Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR1XDH6T4P9Y4SN6X3R5YC

The scent of turmeric and frying cumin crept up through the floorboards, a permanent feature of life above a curry house on Brick Lane. Rory barely noticed it anymore. She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by precarious towers of Eva’s books, a lukewarm mug of tea forgotten beside her. Ptolemy, a marmalade cannonball of a cat, was a warm, purring weight in her lap. She was trying to decipher a passage in a faded grimoire, its Latin dense and archaic, when the knock came. It wasn’t Eva’s knock—a frantic, impatient volley—but three distinct, measured raps against the heavy wood of the flat’s door. Ptolemy’s purr cut off with a flick of his ears. Rory’s shoulders tensed. No one knocked like that. No one she knew, anyway. She gently nudged the cat from her lap and rose, her socked feet silent on the worn rug. She peered through the peephole, but the bulb in the landing was out again. Nothing but a distorted silhouette. Her hand went to the deadbolts, all three of them. A legacy of Eva’s paranoia, but a comfort Rory had come to appreciate. She slid the first bolt back. The heavy chunk of metal felt loud in the quiet flat. The second followed. On the third, she paused, a knot of unease tightening in her stomach. She drew a breath and pulled the door inward just enough to see. And the world tilted. Lucien Moreau stood on the threshold. Rain beaded on the shoulders of his tailored charcoal suit, glistening like tiny jewels under the dim light filtering up from the street. His platinum blond hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place despite the drizzle. He leaned casually on an ivory-handled cane, the picture of unnerving elegance. He looked exactly the same. That was the first, cruelest blow. He hadn’t aged a day since she’d last seen him, six months ago, walking away from her without a backward glance. The same sharp cheekbones, the same wry curl to his lips that wasn’t quite a smile. And the eyes. One, the warm, liquid color of amber. The other, a flat, depthless black. They were fixed on her, and Rory felt them like a physical touch, pinning her in place. “Aurora,” he said. His voice was a low timbre, the faint trace of his Marseille accent sanding the edges off her name. It was the voice that had once whispered promises against her skin, and her heart gave a painful, rebellious kick against her ribs. “Lucien.” She kept her own voice flat, a wall of ice she frantically tried to erect. “What are you doing here?” “A charming welcome, as always.” He offered that ghost of a smile. “May I come in? It’s rather damp out here.” Her immediate, visceral instinct was to slam the door in his perfectly composed face. To shoot all three bolts home and lean against the wood until her heart stopped trying to claw its way out of her chest. But her body wouldn’t obey. Her fingers were numb where they gripped the edge of the door. “No,” she managed. The word felt thin. His smile didn’t falter, but something shifted in his mismatched eyes. A flicker of… not impatience, but resolve. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.” “Everything with you is important, Lucien. Usually to you.” The bitterness tasted like acid on her tongue. It was real. She clung to it. He took a half-step forward, and she instinctively stepped back. He was close enough now that she could smell him. Sandalwood and something else, something sharp and clean like ozone after a storm. It was his scent. The scent of her sheets for three intoxicating months, and the scent of the empty space beside her for six long ones. She absently rubbed the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a nervous habit. “This is different,” he said, his voice dropping lower, more serious. “This concerns you.” “I’m not in the game anymore,” she snapped. “I deliver noodles, Lucien. I try to read Eva’s ridiculous books and avoid trouble. The last thing I need is you on my doorstep, bringing it with you.” “The trouble has a way of finding people, Aurora. Whether they work in my world or at the Golden Empress.” The mention of her job was a subtle, deliberate jab. A reminder that he knew things. He always knew things. He was a broker of secrets, after all. It was how he made his living, and how he’d shattered hers. “Go away, Luc.” The old nickname slipped out, a traitor. She hated herself for it. He ignored it. His gaze dropped for a fraction of a second to her hand on the door, then back to her face. “There’s a contract. A bounty. For an artifact called the Chronos Key.” Rory’s blood went cold. She kept her expression blank, a mask of indifference she’d perfected long ago. “Never heard of it.” “Don’t lie to me,” he said, his voice soft, but with an edge of steel that sliced through her defenses. “I know you have. I know you were with Eva when she acquired it. And I know the people looking for it are not the sort to ask nicely twice.” His amber eye seemed to glow with an inner light. “They’re paying in souls, Aurora. And they’re starting their search in this part of London.” Her mind raced. The Chronos Key. Eva had brought it back from a dig in Egypt a month ago—a strange, gear-like object that hummed with a low energy. It was stashed in a lead-lined box under a loose floorboard in the bedroom. Eva had been obsessively researching it, convinced it was more than just a relic. And Lucien knew. Of course he knew. She hated the position he was putting her in. Hated that he could waltz back into her life with a crisis only he could deliver, forcing her to need him. “Why are you telling me this? Last I checked, we weren’t friends.” The words hung in the air between them, heavy and sharp. For the first time, a genuine emotion broke through his placid exterior. A shadow of hurt, of regret, passed over his features so quickly she might have imagined it. “No,” he conceded quietly. “We are not. But I still have no wish to see you harmed.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice a murmur meant only for her. “I came to warn you. To offer my help.” “Your help,” she repeated, the words a hollow echo. She let out a short, humorless laugh. “Your help comes with a price. It always does.” “And you think facing the Circle of Thorns alone will be cheaper?” The name hit her like a punch to the gut. The Circle of Thorns. A cabal of necromancers and blood mages who collected powerful artifacts, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. She had only heard whispers about them, grim tales told in hushed tones in the shadowy corners of the supernatural world she tried so desperately to leave behind. Fear, cold and sharp, pierced through the armor of her anger. This was bigger than a simple चोरी. This was death walking up to their door. To her door. Her resolve crumbled. She looked at him, really looked at him—at the stark lines of his face, the quiet intensity in his gaze, the way he stood as if he were the only solid thing in a dissolving world. He was dangerous. He was heartbreak and betrayal and sleepless nights. But right now, standing in the poorly lit hallway of a Brick Lane tenement, he was also her only chance. The fight went out of her in a long, shuddering sigh. Her knuckles, white against the door, relaxed. “Fine,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she focused on the ivory head of his cane, a carved wolf with garnet chips for eyes. She remembered tracing its lines with her fingertips one night, sitting beside him in front of a fire. The memory was a fresh stab of pain. She pulled the door open wider and stepped back into the cramped, book-choked confines of the flat. The space suddenly felt impossibly small. Lucien moved across the threshold with a fluid, silent grace that was almost predatory. He brought the scent of rain and sandalwood and trouble in with him. Ptolemy, who had been watching from his perch on a stack of encyclopedias, let out a low, guttural hiss. Lucien’s mismatched eyes flickered towards the cat, a flicker of amusement touching his lips. He paused, his expensive leather shoes looking absurdly out of place on Eva's threadbare welcome mat. He looked at her, his expression unreadable. “Thank you, Aurora,” he said softly. Rory just wrapped her arms around herself, a futile defense against the cold that had nothing to do with the damp air he’d let in. “Don’t thank me yet,” she said, her bright blue eyes finally rising to meet his. “You haven’t told me the price.”