Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR6RPQRASR8RKN9DHBABH2

The third deadbolt clicked home with a solid thunk that usually settled Rory's nerves like sediment in a wine glass, but the knocking—three sharp, authoritative raps against the scarred wood—had already sent her pulse stuttering into her throat. She counted to five in Welsh, the way her mother had taught her to ward off panic, her palm flat against the door's paint-peeled surface. Through the fisheye lens of the peephole, the hallway distorted into a funhouse warping of beige walls and the curry house's exhaust steam. But she knew the silhouette. The uncompromising vertical line of the posture. The charcoal wool of the suit coat, dampening at the shoulders despite the June drizzle. The flash of ivory where his fingers gripped the cane handle. She shouldn't open it. She knew better than to open doors for ghosts. But her fingers were already working the locks. "Lucien." His name escaped before she could armor it, raw and exposed. Six weeks, four days, and seventeen hours since she'd walked barefoot through Fitzrovia at dawn, carrying her heels and her shredded dignity. The memory still burned—his sheets tangled and cooling, the distance in his heterochromatic eyes when he'd told her, cold as marble, that she was a liability his bloodline couldn't afford. "Rory." He didn't smile. The amber iris—his left eye—caught the sallow glow of the hallway bulb, warm and deceptive as honey. The right eye, the demonic one, remained absolute black, drinking in the light. Rain had begun to bead on his platinum hair, slicked back with the precision of a man who controlled every variable, yet he made no move to wipe it away. Demons didn't shiver. They didn't fidget. Ptolemy materialized at her ankles, the tabby's hackles rising in a ridge of orange and black. The cat's growl was low, subsonic, a vibration that traveled up Rory's calves. Animals always knew. Even when the woman didn't want to admit she could still taste him—smoke and bergamot—on the back of her tongue. "You can't be here," Rory said. She gripped the doorframe with her left hand, the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist burning white against her skin. Cardiff. Age seven. A broken bottle of Irn-Bru and stitches that her father had paid for in silence. She locked her elbow to keep her hand from trembling. "I am here," Lucien said. His accent curled around the vowels, French elegance draped over London consonants. He lifted the cane slightly, ivory gleaming like a knucklebone in the dim light. "May I come in, or shall we discuss your friend Eva's research into Avarosian summoning circles in a hallway where the curry house boys might overhear?" The chill that swept Rory's spine had nothing to do with the draft from the stairwell. She glanced back at the flat—Eva's flat, cramped and chaotic, every surface colonized by open grimoires and scrolls weighted down with half-finished mugs of tea. Research that could get a mundane arrested, or a woman killed, in the circles Lucien frequented. She stepped aside. The smell hit him first as he entered—ajwain and cardamom from the restaurant below, mingling with old paper and the ozone tang of Eva's laptop chargers. Lucien had to turn sideways to clear the doorframe, his shoulders spanning the width of the jamb. At five-eleven, he wasn't towering, but he occupied space differently than humans did, as though gravity owed him a favor. The cane tapped once against the floorboards, the sound muffled by the threadbare rug Eva had salvaged from a skip. Rory secured the three deadbolts with mechanical efficiency, her back to him, hyperaware of his gaze tracking the movement—the first bolt, the second, the third. Safety rituals. Habits she'd imported from Cardiff along with her accent and her fear of raised voices. When she turned, he was already assessing the room with the dispassionate attention of a broker cataloging assets, though his left hand—the one not holding the cane—twitched at his side. He navigated the labyrinth of Eva's obsession with the sure-footedness of a man used to dodging pitfalls. His gaze lingered on a scroll unspooling across the radiator—Avarosian script, she realized with a jolt, the same script he'd claimed was tattooed into the lining of his lungs, binding him to his father's realm. He didn't touch it. He respected boundaries here, in this shrine to knowledge that could unmake him. "Eva's in Camden," Rory said, the words too loud in the small space. She crossed her arms over her chest, creating a barrier. Her black hair, still damp from her own shower earlier, fell forward to curtain her bright blue eyes. "Chasing a dryad." "I know." He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a silk handkerchief—monogrammed, absurdly expensive—to dab at the rain on his temples. "I didn't come for Eva." "Then why?" The question fragmented between them like glass. Six weeks ago, she had traced the line of his jaw in the dark, marveling at the contrast of his beauty against the danger she'd sensed coiled beneath. In the morning, he had sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in exactly this shade of charcoal, and told her that proximity to him was a death sentence written in Avarosian script. *You're human, Aurora. You break. I break things.