a rhythm that felt like home. “Sit down, Lucien,” she said, pointing to a chair buried under a pile of laundry. “Clear a space. We have work to do.”