AI The first deadbolt slid back with a dull, reluctant clack. Aurora kept her shoulder against the door as she worked the second, then the third, the chain last. The habit wasn’t hers—Eva had trained every one who crossed her threshold the way other people trained dogs—but it had seeped into Rory’s muscles all the same.
On the other side, the hallway was thin and dim, smelling of fried onions and cumin from the curry house below. A strip light buzzed overhead like a trapped insect.
And in that narrow rectangle of space stood Lucien Moreau.
He look ed as if he’d stepped out of a charcoal advertisement: tailored suit, crisp collar, platinum hair slicked back with deliberate precision. His ivory-handled cane rested lightly in his right hand, the tip angled toward the cracked lino. The only untidy thing about him was the expression in his face—something held too tight behind his cheekbones, like he’d been clenching his teeth for an hour and only just remembered to stop.
One eye amber, one eye black. Both fixed on her.
Rory’s hand stayed on the chain. Her pulse didn’t so much jump as rearrange itself, turning erratic and loud.
“You’ve got to be joking,” she said, because if she didn’t speak, she might do something worse—stare, or reach, or slam the door and lean her forehead against it until her breath steadied.
Lucien’s gaze flicked to the chain, then back to her. “Bonsoir, Rory.”
He said her name the way he used to, soft around the edges, the R not quite rolled but hinted at. It pressed on her like a thumb on a bruise.
“You don’t get to ‘bonsoir’ me.” She tightened her fingers around the chain until her knuckles whitened. “You don’t get to show up here.”
A faint lift in his brows. Not surprise—Lucien rarely looked surprised —but something like acceptance. “May I come in?”
“No.”
He nodded once, as if she’d answered a polite question about tea. “All right. Then I’ll speak from the corridor.”
Rory’s laugh came out sharp. “You’re going to stand out there and do what, exactly? Apologise? Explain? Ask for a favour?”
He didn’t flinch. That steadiness used to make her feel safe. Now it only made her want to shake him until the truth fell out of him like coins.
“I need a moment,” he said. “With you.”
Her skin prickled along her forearms. She was acutely aware of the flat behind her—Eva’s cramped one-bedroom overflowing with books and scrolls and notes pinned in frantic grids. Ptolemy, Eva’s tabby, would be somewhere among the paper stacks, watching with his judgemental little golden eyes. Rory had been alone here for most of the afternoon, cataloguing Eva’s latest research in a futile attempt to feel useful. She’d welcomed the quiet; it had made thinking easier.
Now the air felt too thin for thinking.
“What moment?” Rory asked. “Because last time, you stole plenty.”
Something crossed Lucien’s face. Not guilt exactly. Something older. “I didn’t steal.”
“You vanished,” she shot back. “You kissed me in the back of a car like you meant it, and then you disappeared for three weeks. No message. No warning. Nothing. And when you finally resurfaced, you talked to me like I was—” She stopped herself before the word fell out. Convenient. Disposable. A tool.
He stood very still, cane steady, shoulders square. His suit caught the corridor light and swallowed it, as if the fabric was made to absorb attention. “I know,” he said quietly.
The simplicity of it—the lack of defence—hit her harder than any clever excuse would have.
Rory took a breath. She tried to hold on to anger because anger was clean. Anger made a line in the sand and kept her on the right side of it.
But there was his face, familiar and infuriating, and there was the way her body remembered him before her mind could stop it. The press of his hand at the small of her back. The smell of expensive soap and something darker underneath, like smoke on cold air. The way his voice dropped when he said her name.
Ptolemy chose that moment to appear, slipping between Rory’s legs with a silent insistence. The cat’s tail rose like a flag, brushing her calf. He paused at the open crack of the door and stared out at Lucien.
Lucien’s eyes dipped. “Ah,” he murmured. “The guardian.”
Ptolemy blinked slowly , unimpressed.
Rory’s throat tightened with an absurd flare of protectiveness. This was Eva’s space, Eva’s fortress. Lucien didn’t belong on her landing any more than he belonged in Rory’s life.
And yet he was here.
“What do you want?” she asked, voice lower now, because if she raised it any higher she might crack.
Lucien’s gaze came back to her. “To come in.”
“No.”
His mouth curved, but it wasn’t amusement. It was the ghost of something that used to live between them, a small private recognition. “Then to not be left in the corridor.”
