Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR1TEVC83B4C69NB1PEQ5M

The knock came at half past eleven on a Thursday night, the kind of hour that made Rory's stomach clench before she even looked through the peephole. She'd learned to be cautious in London. Three deadbolts bought some peace of mind, though not much. She squinted through the glass and felt her breath catch. Lucien stood in the hallway outside Eva's flat, still in his charcoal suit despite the late hour, the ivory handle of his cane catching the amber glow of the corridor light. His platinum hair was slightly mussed, which meant something had rattled him. Rory had learned to read those small tells over the months they'd worked together before everything went sideways. She didn't open the door. "I know you're there," he called through the wood, his Marseille accent clipping the words just slightly. "I can hear your breathing." "Go away, Luc." "Not until we talk." "We don't have anything to talk about." But even as she said it, Rory's hand was moving to the first deadbolt, muscle memory overriding the part of her brain that insisted this was a terrible idea. The part that remembered how it had ended — the argument in his apartment in Shoreditch, the way his heterochromatic eyes had gone cold when she'd accused him of lying about his connections to the thing they'd been hunting. The silence that followed, thick and suffocating. The bolt turned with a click. "This is a mistake," she muttered, unlatching the second lock. "Probably," Lucien agreed from the other side. "But a necessary one." The third bolt gave way, and Rory pulled open the door before she could second-guess herself. The hallway air rushed in, carrying the ghost of curry spices from downstairs and something else — something that smelled like cologne and rain and the specific Lucien-ness she'd been trying not to think about for the past six weeks. He looked tired. Not disheveled, never that — his suit was impeccable, not a thread out of place — but tired in the way that suggested he hadn't slept properly in days. The black of his left eye seemed darker than she remembered, a void against the sharp amber of the right. "You can't just show up at people's flats at eleven at night," Rory said, but she stepped back anyway, an implicit invitation he didn't waste time accepting. She locked the door behind him with the same three deadbolts, though she wasn't entirely sure if she was locking him in or the rest of the world out. "I tried the restaurant first," Lucien said, leaning his cane against Eva's overstuffed bookshelf. The ivory handle gleamed among the spines of grimoires and research texts. "Yu-Fei said you'd left early. The bar was my second attempt, but Silas was less than forthcoming about your current whereabouts. Eva's flat seemed the logical choice." "How did you even—" "I know where your friend lives, Aurora." He used her full name, the one he only deployed when he was making a point. "I've known for months. I simply respected your privacy enough not to appear on her doorstep until circumstances became urgent." Rory crossed her arms. Ptolemy, Eva's tabby, had appeared in the kitchen doorway at the sound of his voice, regarding Lucien with the same suspicious intensity Rory was managing. At least the cat had good instincts. "What circumstances?" she asked. "What's happened?" "The Veil corruption you and I investigated together — the one you were convinced I was involved with — has accelerated." Lucien moved deeper into the flat, careful not to disturb the precarious stacks of books that covered nearly every surface. His cane made a soft sound against the hardwood. "It's spreading faster than anyone anticipated. Three locations in East London in the past week alone. The supernatural community is starting to notice, which means the human authorities won't be far behind." "That's not my problem anymore," Rory said, but her voice wavered. It was a lie and they both knew it. When you'd spent months chasing something, when you'd nearly died for it, it didn't stop being your problem just because you'd walked away from the person who'd helped you hunt it. Lucien turned to face her, and in the lamplight of Eva's cramped living room, she could see the shadows under his eyes more clearly. "Three people died in the latest breach." The words landed like a stone in her chest. "I didn't know," she whispered. "Of course you didn't. You've been avoiding me — and by extension, anyone who works with me, anyone who might bring me within your orbit." His voice wasn't cruel, which somehow made it worse. "But ignorance has an expiration date, and that date has passed." Rory sank onto the arm of Eva's sofa, the one that wasn't buried under books. Ptolemy jumped up and pressed against her legs, offering cat-based comfort that felt inadequate to the moment. "Why come to me? You have your contacts, your network. You don't need me." "I came to you," Lucien said slowly, as if choosing each word with deliberate care, "because you are the only person I trust to keep an open mind. The only person I trust at all, if I'm being precise." The admission hung between them, fraught with all the things they hadn't said before he'd left her apartment that night. The way she'd hurt him — that was clear now, in the careful distance he maintained, in the formality that had replaced the ease that used to exist between them. "Luc—" "I wasn't lying to you," he continued, moving to the window. He didn't look out at the street below, just stood with his hand on the frame, staring at the glass. "About my involvement with the Architect or whatever that thing called itself. I was protecting you, yes, but not in the way you thought. The less you knew about my family's connection to the Avarosian realms, the safer you were. And I botched the explanation badly enough to make you believe I was complicit. I've spent six weeks wishing I'd done that differently." Rory's throat felt tight. She'd spent those six weeks alternating between anger and regret, constructing arguments she'd never get to make, reliving the moment his eyes had gone shuttered. "I accused you of terrible things." "You were right to be suspicious. I was hiding things." He turned back to her, and the heterochromatic gaze was level, honest. "I'm still hiding things — I always will be, it's part of what I am. But I wasn't lying about what mattered. I wasn't lying about wanting to protect you. I wasn't lying about..." He trailed off, the words catching somewhere behind his teeth. "About what?" Rory asked quietly. Lucien's jaw worked. "I came here because I need your help. But also because I've been miserable without you, and I thought you should know that." The admission seemed to cost him something. "Even if you tell me to leave right now, even if you slam this door and throw the deadbolts and never want to see me again, I wanted you to know." Rory stood, moving toward him without quite deciding to. The space between them felt charged, like the air before a storm. "You can't just say things like that." "Why not?" "Because I've been miserable too," she said, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. "And that's not fair. You don't get to come here at eleven at night and make me have feelings about you after six weeks of successfully not having them." "I never made you have feelings," Lucien said softly. "They were always yours, same as mine are mine. We just spent some time pretending they didn't exist." Rory could feel the crescent scar on her wrist tingling — a phantom ache from her childhood, triggered by tension. She rubbed at it absently and watched understanding flicker across Lucien's face as he noticed the gesture. He'd always been attentive that way, always saw the small tells. "Tell me about the breaches," she heard herself say. "Tell me everything, and then we'll talk about what comes next." The relief in his expression was unmistakable. "There's a café near here. We could—" "No." Rory shook her head. "Here. Eva won't be back until morning, and Ptolemy has already accepted you. We'll talk here, and you can help me make sense of the research she's been accumulating. And then..." She paused, looking at him directly. "Then we figure out what we're doing." Lucien picked up his cane, leaning on it with a grace that suggested it was as much accessory as tool. "I was hoping you might say something like that." They settled at the kitchen table, surrounded by books and the lingering smell of curry, while Lucien laid out the details of the accelerating corruption. And if his fingers brushed hers once or twice while they sorted through Eva's meticulous notes, if the careful distance between them seemed to shrink with each passing hour, neither of them mentioned it. Not yet. But the night was long, and there were still so many things left unsaid.