Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXG8YD0JSTM2E09BNGMGD

The door cracked open just wide enough for Rory to see one bright amber eye and half of Lucien Moreau's too-handsome face. "You're bloody joking," she said. "I assure you, I am quite serious." His voice carried that insufferable French lilt, smooth as aged cognac. The door widened another inch. "May I come in?" "No." "Aurora—" "It's Rory." She moved to shut the door, but his ivory-handled cane was already wedged in the gap. She'd forgotten how quick he was. "That trick's going to cost you a cane one of these days." "I have several." Of course he did. She let go of the door and turned her back on him, stalking into Eva's cramped flat. Behind her, she heard the click of his shoes on the threshold — expensive leather, probably Italian — and the softer snick of the door closing. One deadbolt. Two. Three. "Expecting trouble?" Lucien asked. "I was, actually. Didn't think it would be wearing Armani." "Brioni." "I don't care if it's Versace's ghost stitching your suits personally." She spun to face him, nearly colliding with a stack of books on comparative demonology that teetered dangerously. "What are you doing here?" He stood framed against Eva's door, platinum hair catching the weak afternoon light filtering through the curry-stained window. His mismatched eyes — amber and black, demon and human — fixed on her with an intensity that made her skin prickle. Four months. It had been four months since she'd walked out of his Mayfair flat with her pride in tatters and her heart doing its best impression of shattered glass. "I need to speak with Eva," he said. "Eva's not here." "Then I'll wait." "Like hell you will." Rory crossed her arms, fighting the urge to touch the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. Old nervous habit. "You lost visiting privileges when you decided to use me as bait without telling me." Something flickered across his face. Regret, maybe, though with Lucien it was hard to tell. The demon half made him difficult to read, all smooth surfaces and calculated expressions. "That was necessary," he said quietly. "Necessary." The word tasted bitter. "You let me walk into the Blackwater Den thinking I was doing a simple information handoff. You didn't mention the part where I'd be surrounded by ghouls who'd been told I was carrying the Tears of Asmodeus." "You were never in actual danger. I had three people positioned—" "I didn't know that!" Her voice rose despite herself. Ptolemy, Eva's tabby, lifted his head from his perch on a stack of grimoires and gave her a reproachful look before tucking his nose back under his paw. She lowered her voice. "I thought I was going to die, Lucien. I thought—" She cut herself off, jaw tight. "I know." He took a step forward, cane clicking softly against the worn floorboards. "Rory, I know, and I—" "Don't." She held up a hand. "Don't do that thing where you get all soft-voiced and earnest. You're an information broker. You trade in secrets and lies for a living. This is just another negotiation to you." "This was never a negotiation." Another step. He was close enough now that she could smell his cologne — something dark and expensive with notes of bergamot and smoke. "What happened between us—" "There is no 'us.'" The words came out harder than she intended, a wall going up. Defense mechanism. She'd learned those well with Evan, learned how to build barriers fast and strong. "There was a job. I helped you. We slept together. You betrayed my trust. I left. End of story." "Is it?" His amber eye caught the light, inhuman and beautiful. "Because you haven't returned any of my messages." "Because I don't want to talk to you." "You're talking to me now." "That's because you forced your way in here like a—" She gestured at him, at his perfect charcoal suit and his platinum hair and his insufferable calm. "Like a well-dressed stalker." "I knocked." "After following me here. Don't think I didn't notice you three blocks back." The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "You've improved your situational awareness." "Had to. Learned from the best backstabber in London." "Rory—" "What do you actually want, Lucien?" She was tired suddenly, bone-deep weary in a way that had nothing to do with her morning delivery shift. "And don't say Eva. You could have called her. Sent a message through any of your hundreds of contacts. You came here because you knew I'd be here." He was quiet for a moment, that unnerving stillness that came from the demon side of him. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost its practiced smoothness. "There's a situation developing. Something that involves the people who took out the contract on the Tears of Asmodeus. They know you were instrumental in the operation, and they're not pleased." Ice slid down her spine. "How not pleased?" "The kind of not pleased that ends with bodies in the Thames." "Brilliant." