Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQSPJ85H6V83R54RMEH4N3

The door swung open before Rory could knock a second time, and there he was. Lucien Moreau stood in the doorway of Eva's flat, one hand still on the knob, his mismatched eyes—amber and black—fixing on her with an intensity that made her breath catch. He wore a charcoal suit despite the hour, perfectly tailored as always, though his platinum hair had fallen slightly out of place. A strand curled against his temple. "Aurora." Her full name on his lips, spoken in that accent that turned vowels into something liquid and warm. "I'm here for Eva." Rory kept her voice flat, professional. She shifted the takeaway bag in her hands, the plastic crinkling loud in the narrow hallway. The smell of curry from the restaurant below mixed with something else—sandalwood and smoke. Lucien's cologne. "Is she in?" "She stepped out." He didn't move from the doorway. "Twenty minutes ago. Said she would return within the hour." Of course Eva had stepped out. Of course Lucien was here alone. Rory's friend had been making pointed comments lately about how Rory needed to "sort things" and "stop being so bloody stubborn." This had her fingerprints all over it. "Right." Rory adjusted her grip on the bag. "I'll come back later, then." "Or you could wait inside." Lucien stepped back, opening the door wider. The movement was graceful, controlled. Everything he did was controlled. "Unless you prefer standing in the hallway like a stranger." That stung, probably because it was meant to. Rory met his gaze and saw something flicker there—challenge, hurt, something else she couldn't name. Three months. It had been three months since she'd walked out of his Mayfair townhouse at two in the morning, since she'd told him this was a mistake, since she'd seen that carefully neutral expression slide over his features like a mask. She should leave. She should absolutely leave. Instead, she walked inside. The flat was exactly as she remembered—cramped, every surface buried under Eva's research. Books stacked on the coffee table, scrolls unfurled across the kitchen counter, sticky notes in her friend's messy handwriting covering the wall above the desk. Ptolemy, Eva's tabby cat, looked up from his perch on the windowsill, offered a slow blink of recognition, then returned to watching the street below. Rory set the takeaway bag on the only clear corner of the counter. "Yu-Fei made extra spring rolls. Eva texted she was hungry." "How thoughtful." Lucien closed the door behind them—all three deadbolts clicking into place with practiced efficiency. "You delivered personally. Your shift must be over." "It is." She didn't turn around, instead focusing on unpacking the containers. Pad Thai, green curry, those spring rolls. Her hands wanted to shake. She wouldn't let them. "And I was in the area." "Were you." It wasn't a question. Rory finally turned to face him. He'd moved to stand near the bookshelf, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane. He didn't need it—the cane was for show, for the blade hidden inside—but he carried it everywhere. A reminder, perhaps, of what he was. What he could do. "Lucien, what are you doing here?" "Eva asked me to examine a text she acquired. Thirteenth-century grimoire, Occitan dialect. She thought I might translate a passage." He gestured vaguely toward the desk where a leather-bound book lay open. "My skills remain useful, even if my company does not." There it was. The edge beneath the smooth words. "That's not fair." "Non?" One pale eyebrow arched. "Please, enlighten me. What part is unfair?" Rory's jaw tightened. She could feel the old frustration rising, the same knot that had been building for months before she'd finally walked away. "You know why I left." "I know you left." Lucien's voice remained even, but his fingers had gone white against the cane handle. "I know you departed in the middle of the night after telling me you couldn't do 'this'—whatever 'this' was—and I have not heard from you since. Beyond that, Aurora, I confess myself unclear on the details." "We talked about this." But even as she said it, Rory knew it was weak. They hadn't talked. She'd thrown words at him like weapons—too fast, too complicated, your world is too dangerous—and then she'd run. Just like she'd run from Cardiff, from Evan, from everything that got too close, too real, too much. Lucien took a step closer. Then another. Each movement deliberate. "We did not talk. You spoke. I listened. Then you left." He stopped an arm's length away. Close enough that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the slight discoloration of his sclera in his demon eye—black bleeding into where white should be. Close enough to smell the sandalwood, to feel the temperature shift that always happened around him. Half-demon, Eva had explained once. His body temperature ran three degrees hotter than human normal. "I was trying to protect myself." The truth came out quieter than she'd intended. "From me?" "From—" Rory gestured helplessly. "From everything. From your world, from getting hurt again, from—" She stopped. Drew a breath. Started over. "My last relationship nearly destroyed me, Lucien. Evan was human and he still managed to make me doubt everything about myself. You're an information broker in the supernatural underworld. You trade in secrets and violence and things I barely understand. How was that supposed to work?" Something shifted in Lucien's expression. The mask cracked, just slightly. "You think I would hurt you." "No." The word came fast, certain. "No, that's not—you wouldn't. I know you wouldn't." And she did know it, bone-deep. For all his dangerous edges and supernatural blood, Lucien had been nothing but careful with her. Patient. Gentle, even, in his own precise way. "But your life is dangerous. The things you deal with are dangerous. And I'm just—I'm a delivery driver, Lucien. I live above a bar. I'm nobody." "Stop." The command was quiet but absolute. Lucien closed the remaining distance between them, his free hand coming up to cup her jaw. His palm was warm, his thumb brushing against her cheekbone. "You are not nobody. You are brilliant and brave and impossible. You walked into a fae negotiation last year armed with nothing but audacity and talked your way past a creature that has been collecting debts for three centuries. You see patterns others miss. You ask questions no one else thinks to ask. So do not insult my taste by suggesting you are somehow unworthy of my attention." Rory's heart hammered against her ribs. "Your attention terrifies me." "Why?" "Because I want it too much." The confession felt like falling. "Because when I'm with you, I forget to be careful. Because you make me feel like I could be someone different—someone braver, someone who belongs in your world—and that scares the hell out of me." Lucien's thumb traced the line of her jaw, down to her chin. His amber eye caught the light from Eva's desk lamp, gleaming. The black eye remained fathomless. "What if I do not want you different? What if I simply want you?" "That doesn't make sense." "Perhaps not." A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "But very little about you has ever made sense to me, Aurora Carter. From the moment you walked into my office demanding information about a missing artifact with no money to pay and no concept of how these transactions work—you have been wonderfully, maddeningly nonsensical. And yet I cannot seem to stop thinking about you." She should say something. Should pull away or lean in or make some kind of decision. Instead, she stood frozen, caught between wanting and fear, between the careful walls she'd built and the dangerous possibility of letting them fall. "I don't know how to do this," she whispered. "Neither do I." Lucien's forehead came to rest against hers. His breath was warm, and he smelled like smoke and sandalwood and something indefinably other. "I have lived many years, chérie, and navigated situations that would break most people. But you? You are the only thing that has ever truly undone me." "Lucien—" The sound of a key in the lock made them spring apart. Three deadbolts clicked open in succession, and then Eva's voice rang out cheerful and utterly unsurprised. "Oh good, you're both still here. That's promising."