Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQY3YCMV6K3XCPJJ87MVRB

The insistent rapping on the door was sharp enough to cut through the scent of simmering spices from the curry house below. Aurora looked up from a brittle scroll detailing Sumerian warding techniques. A fine layer of dust coated her fingertips. On the arm of the chair, Ptolemy, a fat tabby who ruled the flat with furry indifference, flicked an ear but didn't bother opening his eyes. Eva wasn’t expecting anyone. Rory wasn’t either. Probably a courier with the wrong address again. She slid a strip of vellum into the scroll to mark her place and navigated the treacherous maze of book stacks that had consumed Eva’s living room. The door, a slab of thick, scarred wood, was a fortress. Rory worked the locks, her fingers sure and practiced. The top deadbolt groaned in protest. The second clicked cleanly. The third, a beast of reinforced steel Eva had installed after a particularly nasty incident involving a rogue imp, took a firm twist to disengage. Finally, she pulled the door inward. And her breath caught in her throat. Lucien Moreau stood on the threshold, a study in charcoal and silver. His tailored suit was immaculate, uncreased by the chaos of a Brick Lane afternoon. His platinum hair, catching the weak hallway light, was slicked back from his sharp features. One hand rested on the ivory head of his cane, casually, as if he were waiting for a table at a Michelin-star restaurant and not standing in the shabby corridor of a walk-up. Then he met her gaze, and the world tilted. One eye was the colour of warm amber, the other a stark, bottomless black. The last time she saw those eyes, they were looking at her with an expression she’d never managed to decipher, just before he walked out of her life without a word. “Aurora,” he said. Her full name, a sound like gravel and silk. No one called her Aurora anymore. She was Rory. Or Carter. Hearing it from him felt like being called back to a life she’d deliberately shed. “Lucien.” Her voice was tight, thin. “What are you doing here?” A ghost of a smile touched his lips, but it didn’t reach his mismatched eyes. “A simple ‘hello’ would suffice. It has been a while.” “Not long enough.” She kept her hand on the door, her body angled to block the entrance. The cramped hallway suddenly felt smaller, airless. He smelled the same—of expensive cologne, old paper, and something else, something faintly metallic and sharp, like ozone after a lightning strike. He ignored her jab. His gaze drifted past her, into the chaotic sanctuary of Eva’s flat. “Is she here?” “No.” The word was a clipped, defensive bark. “Eva’s in Glastonbury for the week. Research.” “Convenient,” he murmured, though whether for him or for her, Rory couldn’t tell. He took a half-step forward, a subtle shift of weight that was pure predatory grace. “Then perhaps you can help me.” Rory’s grip on the door tightened. “I’m not interested.” “You haven’t heard what I need.” “Don’t care.” Everything in her screamed to slam the door, to shoot the three deadbolts home and pretend he was just a bad memory. But she was rooted to the spot, trapped in the gravitational pull of his presence. Six months. Six months of radio silence, of wondering if he was dead in a ditch or simply bored of her. And now he stood here, asking for a favour. The audacity of it was a current of pure fire in her veins. His amber eye seemed to soften, a trick of the light. “You are the only other person she trusts, Laila.” Her breath hitched. *Laila*. The name he’d given her on their second meeting, whispered in the back of a shadowed pub. *My night*, he’d translated from the Arabic, his voice low and intimate. It had felt like a secret, a name just for them. Hearing it now felt like a violation. “Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice dropping. “Why not? It suited you.” He finally moved, not to get past her, but to lean one shoulder against the doorframe. The pose was relaxed, belying the tension coiled in his frame. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his fingers tapped a restless rhythm on the ivory cane. “I need access to Eva’s collection. Specifically, her notes on the Ashen Grimoire.” Of course. It was never about her. It was always about the work, the information, the next move in the endless game he played in the city’s supernatural underbelly. She’d been a fool to ever think otherwise. “The Grimoire is a myth,” she said, falling back on academic dismissal. “Myths are just truths that have learned to hide,” he retorted smoothly. “And I have reason to believe it has surfaced. There are whispers. People are dying, Aurora. In ways that are… inventive.” She hated the part of her that felt a flicker of professional curiosity. Hated more that he knew it would be there. She glanced down at her own left wrist, at the faint, crescent-shaped scar there. A reminder of a different kind of danger, a purely human one she’d run from. Evan had been a monster of fists and words. Lucien was a monster of silences and shadows, and