AI The third deadbolt clicked into place with a definitive, metallic thud, and for a fleeting second, Rory thought she might finally be alone with her thoughts. The air in Eva’s flat was heavy with the scent of turmeric and cumin rising from the curry house below, a thick olfactory blanket that usually grounded her. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door, her fingers still trembling slightly around the key. The delivery shift at the Golden Empress had been brutal—sixteen miles on the bike through a biting London drizzle—and all she wanted was to shed her damp clothes and disappear into the stacks of research notes that littered the floor.
Ptolemy, Eva’s temperamental tabby, wound himself around Rory’s ankles, a silent demand for dinner.
"I know, I know," Rory whispered, her voice raspy from the cold. "Empty belly, cold flat. Life is hard, Ptolemy."
Then came the knock.
It wasn't the frantic pounding of Eva forgetting her keys, nor the rhythmic rap of the postman. It was a measured, deliberate sound—three strikes of something hard against the wood. Ivory on oak.
Rory froze. Her heart, which had been slowing its frantic pace, kicked against her ribs. She knew that rhythm . She hadn’t heard it in six months, not since the night in Marseille when the world had smelled of ozone and betrayal, but the memory of it lived in the marrow of her bones. She didn’t move. She barely breathed.
"I can hear your pulse through the timber, Aurora. It’s erratic. You really should practice your breathing exercises."
The voice was like silk pulled over a blade—refined, French-accented, and infuriatingly calm.
Rory squeezed her eyes shut. She looked down at the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a relic of a childhood fall that she often rubbed when she was nervous . She didn't rub it now. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and checked the chain on the door. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair caught in the collar of her jacket. She didn't bother to fix it.
She unlocked the top two deadbolts but kept the chain engaged as she cracked the door open an inch.
Lucien Moreau stood in the dimly lit hallway of the Brick Lane tenement like a creature from another dimension. In the drab, peeling corridor, his tailored charcoal suit looked strike-ready, the fabric crisp despite the humidity. His platinum blond hair was slicked back with its usual surgical precision, not a single strand out of place. He leaned slightly on his ivory-handled cane, his heterochromatic eyes—one a warm, deceptive amber and the other a void-like black—tracking her movement with predatory focus.
"You’re a long way from the underworld, Lucien," Rory said, her voice steadier than she felt. "And you’re bleeding on Eva’s welcome mat."
Lucien glanced down at his side, where a dark stain was bloom-spreading across his waistcoat, turning the charcoal fabric to a wet, obsidian sheen. He didn't flinch. "A minor disagreement regarding a shipment of Avarosian glass. Your friend Eva wasn't answering her cellular device. Since you’ve been masquerading as her research assistant, I assumed this was the safest harbor."
"Safety is a relative term when you show up at my door," Rory snapped, though she was already sliding the chain back.
She shouldn't. Every instinct groomed by the disaster with Evan told her to shut the door and let the fixer bleed out in the hall. But Lucien wasn't Evan. Lucien was something far more dangerous because he was someone she had actually started to trust before it all went sideways in France.
She stepped back, swinging the door wide. "Get in. Before the neighbors think I’m hosting the French mafia."
Lucien stepped over the threshold, his limp more pronounced than he was trying to admit. He scanned the room, his gaze flickering over the mountains of books, the stray scrolls, and the piles of photocopied Latin texts. Ptolemy hissed at him, fur spiking along his spine.
"The cat still has impeccable judgment," Lucien murmured, sinking into a velvet armchair that looked like it might collapse under the weight of his elegance.
Rory ignored the jab. She moved to the kitchenette, grabbing a bowl of warm water and a clean rag. When she returned, she knelt between his boots—highly polished Italian leather—and reached for the buttons of his waistcoat. Her hands hovered for a second. The last time she’d been this close to him, they’d been standing on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, and he’d been promising her that some secrets were meant to stay buried. Then he’d vanished, leaving her to deal with the fallout of a job gone wrong and a heart that felt like it had been put through a shredder.
"Let me," she said, her tone clinical.
Lucien’s hand, cold and pale, set itself atop hers. "I can manage, Aurora."
"You can barely sit upright. Be still."
She brushed his hand away. Her fingers worked the buttons with a shaking precision. As she peeled back the silk lining of his shirt, the wound came into view—a jagged tear along his ribs, the blood dark and sluggish, shimmering with a faint, iridescent purple hue that signaled his demon heritage.
