Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQP4C6T1MBQRQ264V6S4QM

The deadbolts were a ritual. Rory slid the first chain, the second, the third—Eva’s paranoia about living above a twenty-four-hour curry house had seemed excessive until you remembered what else shared the Brick Lane shadows. Her fingers lingered on the cold metal of the final latch. Through the peephole, the corridor warped into fisheye distortion: charcoal wool, platinum hair, ivory gleaming like a threat against his gloved palm. She stopped breathing. Lucien Moreau stood in the hallway that smelled of vindaloo and cheap detergent, leaning on that cane of his with a casualness that didn’t fool her for a second. He’d slicked his hair back, severe and proper, but one stray strand had escaped, silver against his temple. His eyes—god, his eyes. Even through the distorted glass, the asymmetry unnerved her. Amber and obsidian. Human and not. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been walking away from her in a Soho alley, the tails of his coat disappearing into fog, leaving her with a half-truth that had felt like a broken rib every time she breathed since. She should shut the peephole. Walk away. Instead, her thumb found the release. The door cracked open. “You’re missing a deadbolt,” he said. His voice carried the faint rasp of Marseille, velvet over gravel. “You’re counting my locks?” “I’m noting your security habits, chérie. One should always note what has changed.” Not what has changed. What has changed between them. The subtext hummed like a live wire. She opened the door fully. The chain remained on—old habits—but the gap was wide enough to see him properly. Rain had darkened the shoulders of his charcoal suit to near-black. He hadn’t brought an umbrella. For a man who calculated every variable, the oversight felt deliberate. Vulnerable, even. “Eva’s not here,” Rory said. “I know. I came to see you.” Her left wrist throbbed, phantom pain around the crescent scar she’d earned at eight years old, falling from her father’s bookshelf. She hid it behind her back, then stopped herself. He’d already seen. He saw everything. Ptolemy wound between her ankles, orange tabby fur brushing her jeans, then darted back into the flat’s interior as if sensing the static in the air. “You can’t just—” Rory gestured at the threshold, at him, at the three years or three weeks or however long it had been since he’d decided she was collateral damage in whatever demon realm dispute he was brokering. “You don’t get to show up like this. Unannounced. After—” “After I lied to you about Avaros?” He tilted his head. The amber eye caught the hallway’s bare bulb, reflecting something ancient. The black eye drank the light. “After I let you believe I was only dangerous in the ways you could see?” She gripped the doorframe. The paint was peeling there, layered with curry grease and London damp. “Yeah. After that.” He shifted his weight. The cane tapped once against the linoleum, ivory handle flashing. She knew what it concealed—a blade thin enough to slip between ribs, sharp enough to cut lies in half. He’d taught her that, during those weeks when she’d been stupid enough to think she could learn the rules of his world without paying a price. “May I come in?” he asked. Not a demand. A request, stripped of his usual performance. No flourish. No smirk. Rory looked at him—really looked. The exhaustion bracketing his mouth. The way his free hand flexed, empty, as if reaching for something he’d lost. She undid the chain. The door swung inward. He stepped across the threshold, and immediately the flat felt smaller. Eva’s research had colonized every surface: books teetering on the kitchen counter, scrolls unspooling across the threadbare sofa, the air thick with old paper and the cardamom scent rising from the restaurant below. Lucien had to turn sideways to avoid knocking a stack of grimoires with his cane. He smelled of rain and something else—sulfur, faint but distinct. The Avaros bloodline showing through. “You’re working for the Cheung family now,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Delivery girl,” Rory said, closing the door, sliding the deadbolts home with three decisive clicks. The sound seemed loud in the sudden intimacy of the room. “Keeps me off the radar. Keeps me fed.” “It keeps you visible. Yu-Fei uses her delivery network to map the ley lines.” “I know.” She faced him, arms crossed. The scar on her wrist peeked from beneath her sleeve—black hair falling forward, bright blue eyes defiant. “I’m not stupid, Lucien. I just needed a job that didn’t ask questions. Unlike some people.” He set the cane against Eva’s cluttered dining table—an antique mahogany piece buried under archaeological journals—and removed his gloves, finger by finger. Black leather. Precise. The exposed skin of his hands was pale, the nails manicured, but the knuckles carried faint scarring she didn’t remember. New damage. “I didn’t come to recruit you,” he said. “Then why?” Silence settled between them, heavy as the humidity outside. Ptolemy jumped onto the windowsill, tail thumping against the glass, watching Brick Lane’s evening crowd with feline indifference. Lucien took a step closer. He was five-eleven to her five-six; he’d always had to tilt his chin down to meet her eyes, and he did so now with a focus that felt like being pinned beneath a microscope. “You stopped taking my calls,” he said. “You stopped being honest.” “I stopped being safe. There’s a difference.” “Not to me.” Rory’s voice cracked. She hated it. She was cool-headed, calculated—her father’s daughter, her mother’s stubbornness. But around him, the edges blurred. “You walked away like I was nothing. Like what happened in that safehouse was—” “Was what?” Another step. His shadow fell across her, cool where the room was warm. “Say it, Rory. You’re so good at naming things. The law, the truth. Name this.” Her back hit the bookshelf. Spines dug into her shoulder blades—Eva’s collection on Celtic demonology, ironically enough. Lucien’s hands came up, not touching her, but bracketing her head, caging her in a prison of his own making. His breath stirred the hair at her temple. The sulfur smell was stronger now, but beneath it, the clean scent of his cologne, something with bergamot and sharp edges. “You left,” she whispered. “I was protecting you from the House of Avaros. From my father’s emissaries who would have used you to leash me.” His amber eye was molten now, the black one depthless. “I thought distance was armor. I was wrong.” She could see the pulse in his throat, rapid and uncontrolled. For a fixer who spoke four languages and wielded silence like a blade, the tremor in his composure was devastating. “Three weeks,” she said. “You let me think you were dead for three weeks, Lucien. I checked the morgues. I checked the—” “I know.” His forehead dropped to rest against hers, a gesture so intimate it felt like a confession. His skin was fever-warm, demon-warm. “I know, and I’m here to collect the debt of that hurt, if you’ll let me. Or I’ll leave again, if that’s what you need. But I couldn’t stay away another night, not knowing you were here, unprotected, with Evan still asking questions in Camden—” Rory’s breath hitched. The abusive ex. The reason she’d fled Cardiff. Lucien knew; of course he knew. Information broker. “You’re checking up on me,” she said, but there was no heat in it. “I’m falling apart without you,” he murmured, the French accent thickening, breaking through the polished English. “Je suis désolé, Laila.” The alias—Laila, the name she’d used in the underworld, the name he’d whispered against her skin in that safehouse—shattered the last of her resolve. Her hands moved before her mind caught up, gripping the lapels of his charcoal suit, pulling him in. The cane clattered to the floor, forgotten. His mouth found hers, hungry and desperate, all the unsaid things translating into pressure and heat and the taste of rain. He kissed like he fought—strategic, devastating, then suddenly soft, reverent, his thumbs brushing the scar on her wrist where he’d finally touched her. Outside, Brick Lane roared with life, curry and crowds and the endless London rain. Inside, surrounded by Eva’s books and Ptolemy’s judgmental stare, Rory let the deadbolts stay thrown. Let the world wait. Let him in.