Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQYGR7BYX7V7FXCVKA3RMM

The knock came at half past eleven, three sharp raps against weathered wood that cut through the silence of the flat like a blade. Rory stiffened in her chair, the worn paperback she'd been reading slipping from her fingers. Ptolemy lifted his head from where he'd been sleeping on the cluttered desk, his tabby ears swiveling toward the door. The curry house below had closed an hour ago, and Eva wasn't due back from her shift at the hospital until morning. No one else knew this address—no one who mattered, anyway. Three more knocks. Harder this time. Impatient. She crossed the small space on silent feet, the floorboards protesting beneath her weight. Her hand found the first deadbolt, then the second, then the third—a habit born of paranoia that had kept her alive more than once. The chain she left in place as she pulled the door open a crack. "Merde. You've added another one." The voice—cultured, slightly rough at the edges, carrying that unmistakable French inflection—sent a jolt through her chest that she absolutely refused to acknowledge. She knew that voice. She'd spent six months trying to forget that voice. Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hallway, his platinum hair slicked back from his face, one amber eye and one black eye fixed on the gap between door and frame. He looked immaculate despite the hour, as though he'd simply stepped out of a boardroom rather than materialized on a Brick Lane doorstep at midnight. His tailored charcoal suit absorbed what little light the hallway's single bulb offered, and his ivory-handled cane hung from his wrist on a leather loop, its concealed blade mercifully hidden for once. "What the hell are you doing here?" The words came out harder than she'd intended. Good. Hard was safe. Hard kept the other things at bay. "May I come in?" "No." "Rory." Her name in his mouth sounded different than it did from anyone else—softer at the edges, like something precious he was trying not to damage. "Someone is trying to kill me." She laughed. She couldn't help it. The sound scraped out of her throat, brittle and sharp. "And you thought you'd bring that to my doorstep? You told me you handled your own problems." "I did. I do." His jaw tightened. "This is different." Ptolemy padded over and butted his head against her ankle, purring. The cat had always liked Lucien—had practically abandoned her the first time he'd visited, winding between his legs like they were old friends. Traitor. "Please," he added, and that single word carried more weight than it had any right to. Lucien Moreau didn't say please. Lucien Moreau dictated terms and watched people scramble to meet them. She closed the door, slipped the chain free, and pulled it open wide enough for him to enter. A mistake, probably. She'd made plenty of those where he was concerned. He stepped inside, his gaze sweeping the cramped space with professional assessment—the towers of books and scrolls, the papers pinned to every available surface, the single window overlooking the street. Ptolemy immediately twined around his legs, and Rory watched the man who'd broken something in her chest six months ago crouch down to scratch behind the cat's ears with genuine affection. "You've redecorated," he said, straightening. "I haven't. It's exactly the same." "Then perhaps it only feels smaller." The implication hung in the air between them. She'd felt it too—the way the flat had seemed to shrink in the weeks after he'd left, as though the walls were closing in on the space he'd once occupied. She moved to the kitchenette, putting distance between them. "Tea?" "Whiskey, if Eva has any." "She doesn't." Eva's only vices were research and the occasional overpriced latte. Rory reached for the bottle of cheap scotch she kept in the back of the cabinet behind a stack of old takeout menus—a hiding spot born of the same paranoia that had produced the deadbolts. She poured two fingers into a chipped mug and set it on the counter. "You're not getting a glass. You'll have to drink it like a civilized human being." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "I don't believe that's possible with this brand." "Then don't drink it." He picked up the mug anyway, his fingers wrapping around the ceramic. She watched his throat work as he swallowed, watched the way his heterochromatic eyes half-closed at the burn. She looked away. "Someone is trying to kill you," she repeated, folding her arms across her chest. "Who?" "A faction I thought I'd handled years ago. They've resurfaced." "Handled how?" "Does it matter?" "It matters if they're going to show up at my door next." She leaned against the counter, the edge biting into her lower back. "What did you do, Lucien?" The silence stretched between them, filled with the sounds of Brick Lane at night—distant traffic, the wail of a siren somewhere in the city, the hum of the curry house's old ventilation system. His thumb traced the rim of the mug, a gesture she recognized. He was buying time, choosing his words. "I acquired something they believe belongs to them." "Acquired." She let the word sit there, heavy with implication. "Stole, you mean." "Retrieved. It was taken from my family decades ago. I simply... relocated it." "And now they want it back." "Now they want my head on a pike as an example to anyone else who crosses them." He said it without inflection, as though discussing the weather. "I've handled the immediate threat, but they'll send others. I need somewhere to