"It's not deep," she lied, looking up at him.
She found him already watching her. The amber eye was glowing with a soft, internal light, while the black eye seemed to swallow the dim light of the flat. The air between them suddenly felt charged, the static of his presence making the fine hairs on her arms stand up.
"You changed your hair," he said softly .
"I grew up," she countered, dipping the rag into the water. "I stopped waiting for people who don't show up."
Lucien hissed as the water hit the wound, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the ivory head of his cane. "I couldn't come back for you. Not then. Avaros doesn't let go of its sons easily, even the half-bred ones."
"You could have sent word. A cipher. A carrier pigeon. You’re the best information broker in London, Lucien. Don't tell me you couldn't find a girl living above a bar in Southwark." Rory worked the rag in firm, circular motions, cleaning the copper-scented blood from his skin.
"Finding you was never the problem," he whispered. "Leaving you alone was the penance."
Rory paused, the rag suspended over his ribs. She looked up, her bright blue eyes meeting his mismatched ones. The vulnerability in his expression was a rare thing, a crack in the porcelain mask of the 'Frenchman'. For a moment, she wasn't a delivery girl hiding from her past, and he wasn't a fixer for the supernatural elite. They were just two people who had nearly died for each other once.
"Is that what this is?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Penance? Showing up at midnight, bleeding on my floor, reminding me of every thing I tried to forget?"
Lucien reached out, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw, lingering just below her ear. His skin was unnaturally cool, a hallmark of the blood that ran in his veins, but his touch was incredibly gentle. "I came because I knew you were the only person in this city who wouldn't ask for a price before helping me. And because I missed the way you look when you're angry with me."
Rory let out a dry, jagged laugh. "Then you must be very satisfied, because I am furious."
"I can see that. Your pulse is still quite high."
She grabbed his wrist, intending to push his hand away, but her grip faltered as his fingers slid into her hair, cupping the back of her head. He pulled her slightly closer, not with force, but with a silent invitation. The smell of him—expensive cologne and ancient dust—filled her lungs, overriding the curry spices and the rain.
"Rory," he breathed, the nickname a soft plea.
"Don't," she said, though she didn't move. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to disappear for six months and then come back and call me by a name you haven't earned back yet."
"Then let me earn it." He leaned down, his forehead resting against hers. "Give me tonight to survive, and tomorrow to explain. Stay with me, Aurora. Just until the sun comes up and I can stand on my own again."
The intelligent, out-of-the-box thinker in her brain was screaming that this was a trap, that Lucien Moreau was a complication she didn't need in her carefully constructed New London life. But her heart, the part of her that still remembered the warmth of his coat around her shoulders in a cold Marseille winter, was winning .
She sighed, a long, shaky exhale that signaled her surrender. She lowered the rag back into the bowl. "You’re sleeping on the floor, Lucien. I’m not sharing the bed with a man who carries a sword in his cane."
A ghost of a smirk played on his lips. "The floor is a small price to pay for such charming company."
Rory stood up, her legs a little weak. She looked at him—impeccable, broken, and utterly out of place in Eva’s cramped flat. "I’ll get the first aid kit. Don't move. If you bleed on the rug, I’m kicking you out."
"Understood," Lucien said, his eyes following her as she walked away. "And Aurora?"
She paused in the doorway to the bathroom. "What?"
"It is good to see you again. Even if you are holding a very dirty rag."
She didn't answer, but as she turned the corner, a small, involuntary smile touched her lips. She leaned against the bathroom sink, staring at her reflection in the cracked mirror. Her face was flushed , her eyes bright. She ran a hand through her black hair, realizing for the first time that the stagnation of the last six months had finally broken. The storm had walked through her door, and for the first time in a long time, Rory Carter felt truly awake.
Outside, the rain began to lash against the windowpanes of Brick Lane, but inside, the air was warming . Ptolemy jumped onto Lucien’s lap, deciding that the Frenchman’s silk waistcoat was an acceptable place for a nap. Lucien, for his part, didn't move a muscle, his amber eye fixed on the doorway where Rory would eventually return. He was a patient man, a man of trade-offs and long games, and he knew that while he hadn't yet been forgiven , he was, at last, home.