“Lucien.”
He leaned a fraction toward the door, and Rory’s grip on the chain went tighter. “I’m not here to cause trouble,” he said. “Not for you.”
“You’re trouble just by existing.”
That earned her a small exhale through his nose—close to a laugh, but restrained. His eyes held hers, and for a second she remembered sitting beside him in a booth at Silas’ bar, the music too loud for secrets but somehow they’d spoken in them anyway. He’d leaned in, his breath warm at her ear, and she’d felt like she’d been chosen .
Then he’d left, and the chosen feel ing had curdled into something else.
“You look tired,” he said.
The comment landed wrong. Too intimate. Like he still had the right to notice her.
Rory’s shoulders squared. “You look like you always do. Like you’ve never had a bad day in your life.”
His amber eye brightened with something sharp. “Would that comfort you?”
It would, she thought, and hated herself for it. If he were ordinary heartbreak, at least she could pack it into a box. Lucien was a tangle of tailored charm and underworld shadow. He belonged to a London she hadn’t asked to see, full of debts and bargains and things that watched from between streetlamps. He’d brought her to the edge of it and then he’d stepped away as if she was safer not knowing.
But she hadn’t been safer. She’d only been alone with questions.
Rory look ed at the chain again. Three deadbolts behind her. Eva’s paranoia as architecture. Rory had taken comfort in those locks when she first fled Cardiff, when Evan’s messages had still lit up her phone like warning flares. Locks had meant distance. Distance had meant survival.
Lucien’s presence made the locks feel like papier-mâché.
She swallowed, then snapped the chain free. “Fine,” she said, sharp, as if granting him entry was an act of aggression rather than surrender. “Five minutes. And if you try anything—”
“Try anything,” he echoed , stepping forward.
Rory backed up as he crossed the threshold. He didn’t brush her, didn’t crowd her, but the hallway suddenly felt smaller with him in it. His coat moved with the precision of a curtain. The scent of him filled the air, an expensive clean overlaying the curry spices and the old-paper must of Eva’s obsession.
Ptolemy slipped past Lucien, tail high, then circled back to rub against Lucien’s polished shoe like he’d decided to claim him.
Traitor, Rory thought, but her mouth twitched despite herself.
Lucien look ed down at the cat with a cautious fondness, as if he wasn’t sure whether touching would be permitted. “He remembers me.”
“He likes anyone who look s like they might feed him,” Rory said, shutting the door and sliding the bolts back into place. The sound of each lock was a punctuation mark she could cling to. She turned, keeping the narrow hall between them like a shield. “Five minutes. Talk.”
Lucien’s gaze moved past her into the flat proper. The living room was a battlefield of paper: stacks of books on demonology and old London maps, scrolls rolled and tied with string, Eva’s looping notes spread like nets across every surface. A kettle sat cold on the stove. A mug with a tea stain ringed its lip had been abandoned on the table near a half-eaten biscuit.
Rory realised with a jolt that Lucien had never seen Eva’s flat. He’d met Rory in places with back doors and exits, in restaurants and bars and alleys where he could melt away. This space was messy and human and safe in a way his world never was.
His eyes returned to Rory. “You’re staying here.”
“Eva’s away,” Rory said. She didn’t add that she’d volunteered to feed Ptolemy and keep an eye on the research because she couldn’t stand being alone above Silas’ bar with her own thoughts. “What’s it to you?”
“It means you’re not where I expected.” He paused, then added, “It means I had to find you.”
The words should have been flattering. They weren’t. They were a reminder that he could locate her whenever he wanted, and he’d chosen not to until now.
Rory folded her arms. Her left wrist twinged where the small crescent scar lived beneath her sleeve, a phantom ache she got when she was stressed . “So you found me. Congratulations. Now explain why.”
Lucien’s hand tightened on the cane. The ivory handle caught the light, smooth and pale as bone. Rory had seen the blade it hid once, by accident, when he’d drawn it with a flick too quick to follow. It had been thin as a promise.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
Rory’s throat tightened. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
Just that. No qualifiers. No excuses. It made her anger wobble, like a chair with one leg shorter than the others.
He took a step into the living room. Rory followed, staying near the doorway as if proximity would cost her. Lucien stopped beside the table piled with papers, careful not to touch anything. His gaze slid over the scattered notes with an instinctive assessment, like he could read danger in ink.