* She had thrown his own shirt at him, the buttons scattering, and fled. Now, Lucien's jaw worked. He looked exhausted, shadows pooling beneath the amber eye in a way that suggested he hadn't slept in days. Demons didn't need sleep. Something was wrong. "There's a contract," he said quietly. He moved toward the kitchenette, navigating around a stack of books on Celtic protective rites with practiced ease. "Circulating in the Lower Market. A bounty on a human woman. Pre-Law background, Cardiff native, currently residing above a bar in Soho. The contractor wants her alive initially, for questioning. After that..." He let the sentence dangle, his black eye fixed on her face. Rory's blood turned to mercury, heavy and cold. "Evan." It couldn't be anyone else. Her ex had resources, hatred, and a memory like a steel trap. "He's finally decided to finish what he started in Cardiff." "Not Evan." Lucien was close now, close enough that she could see the individual platinum hairs at his temple, the way his throat moved when he swallowed. "The contract is in my name, Rory. Or rather, the name I used to use in Marseille. Someone knows about us. They know that threatening you is the only way to control me." Rory's arms dropped to her sides. "There is no 'us.' You made that clear." "I lied." The words cracked like a whip. He took another step, bridging the distance until she felt the heat of him—or the illusion of heat, demon biology being what it was—against her palms. "I told you I was dangerous to keep you safe. I told you to run because the alternative was showing you exactly how deep the Avarosian blood runs in my veins, and I was terrified, Rory, I was *terrified* that if you saw that beast, you would look at me the way you're looking at me now. Like I'm a stranger." Ptolemy yowled from atop the refrigerator, a banshee wail of warning. But Rory wasn't looking at him like he was a stranger. She was seeing the Lucien who had carried her groceries up four flights to the flat above Silas' bar when she'd twisted her ankle delivering for Golden Empress. The Lucien who had quoted Welsh poetry to her in bed—*Nid cariad mohono, ond cythraul*—laughing at her shock that the French fixer spoke her grandmother's tongue. The man beneath the demon. "You left," she said, her voice barely audible above the curry house's extraction fan rattling below. "To protect you." "You broke my heart." "I know." His hand lifted, trembling slightly, the fingers long and elegant and tipped with the potential for claws she knew he could manifest. But when he touched her, it was with the pad of his thumb against the crescent scar on her left wrist, tracing the white line with a reverence that made her breath hitch. "I know, Rory. And I will carry that fracture in my own chest until you decide whether to let me heal it or drive the blade in deeper." His cane leaned against the counter, abandoned. Outside, Brick Lane roared with the evening rush, buses spewing diesel and rain against the windows. But inside Eva's cluttered sanctuary, with grimoires stacked like walls around them, the world reduced to the amber and black of his eyes, the smoke and rain of his skin. Rory didn't move. She let him hold her wrist, his thumb fluttering against her pulse point. "You said I was fragile." "You are," Lucien whispered. "You are fragile and brilliant and you heal stronger at the broken places. I watched you survive Evan. I watched you build a life here, with your deliveries and your quiet nights and your three deadbolts. I thought if I removed myself, you would have peace." "And now?" "Now I find I am a selfish creature after all." His forehead touched hers, a benediction and a burden. "Let me stand between you and the dark, Rory. Not because I'm strong, but because you make me want to be better than my blood." The amber eye closed. The black one remained open, guarding, wary. But his mouth found hers with a gentleness that contradicted every weapon he carried, every lie he'd told in his thirty-two years of half-breathing. It tasted of rain and Marseille sunlight and the sharp copper of old fear dissolving. Rory's fingers curled into the lapels of his charcoal suit, pulling him closer, anchoring herself in the storm she had tried to outrun. The kiss deepened, desperation threading through gentleness. His hand slid from her wrist to her waist, spanning her ribs with a possession that didn't demand but offered shelter. She met him, arching into the charcoal-dark safety of his arms, the scar on her wrist pressed against his heart—a crescent moon meeting a solar eclipse. Outside, London raged. But the three deadbolts held, and for the first time in six weeks, Rory Carter didn't feel the need to check them.