Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQV4FNYZR4QM2CX9Z2554Y

The knock came as a sharp, three-knuckle rap against the door, precise and impatient. Rory startled, sloshing tea onto a fifteenth-century scroll detailing Sumerian harvest rites. She cursed under her breath, dabbing at the spreading stain with the sleeve of her jumper. Eva was going to kill her. “One minute!” she called out, her voice muffled by the sheer volume of books stacked around her. She navigated the treacherous path to the door, a canyon carved between mountains of paper. Eva’s cat, Ptolemy, watched her progress from his perch atop a teetering pile of leather-bound grimoires, amber eyes slitted in judgment. At the door, Rory went through the familiar ritual. Click-thunk went the first deadbolt. A scrape and a groan for the second. A final, heavy clack for the third. Eva’s paranoia was a tangible thing. Rory pulled the door inward, expecting a courier, maybe a neighbour complaining about the arcane chanting again. The man on the landing stole the air from her lungs. Lucien Moreau stood framed in the doorway, a shard of monochrome perfection against the building’s peeling floral wallpaper. His platinum hair was slicked back from his forehead, not a strand out of place. His suit was charcoal, tailored so exquisitely it seemed a part of him, the sharp lines of the shoulders a stark contrast to the chaotic clutter of the flat behind her. His ivory-handled cane rested lightly in one hand. And his eyes—one the warm, dangerous color of amber, the other a flat, fathomless black—fixed on her. Six months. Six months since she’d last seen those impossible eyes, since the world had tilted on its axis and he had simply vanished from its spin. Rory’s hand tightened on the edge of the door. Her first instinct was to slam it shut, to re-engage the deadbolts and pretend he was a hallucination brought on by inhaling too much book dust. “Aurora,” he said. His voice was just as she remembered: a low, smooth baritone with the faintest ghost of Marseille clinging to the vowels. It slid over her skin like cool silk. “Lucien.” She kept her own voice flat, a wall against the sudden, stupid hammering in her chest. “You’ve got the wrong flat.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched one corner of his mouth. It wasn’t a smile of humour. It was a smile of knowing. “I’m quite certain I don’t.” He didn’t try to move, didn’t try to step past her. He just waited, his stillness a form of pressure she remembered all too well. The scent of curry wafted up from the restaurant below, thick and spicy. Somewhere an ambulance wailed. Normal London sounds, made alien by his presence. She couldn't leave him standing in the hall. It was too exposed. Too... public. With a tight, unhappy sigh, she pulled the door wider. “Fine. But Eva’s not here.” He inclined his head in acknowledgment and stepped across the threshold. The cramped space of the flat seemed to shrink around him, his immaculate form a disruption in the cosy, academic chaos. He surveyed the towering stacks of books, the unrolled scrolls, the scattered notes, his gaze lingering for a moment on the tea-stained Sumerian text. His expression was unreadable. Ptolemy, the traitor, hopped down from his perch. He wound himself around Lucien’s impeccably polished shoes, tail held high, a rumbling purr starting in his chest. Lucien’s long fingers drifted down, stroking the cat once behind the ears before he straightened. “He remembers me,” Lucien observed quietly. “Cats have no sense of loyalty,” Rory retorted, shutting the door. The sound echoed with a grim finality. She didn’t bother with the deadbolts. Not yet. She leaned back against the wood, crossing her arms over her chest. It was a defensive posture, and she knew it, but she didn’t care. “What do you want?” He turned his full attention to her, and the intensity of it was a physical force. It had always been like this. When Lucien Moreau looked at you, the rest of the world faded to grey. She felt a familiar flush of heat crawl up her neck, born of equal parts anger and an attraction she’d tried for six months to kill. “I require Miss Evans’s expertise,” he said, his tone all business. “On a matter of some urgency.” “Like I said, she’s out. Try her mobile.” “I did. It goes directly to voicemail.” He took a slow step further into the room, his gaze sweeping over the mess. “Her wards are… unusually strong tonight. A new addition?” Rory’s jaw tightened. Of course he would notice the wards. “Trouble finds you, Lucien. Some of us prefer to keep it at arm’s length.” The jab was obvious, and she saw a flicker in his amber eye. A direct hit. “An astute policy,” he said, his voice betraying nothing. “However, this particular trouble is not of my making. And it may find her regardless of her precautions.” He paused, his focus settling on a frayed Coptic manuscript. “I have a client. They’ve acquired an artifact, and it is proving… recalcitrant.” “So you want Eva to look at your client’s new toy. Same old story.” She pushed herself off the door, her bare feet cold on the dusty floorboards. She needed to put some distance between them, to think. She traced the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist with her thumb, a nervous habit. “After last time, I’m not sure she’d be inclined to help you. I’m not sure *I* am.” He finally looked away from the books, his gaze locking with hers again. The air grew thick, heavy with everything they weren’t saying. The ‘last time’ wasn’t just a botched