“You left,” Rory said, because the silence threatened to soften her. “And you didn’t tell me why.”
Lucien’s jaw worked. He set the cane against the table edge, fingers still resting on the handle as if letting go would be a mistake. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t,” Rory repeated, the word sour. “Or wouldn’t.”
His black eye held hers, depthless. “Wouldn’t,” he corrected, and the honesty of it was a slap. “Because if I told you, I would have had to ask you to do something I had no right to ask.”
Rory’s heart thudded. “Like what?”
Lucien’s gaze flicked , just once, to her hands—folded tight across her chest. It felt like a memory touching her skin. “To be in danger for me.”
“I was already in danger,” Rory snapped. “You dragged me into your world the moment you decided I was useful.”
His expression tightened, a line drawn at the corner of his mouth. “Yes,” he said quietly. “And that was unforgivable. I know.”
Rory stared at him. She’d rehearsed this confrontation in her head on sleepless nights. In her rehearsal, Lucien had been smug, deflecting, infuriating. Rory had been razor-sharp, victorious. She hadn’t rehearsed him standing in Eva’s cluttered living room, look ing at her like he’d walked a long way to reach a truth he didn’t want.
“What happened?” she asked, and hated how small it sounded.
Lucien’s fingers slid along the cane handle, a slow, grounding motion. “There was a debt,” he said. “An old one. Something I thought I’d buried. It resurfaced.”
Rory’s eyes narrowed . “And that’s why you disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Because you didn’t want to involve me,” she said, voice flat.
“Because I didn’t trust myself not to involve you,” he corrected.
That landed in her chest, heavy and hot. Rory licked her lips. “So why are you here now?”
Lucien’s gaze held hers. His amber eye seemed to catch the room’s lamplight and keep it, like a coin held between fingers. “Because I tried to handle it alone,” he said. “And I failed.”
Rory’s stomach tightened. “Are you hurt?”
He hesitated—just a fraction too long—and Rory’s attention sharpened. She stepped closer without meaning to, eyes scanning him. There was no obvious blood. No rip in his suit. But Lucien held his left side a little too carefully , and the cane wasn’t just for show. It bore more weight than vanity required.
Rory’s anger shifted, unwillingly, into something else. Concern, sharp-edged. “Lucien.”
His mouth opened as if to deflect. Then he stopped. Something in his face softened, a crack in the polish. “I didn’t come here to bleed on your friend’s carpet,” he said.
“Good, because Eva would murder you,” Rory muttered, but she was already moving past him toward the kitchenette. The flat was small; she could reach the sink in three steps. She yanked open the cupboard beneath it, finding the battered first-aid kit Eva kept beside cleaning supplies.
She heard Lucien behind her, the faint tap of the cane on the floor. “Rory,” he said, low. “You don’t have to.”
She didn’t look at him as she stood and snapped the kit open on the counter. “I’m not doing it for you,” she lied. “I’m doing it so you don’t drip on anything.”
“Of course,” he murmured, and there it was again—that ghost of humour, the private current that used to run between them when they were alone. It made her hands shake as she tore open a packet of antiseptic wipes.
She turned. “Sit.”
Lucien’s brows rose. “Is that an order?”
“If you want to keep your insides on the inside, yes.”
For a moment he just look ed at her, and Rory felt the weight of it like a hand at her throat. Then he moved, slow and controlled, and perched on the edge of the battered sofa half-buried under books. Ptolemy leapt up beside him as if to supervise. Lucien’s fingers hovered, then he stroked the cat’s head once, tentative. Ptolemy leaned into it shamelessly.
Rory approached with the first-aid kit, her breath shallow. She crouched in front of Lucien, close enough to see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw that he’d missed shaving. It was the first imperfection she’d ever seen on him, and it made him look —if not human—then at least tired.
“Lift your jacket,” she said.
Lucien’s gaze didn’t drop. “You’re angry,” he observed.
Rory’s mouth tightened. “Brilliant deduction.”
“And you’re still here,” he said.
Something in her chest gave a small, traitorous pull. She fumbled with the kit latch, forcing her hands steady. “Don’t read into it.”