stay until I can arrange transport out of London." Rory stared at him. The audacity of it—the sheer, unmitigated gall—should have shocked her. It didn't. This was Lucien, after all. The man who'd walked into her life like he belonged there and walked out like he'd never been. "You have resources," she said carefully. "Safe houses. Contacts. People who owe you favors in every corner of this city. And you're asking to stay here? With me?" His jaw worked. "Yes." "Why?" "Because they won't look for me here." The answer should have stung. It didn't. She'd known what she was to him—what she'd always been. A useful convenience. A place to land. Someone who asked the right questions and didn't flinch at the answers. She'd known it even as she'd let herself fall anyway, let herself believe that maybe, just maybe, the things she'd seen in his eyes meant something more. "You left," she said. The words emerged quieter than she'd intended, stripped of their protective sharpness. Lucien set the mug on the counter between them. "I had no choice." "There's always a choice. You just didn't want to make it with me." "I left to protect you." The words cracked out of him, sharp and sudden, and something shifted in his face—the careful composure fracturing for just a moment before he pulled it back together. "The factions, the power struggles—I didn't want you caught in the crossfire. You were already running from one monster. I refused to hand you to another." "That wasn't your decision to make." "No." He met her gaze straight on, and she saw the thing she'd spent six months trying to unsee—the weight of everything he hadn't said, sitting there in the space between his carefully chosen words. "It wasn't. But I made it anyway, and I've had to live with it every day since." Rory's throat tightened. She turned away, busying herself with nothing—straightening a stack of papers that didn't need straightening, checking a window that was already locked. Ptolemy hopped onto the counter and began to investigate the abandoned mug of scotch, and she scooped him up without thinking, cradling him against her chest like armor. "Three deadbolts," Lucien said quietly. "You've been taking precautions." "I've always taken precautions." "You've added another. Since I left." She didn't answer. Didn't need to. He'd always been able to read her, to see the things she tried to hide. It was part of what had drawn them together in the first place—that ability to look at each other and see something familiar. Something broken in corresponding places. "The couch pulls out," she said finally. "Eva has sheets in the closet. And if you're staying, there are rules." "Name them." "No one else knows you're here. Not your contacts, not your associates, not anyone. You leave the flat only when absolutely necessary, and you tell me before you go." She turned back to face him. "And if this gets dangerous—if you bring trouble to this doorstep—you tell me immediately. No more protective silences. No more deciding what I need to know." Something shifted in his expression, and he inclined his head. A gesture of respect, maybe. Or surrender. "Agreed." She moved toward the hallway closet, still carrying Ptolemy, and pulled out a set of mismatched sheets. When she turned, Lucien was closer than she'd expected—not touching, but near enough that she could smell the sandalwood and smoke that clung to his clothes, near enough that she could see the faint lines of exhaustion around his eyes that his immaculate presentation couldn't quite hide. He reached out, slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. His fingers brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder, the touch feather-light. "I missed you, Rory. That isn't why I came, but it's true all the same." She stood frozen, the sheets pressed against her chest, the cat warm and solid between them. Her body remembered things her mind had tried to forget—the way his hands had felt on her skin, the way his voice had sounded in the dark, the way he'd said her name like a prayer and a curse in the same breath. "That's not fair," she whispered. "No." His hand fell back to his side. "It isn't." She thrust the sheets at him, and he took them, their fingers brushing in the exchange. A spark jumped between them—static from the dry winter air, nothing more—and she turned away before he could see whatever her face was doing. "Bathroom's at the end of the hall. Don't wake the neighbors." "Rory—" "Goodnight, Lucien." She crossed to her bedroom and closed the door behind her, leaning against it as though it could hold back everything she'd spent six months trying to bury. On the other side, she heard him moving around—the soft thud of his cane against the wall, the creak of the pull-out couch, the rustle of sheets being unfolded. Ptolemy squirmed in her arms, and she let him go. He darted back out into the main room, and she heard Lucien's low murmur as the cat presumably settled himself on the man's chest, exactly where he'd always preferred to sleep. She stayed against the door for a long time, listening to the sounds of him in her space again—wrong and right in equal measure, like a joint set poorly that had never quite healed. Tomorrow, she'd figure out what to do with him. Tomorrow, she'd rebuild the walls he'd just walked through like they were made of paper. Tonight, she let herself feel it—all of it. The anger. The hurt. The treacherous warmth that had sparked back to life the moment she'd opened the door. Tomorrow, she'd be sensible. Tonight, she just let herself miss him.