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "And you're just telling me this now?" "I've been trying to tell you for six weeks. You blocked my number." "Can you blame me?" "No." The single word hung in the air between them. "No, I can't. What I did was—" He paused, and for the first time since she'd known him, Lucien Moreau seemed to struggle for words. "It was expedient. It was strategic. It was the best option given the circumstances. And it was still wrong. You deserved to know the risks. You deserved a choice." Rory stared at him. The admission sat strangely on his tongue, like he wasn't used to the shape of it. "Are you actually apologizing?" she asked. "I'm not certain. I haven't had much practice." His mismatched eyes met hers, and there was something raw in them, something that bypassed all his careful control. "I missed you." The words hit her chest like a physical thing. She wanted to throw them back at him, wanted to armor herself in anger and righteousness. But she was so tired of walls, of building them up just to hide behind them. "You hurt me," she said quietly. "I know." "I don't know if I can trust you again." "I know that too." Ptolemy chose that moment to leap down from his book pile and wind between Lucien's legs, purring like a small motor. Traitor cat. Lucien glanced down, surprised, then reached to scratch behind the tabby's ears. "He likes you," Rory said. "He usually hates everyone except Eva." "Perhaps he has good taste." "Or perhaps he's a terrible judge of character." But there was less bite in it now, the anger leaking away to leave something more complicated in its wake. "These people who want me dead. How serious is the threat?" "Serious enough that I spent three days calling in favors and two nights sleeping in my office to track down their movements." He straightened, and she noticed for the first time the faint shadows under his eyes, the slight rumple to his usually immaculate collar. "Serious enough that I broke into the vault at the Continental to access files I wasn't authorized to see. Serious enough that I'm risking Eva's considerable wrath by showing up here uninvited." "Eva's going to turn you into a newt." "She's threatened worse." His expression softened slightly. "Let me help you, Rory. Let me fix this." "You can't fix everything by throwing money and connections at it." "No. But I can keep you alive long enough for you to decide whether you want to give me a chance to earn back your trust." She should say no. Should throw him out and deal with this herself, or with Eva, or with anyone else in London's supernatural underbelly who owed her a favor. But the truth was, when it came to information and protection, no one was better than Lucien Moreau. And beneath the anger, beneath the hurt, there was still that spark of attraction that had drawn her to him in the first place. The way he looked at her like she was the most interesting puzzle he'd ever encountered. The way his voice dropped half an octave when he was being genuine instead of performative. The memory of his hands in her hair, his mouth on her throat, the surprising gentleness of him in the dark. "If I let you help," she said slowly, "there are rules." "Name them." "No secrets. No schemes I'm not fully briefed on. And if at any point I tell you to walk away, you walk." "Agreed." "I mean it, Lucien. One more betrayal and I'm done. Completely done." "I understand." He took another step closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze. "I won't waste this chance, Aurora." The use of her full name, soft and deliberate, made something flutter in her chest. Dangerous, that flutter. She'd felt it before, let it carry her into his orbit and his bed and his complicated world of half-truths. But she'd also walked away from Evan. She'd fled Cardiff and built a life in London on her own terms. She'd learned she was stronger than she thought, braver than she'd given herself credit for. She could do this. Keep her eyes open. Guard her heart. Work with Lucien without losing herself. Probably. "Fine," she said. "We'll work together. But you're buying dinner, and it better be from somewhere expensive. If I'm risking my life again, I'm doing it on a full stomach of caviar and champagne." His smile was slow and genuine, reaching all the way to his mismatched eyes. "I know an excellent place in Knightsbridge." "Of course you do." "They have a sommelier who sources wine from three different realms." "Now you're just showing off." "Perhaps a little." He reached out, hesitated, then let his hand drop without touching her. The restraint in the gesture said more than contact would have. "Thank you, Rory." She nodded, not trusting herself to speak past the knot in her throat. Outside, the curry house below was starting its dinner prep, the smell of frying onions and spices wafting up through the floorboards. Eva would be back in an hour. They had work to do, plans to make, threats to neutralize. But for now, in this cluttered flat with its books and scrolls and suspicious tabby cat, something had shifted. Not forgiveness, not yet. But possibility. Maybe that was enough.