she wasn’t sure which was worse. “And what makes you think Eva’s notes on a fairy tale will help?” “Because Eva Griffith is the foremost expert on Abyssal texts in this hemisphere,” he said, his voice laced with a respect he rarely afforded anyone. “And I am out of time. Please.” The ‘please’ was what did it. It was uncharacteristic, a crack in the polished facade. She saw it then—a faint, dark smudge of exhaustion beneath his eyes, a tension in his jaw that his tailored perfection couldn’t quite conceal. Something had him running scared, and Lucien Moreau didn’t scare easily. With a sigh that felt like it was dredged up from her heels, she stepped back. It was an admission of defeat. The door swung open, granting him entry. He moved into the flat, his presence seeming to absorb what little light and space there was. He navigated the book stacks with an unnerving ease, his cane tapping softly on the floorboards. Ptolemy, finally sensing an intrusion, lifted his head. The cat’s ears went flat, and a low hiss vibrated in his chest. Lucien paused, his heterochromatic eyes fixing on the animal. He didn’t smile, just inclined his head in a small gesture of acknowledgement, as if greeting an equal. Ptolemy’s hissing subsided into a suspicious grumble. “Her filing system is still an offense against God and man, I see,” Lucien commented, his gaze sweeping over the piles of scrolls and leather-bound tomes. “It’s Eva’s system. It makes sense to her.” Rory closed the door but didn’t shoot the bolts. Not yet. Leaving them unlocked felt like a statement: *You are not staying*. He turned to face her, the narrow aisle between a tower of books and Eva’s desk forcing them into proximity. He was closer now than he’d been in the hall, close enough that she could see the fine platinum hairs at his temple, the individual black and gold flecks in his strange eyes. The urge to reach out, to touch his jaw and see if he was real, was a sudden, sharp ache in her chest. She curled her fingers into a fist. “You could have called,” she said, the accusation quiet but sharp. “And would you have answered?” She didn’t have a reply to that. Probably not. “That’s what I thought,” he said, his voice softer now. “This was better.” “Better for you.” “Aurora.” He said her name again, and this time it was different. Weary. He reached out, not to touch her, but to gently move a precariously balanced copy of *De Vermis Mysteriis* that was about to topple onto her shoulder. His fingers brushed the fabric of her t-shirt, and a jolt went through her, hot and unwelcome. She flinched away. His hand dropped. The hurt in his eyes was fleeting, but she saw it. Or maybe she imagined it. With him, she was never sure what was real and what was performance. “I am sorry,” he said. The quiet words stunned her more than a shout would have. “Sorry for what? For needing a book, or for disappearing for six months?” “For the latter,” he said, his gaze unwavering. “It was… unavoidable.” “Everything with you is unavoidable,” she shot back, the bitterness she’d tried to bury bubbling to the surface. “Or necessary. Or complicated. It’s never just a choice, is it? You never just choose.” The silence that followed was heavy, thick with everything they’d never said. It stretched between them, clinging to the dusty air. He looked at her, and for a moment, the impeccable fixer, the half-demon broker of secrets, was gone. In his place was just a man. A man with tired eyes and a past he wouldn’t share. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “the choice is made for you. To protect people.” Rory’s heart hammered against her ribs. *To protect people.* Was that it? Did he leave to protect *her*? The idea was both infuriating and devastatingly tempting to believe. She shook her head, trying to clear it. “The Grimoire,” she said, seizing the original topic like a lifeline. “What do you need to know?” He seemed to gratefully accept the change of subject. “Anything Eva found on its summoning rites. Its vulnerabilities. Who wrote it, and more importantly, who they wrote it for.” It was a huge ask. Hours of work, sifting through Eva’s cryptic cross-references and colour-coded chaos. It meant letting him stay. It meant being near him, breathing the same air, pretending that her world hadn’t just been fractured all over again. She walked past him, deliberately not touching him, and went to the large oak filing cabinet that was the closest thing to an organizational system in the flat. Her hand trembled slightly as she pulled open a drawer labeled *Abyssals & Their Discontents*. “Fine,” she said, not looking at him. “I’ll help you look. But Lucien?” She felt him turn toward her. “When you find what you need,” she said, finally meeting his gaze over her shoulder, “you leave. And this time, you don’t come back.” He didn’t answer. He just watched her, his expression unreadable, and in the amber and black depths of his eyes, she saw the reflection of a thousand unspoken things, a history that was still being written, whether she wanted it to be or not.