Lucien’s hand moved, slow, to his jacket buttons. He unfastened them with careful fingers, then parted the fabric. Beneath the crisp shirt, darkened cloth clung to his left side—blood, soaked through in a spreading bloom.
Rory’s stomach lurched . “Jesus.”
Lucien exhaled, his composure thinning. “It look s worse than it is.”
“That’s not comforting,” Rory said, but her voice had lost its bite. She leaned closer, her hair falling forward, shoulder-length black strands slipping from behind her ear. She peeled back the shirt carefully . The wound was bandaged , but the gauze was saturated, red-black at the centre.
He’d done this himself. Of course he had. Alone, because that was his favourite kind of suffering.
Rory swallowed hard. “Why didn’t you go to someone else?”
Lucien’s gaze held hers. The heterochromia was unfairly intimate up close—two different worlds look ing out through one face. “Because I wanted to come to you,” he said.
Rory’s fingers paused on the gauze. Her pulse throbbed in her wrist, near the crescent scar. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is,” he said softly . “You just don’t like it.”
Her throat tightened. She focused on the task, because if she focused on him she might fold. She peeled the bloodied bandage away with slow care. Lucien’s breath hitched—barely audible—but Rory caught it. She look ed up automatically, and his eyes were on her mouth.
The air between them shifted. Thickened. A familiar gravity, old as the first time he’d leaned too close and she’d sworn she wouldn’t fall for a man who spoke in secrets.
Her hand trembled . “Don’t,” she said, not sure if she meant don’t look at me like that or don’t make me care.
Lucien’s gaze flicked to her eyes, and the intensity there almost hurt. “I’m trying,” he said.
Rory forced herself to look back down at the wound. The cut was deep but clean, as if made by a blade. She wiped it gently with antiseptic. Lucien’s fingers tightened on the sofa edge, knuckles whitening.
“You’re an idiot,” Rory muttered.
Lucien’s mouth curved faintly. “Yes.”
The easy agreement made her eyes sting. It shouldn’t. She’d heard apologies before—from Evan, from men who knew how to perform remorse. But Lucien’s yes wasn’t performance. It was surrender, offered without expectation.
Rory pressed fresh gauze to the wound. “What happened?” she asked again, quieter.
Lucien’s voice dropped. “Someone thought they could leverage you against me.”
Rory’s head snapped up. “What?”
His gaze didn’t waver. “They were wrong. I ended it before it began.” His jaw tightened. “But I realised something.”
“What.”
“I realised I don’t want to live my life constantly calculating whether you’ll be collateral,” he said. “And I don’t want you to live yours constantly wondering when I’ll vanish again.”
Rory’s breath caught. She held the gauze in place, her fingers pressing into his warm skin through layers of fabric. She was suddenly acutely aware of the shape of him under her hands, the solidity of his torso, the faint tremor of pain he refused to show.
“You could just… not vanish,” she said, and hated how much hope tried to sneak into it.
Lucien’s gaze softened. “I’m here,” he said, as if offering his presence like a gift and a vow. “And I’m asking.”
“Asking what?”
His voice was quiet enough that Rory had to lean in to hear. “Let me stay,” he said. “Tonight. Not because I have nowhere else. Because I want to be here. With you.”
Rory’s heart thudded painfully. The room seemed to narrow to the space between their faces. She could smell him—clean soap and something darker, smoke and night air. She could feel the heat of him under her hands.
Every sensible part of her screamed that this was how she got hurt. Men appeared, demanded space in her life, then punished her for giving it. Evan had taught her that lesson with bruises and apologies.
Lucien wasn’t Evan. That didn’t mean he couldn’t break her.
Rory swallowed. Her mouth went dry. “You don’t get to come back and—” She faltered, because the truth was raw and inconvenient. “You don’t get to make me miss you and then ask me to comfort you.”
Lucien’s gaze flicked briefly to her hands, still holding the dressing in place. His voice was gentle. “Then don’t comfort me,” he said. “Tell me to leave. I will.”
Rory stared at him. The offer sat between them, stark and real: control. A choice.
She’d expected him to push. To charm his way in, to leverage his beauty and his voice and the part of her that still remembered his mouth on hers.
But he just waited.
Ptolemy yawned loudly and kneaded the sofa cushion, unimpressed with human drama.
Rory’s laugh came out shaky. She look ed down, securing the gauze with tape, her fingers careful. When she finished, she didn’t move away. She couldn’t.