job. It was the night in the crypt, the press of his body against hers in the darkness, the shared breath, the whisper of his name on her lips before everything went to hell. It was the two days after, when she’d waited for a call, a message, anything. And then the crushing, silent weeks that followed. “My departure was necessary,” he said, his voice lower now, stripped of its business-like veneer. Rory gave a short, humourless laugh. “Necessary for who, Luc? You vanished. Not a word. Not a bloody whisper. I thought you were dead.” The confession slipped out, raw and unplanned, and she hated the vulnerability in it. His expression softened, just for a moment. The impeccably tailored mask slipped. “That was not my intention.” “What was your intention?” she shot back, taking a step toward him. The cat meowed and rubbed against her leg, a fickle peacemaker. “To use us for a job and then disappear back into the shadows? Because that’s what happened.” He didn’t flinch from her anger. He absorbed it, his stillness a frustrating counterpoint to her agitation. “It was… complicated, Aurora.” He hadn’t called her Aurora since that night. It was always the clipped, professional ‘Carter’. The sound of her name in his mouth, soft and serious, was a low blow. It cracked the armour of her anger, leaving her feeling exposed. He took a step closer, erasing half the distance she’d tried to create. The subtle, clean scent of him—expensive soap and cold night air—filled her senses. He was close enough now that she could see the flecks of gold in his amber eye, the faint lines at their corners. He was older than her, and for the first time, she saw a trace of weariness in his face that his perfect suit couldn’t hide. “The situation became untenable,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “My presence was a liability. To you. To Eva.” “You didn’t give me a choice,” she said, her own voice dropping to match his. “You didn’t give me the chance to decide if it was a liability I was willing to take.” His gaze flickered down to her mouth, and her breath hitched. The memory of that night was suddenly, overwhelmingly present between them—the damp chill of the stone walls, the scent of earth and decay, the warmth of his hand on her arm. The unspoken thing that had sparked in the dark. “Some choices aren’t ours to offer,” he murmured. His hand lifted, as if to touch her face, but he stopped himself, his fingers curling into a fist at his side. The control he exerted was immense, a silent battle waged and won in the space of a heartbeat. “Staying away… was not a simple thing.” The admission hung in the dusty air, a fragile offering. It wasn’t an apology, not really. But from him, it was more than she had ever expected. She held his gaze for a long moment, the anger inside her warring with a bone-deep ache she hated to acknowledge. He was a fixer, a half-demon who walked the grey lines of London’s supernatural underworld. He was dangerous and calculating, and she was a fool to ever forget it. But he was also the man who had pulled her from the path of a charging eidolon, whose mismatched eyes saw things in her that no one else did. Finally, she let out a long, slow breath. The fight drained out of her, leaving only a familiar exhaustion. “What kind of artifact?” Relief, subtle but definite, eased the tension in his shoulders. “Avarosian. A binding mirror.” Rory’s blood ran cold. Avaros. His father’s realm. “God, Luc. You don’t do things by halves, do you?” “It would seem not,” he said, a ghost of his usual wry tone returning. “My client is in over his head. The mirror is… communicative. It promises things. And it is beginning to warp the space around it.” She looked around Eva’s flat, a sanctuary of ordered, earthly knowledge. A binding mirror from a demon realm was the last thing that belonged here. But Lucien was right. If it was active, its influence would spread. Eva, with her sensitivities, would be a beacon. “She’s in Cambridge,” Rory said, making a decision. “Presenting a paper. She’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.” He nodded, accepting the information. “I can wait.” “No,” Rory said quickly. “You can’t wait here. Give me the details. Your client’s name, the location. I’ll call her. I’ll explain. We’ll meet you.” She was setting the terms. Reclaiming a sliver of control. He understood this immediately. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a slim, silver business card case. He withdrew a card and a small pen, scribbled an address on the back, and held it out to her. Their fingers brushed as she took it. A jolt, small but sharp, shot up her arm. She pulled her hand back as if burned. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Midday.” He moved to the door, his movements fluid and silent. With his hand on the knob, he paused and looked back at her. The formal mask of the fixer was back in place, but his eyes held something else, something deep and unsettled. “Be careful, Aurora.” Then he was gone, the door clicking softly shut behind him, leaving her alone in the sudden, ringing silence. The only sounds were the hum of the ancient refrigerator and the frantic thumping of her own heart. She stood frozen in the middle of the room, the scent of him a ghost in the air, his card a cold, sharp-edged weight in her hand. Ptolemy rubbed against her ankles, purring, oblivious. She sank onto a stack of journals, the strength gone from her legs, and finally undid the deadbolts one by one. She’d lock them now. She would lock them all.