Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQQ94SEX7DBFS7ZG1RD5QQ

The knock on the door was sharp, impatient, entirely out of place on the quiet landing of the curry house. Rory frowned, her gaze lifting from the crumbling 14th-century manuscript spread across Eva’s kitchen table. Ptolemy, Eva’s ginger tabby, lifted his head from a sunbeam slanting across a stack of books, his tail giving a single, questioning flick. It wasn’t Eva. Eva never knocked on her own door, and she certainly didn’t knock with that particular, rhythmic authority. It wasn’t Silas from downstairs, whose raps were usually lazier, more of a suggestion. And it wasn’t a delivery; the Golden Empress didn’t deliver this far east. Three deadbolts. Eva was paranoid, a trait Rory usually found endearing. Tonight, it felt like a chore. She slid the first, then the second, the metal grating a protest against the silence. The third was the stiffest. She braced a hand on the doorframe and threw her weight against it. The door swung open. And the world, which had been smelling of old paper, cumin, and dusty sunshine, suddenly smelled of ozone and expensive cologne. He stood in the dim hallway, a slash of impeccable charcoal against the peeling paint. Lucien Moreau. His platinum blond hair was slicked back from his brow, not a single strand out of place, and his eyes—one the colour of polished amber, the other a fathomless, starless black—were fixed on her. He held an ivory-handled cane, its tip resting lightly on the worn threadbare carpet. He looked like a king who had taken a wrong turn into a pauper’s kingdom. Rory’s heart gave a single, violent thump against her ribs, a traitor in the cage of her chest. She forced her expression into neutrality, the mask she had spent years perfecting. It was the same face she used for demanding customers and landlords who smelled of cheap beer. “Lucien,” she said. Her voice was cool, steady. A small victory. “Aurora.” His voice was a low, smooth baritone, the kind of voice that could negotiate treaties or sell souls. He used her full name, a deliberate choice. A test. “May I come in?” The question was a formality. He was already assessing the flat behind her, his gaze sweeping over the mountains of books, the scrolls tacked to the walls, the chaotic life that was so fundamentally *Eva*. And now, her. The uninvited guest. “This isn’t a good time,” she said, making no move to close the door. To do so would feel like retreat. She had done enough retreating in her life. A faint, humourless smile touched his lips. “It never is.” He took a step forward, not waiting for an invitation, and the sheer presence of him filled the small doorway. He had to angle his body to get past a teetering stack of occult tomes. As he moved into the flat, the air seemed to thin, to grow charged. Ptolemy, who usually fled from strangers, rose from his sunbeam, arched his back in a long, luxurious stretch, and then padded directly to Lucien. He rubbed against his perfectly tailored trousers, purring like a tiny motor. Lucien glanced down, and for a moment, the intensity in his mismatched eyes softened. He crouched, a movement of surprising grace, and ran a hand over the cat’s back. “You still collect strays, I see.” “I’m feeding a friend’s cat,” Rory corrected, her arms crossing over her chest. She was acutely aware of the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, now hidden in the crook of her elbow. He had never seen it. He knew nothing of that childhood accident, that small, permanent reminder of a clumsy moment. It was a part of her life that was entirely hers, untainted by him. He straightened, his attention returning to her. “Eva is well?” “She’s fine.” “Good.” He tapped his cane on the floorboards, the sound a soft, definitive click. “And you? Are you well, Aurora?” The question, so simple, so direct, was the most dangerous thing he had said yet. It was an invitation to lie, to say, *‘I’m great. I deliver noodles and read books and my life is perfectly normal.’* But he was looking at her as if he could see the cracks in the facade, the fissures she papered over with routine and work. “I’m alive,” she said, which was the truest thing she could offer. His amber eye glinted. “Barely adequate.” He moved further into the room, his gaze drifting over the titles on the shelves. “You’ve buried yourself in her research. Sumerian death rites, Celtic mythos, demonology of the Lesser Key.” He plucked a slim volume from a shelf, his long fingers handling the fragile leather with surprising delicacy. “Still trying to find a logical explanation for everything?” “Some things deserve an explanation,” she countered. “Some things don’t get to just exist in the shadows without a name.” He placed the book back on the shelf, his movements precise. “And some things are better left in the shadows. You used to understand that.” The memory hit her then, sharp and unwelcome. A rain-slicked rooftop in Southwark, the city lights smeared like watercolours below. His hand