Slowly, as if he was approaching a wild animal, Lucien lifted his hand. He didn’t touch her immediately. He hovered, giving her the chance to flinch, to refuse.
Rory didn’t.
His fingertips brushed her left wrist, right over the sleeve, finding the place of her crescent scar as if he’d memorised it. The touch was light, almost nothing, but it lit her skin like a match.
“You’re afraid,” he said quietly.
Rory’s throat tightened. “Of course I am.”
Lucien’s thumb stroked once, barely a movement. “So am I.”
She look ed at him then—really look ed. Not the suit, not the cane, not the controlled elegance. The man beneath it, bruised by something he wouldn’t name, standing here in Eva’s messy flat asking to be allowed into a space that wasn’t his.
Rory’s breath came out slow. “If you stay,” she said, voice hoarse, “you tell me the truth. Not half. Not some carefully edited version. All of it.”
Lucien’s gaze held hers like a promise. “Yes.”
“And you don’t disappear,” she added, heat rising behind her eyes. “Not without telling me.”
He nodded, the motion small and solemn. “I won’t.”
Rory stared at his mouth. She remembered the backseat of that car, the city sliding by outside, his hand in her hair as if he’d been starving. She remembered the silence after he’d left, the way it had chewed at her.
She should have stepped back. She didn’t.
Her hand rose, almost against her will, and touched his cheek. Lucien leaned into it as if he’d been waiting for permission to breathe. The faint roughness of stubble rasped against her palm, and the humanity of it made something in her chest go soft.
“I’m still angry,” Rory whispered.
“I know,” Lucien said, his voice low. “I deserve it.”
Rory’s lips parted. The space between them was small enough to fall into. She could feel his breath, warm and steady, smelling faintly of mint and smoke.
“Lucien,” she said, and the way she said it wasn’t a warning. It was a surrender she hadn’t planned.
His eyes darkened, both of them, amber and black narrowing with focus. “Rory,” he murmured back, as if her name was a prayer.
He didn’t move first. He waited, giving her the choice again.
Rory closed the distance herself.
The kiss was not the frantic collision she remembered. It was slower, deliberate—Lucien’s mouth warm and careful, as if he was afraid she’d vanish this time. His hand rose to her waist, not pulling, just holding, a steady anchor. Rory’s fingers slid into his hair at the nape of his neck where the slick perfection ended and the strands were softer.
For a moment, the world narrowed to breath and pressure and the muted rustle of paper in a draft. The curry smell from downstairs faded beneath the clean scent of him.
When Rory broke away, her forehead hovered near his. Her lungs ached. Lucien’s eyes stayed closed for a beat, then opened, look ing at her like he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
Rory swallowed, forcing her voice back into existence. “That doesn’t fix anything,” she said.
“No,” Lucien agreed. His thumb stroked the side of her waist once, just above her hip, a touch so intimate it made her breath catch again. “But it tells me you still feel it.”
Rory’s laugh was quiet and pained. “I never stopped.”
The confession hung between them, bare and bright.
Lucien’s gaze softened. “Then let’s not waste time pretending,” he said.
Rory sat back on her heels, heart pounding, and tried to gather the fragments of her composure. “You’re sleeping on the sofa,” she said, because she needed a rule to hold on to, something solid.
Lucien’s mouth curved. “As you wish.”
“And in the morning,” Rory added, lifting her chin, “you start talking.”
Lucien inclined his head, the gesture elegant even now. “In the morning,” he said. Then, quieter, “Thank you.”
Rory look ed away, busying her hands with the first-aid kit, snapping it shut too hard. Her cheeks were hot. Her wrist tingled where he’d touched her.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she muttered.
Lucien’s gaze lingered on her, steady and warm in a way that made her insides twist. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll say it later.”
Behind him, Ptolemy settled against Lucien’s thigh as if he’d decided the matter. Rory watched the cat for a second, then look ed at Lucien again—at the blood-darkened shirt, the carefully controlled posture, the vulnerability he pretended was nothing.
She’d let him in. The locks were slid home behind him, but the real door—the one in her chest—was still half-open, swinging in a draft she couldn’t control.
Rory exhaled slowly . “Five minutes,” she repeated, though they both knew time had stopped being the point the moment she’d undone the chain.