on her arm, his voice a low whisper against her ear, telling her there were things she wasn’t ready for, things that would burn her bright, quick-thinking mind to cinders. She had pulled away then, too. “I was wrong,” she said, the words tasting like ash. “Were you?” He turned to face her fully. He was close now, close enough that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the subtle variation in the colour of his skin. He was half-demon, a fact she had learned the hard way, a fact that had been the beginning of their end. “Or were you just scared?” “I’m not scared of you, Lucien.” It was a lie, and they both knew it. She wasn’t scared of him physically, but she was terrified of the world he represented. The chaos, the violence, the moral greys that had a tendency to bleed into her own carefully constructed black and white. He didn’t call her on the lie. Instead, his gaze dropped to her hands, still crossed defensively over her chest. “You’re not wearing your father’s watch.” The observation was so specific, so out of left field, it disarmed her completely. She looked down at her bare wrist. The silver watch, a graduation gift from her barrister father, had been missing for weeks. She’d taken it off during a particularly grueling double shift at the Golden Empress and left it in the pocket of her apron. She’d meant to look for it. She just hadn’t. “I’ve been busy,” she mumbled. “Too busy to keep track of the things that matter?” He took another step. The space between them was negligible now. He reached out, not for her wrist, but for a stray lock of her black hair that had fallen across her cheek. His fingers were cool, impossibly smooth. He tucked the hair behind her ear, a gesture that was intimate and proprietary and utterly infuriating. “I heard a whisper,” he said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “A ghost from Cardiff. A man named Evan.” Every muscle in Rory’s body went rigid. The name was a key turning in a lock she had long ago welded shut. Evan. Her ex. The reason she had fled to London in the first place, the reason she’d been living on Eva’s sofa before finding the flat above Silas’s bar. The reason she had three deadbolts on her own door. “He’s nothing,” she said, the words sharp, brittle. “He’s in the past.” “The past has a way of catching up,” Lucien murmured, his hand lingering near her face. “Especially when it’s looking for you. He’s asking questions, Rory. About a girl named Aurora Carter who used to study Pre-Law. About a delivery girl who works for a man named Yu-Fei.” The carefully constructed walls of her new life began to tremble. Her job, her sanctuary, the one thing that was simple and straightforward. He was touching that now. He was bringing the poison right to her doorstep. “How do you—” she started, then stopped. It was a stupid question. He was Lucien Moreau. Information was his currency. “What do you want?” He finally let his hand drop, the absence of his touch a sudden chill. “I want you to be safe.” A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “You? You want me to be safe? You left because you said I was too human for your world, too fragile. You said I’d get myself killed.” “I said you’d get yourself killed trying to be a hero in a story that has no heroes,” he corrected, his tone losing its softness, gaining an edge of steel. “There’s a difference. I was wrong to leave. I see that now.” The apology, or what passed for one, hung in the air between them, heavy and suffocating. It was too late. Years too late. She had built her life without him. She had learned to lock her doors, to trust her instincts, to sleep with a kitchen knife under her pillow. She had learned to survive. “I don’t need you,” she said, her voice shaking with a fury she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I don’t need your help, and I don’t need your apologies. Get out.” She pointed toward the door, her finger trembling. She expected him to argue, to press his advantage, to use his silver tongue to wear her down. Instead, he just looked at her, his expression unreadable. The amber eye was watchful, analytical. The black eye was a void, pulling at the light in the room. He gave a slow, deliberate nod. “As you wish,” he said. He turned and walked toward the door, his steps silent on the old floorboards. Ptolemy watched him go, his purr fading into a low trill of disappointment. At the door, Lucien paused, his hand on the handle. He didn’t look back at her. “The locks on your own door are flimsy, Aurora. And Evan isn’t the only one who knows where you live.” He opened the door and stepped out, pulling it quietly shut behind him. Rory stood in the centre of the room, the silence rushing back in to fill the space he had occupied. Her heart was hammering, her blood a roar in her ears. She looked at the three deadbolts on Eva’s door, then down at her own bare wrist. He hadn’t been talking about Eva’s flat. He’d been talking about hers. And he hadn’t been warning her. He had been promising.