AI The third deadbolt slid back with a heavy clunk. Aurora Carter paused, her hand hovering over the doorknob. There was only silence from the other side now, a silence that felt heavier than the three separate locks she’d just undone. Eva was away on a research trip to Edinburgh, and no one else had any reason to be here. Except, perhaps, one person.
She pulled the door open a cautious few inches, the chain latch still engaged.
He filled the narrow frame of the doorway, his silhouette sharp against the muted yellow glow of the Brick Lane streetlamp. Lucien Moreau. Dressed, as always, in a charcoal suit so impeccably tailored it looked like it had been woven onto him . The platinum blond hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place despite the faint drizzle clinging to the evening air. And in his right hand, the familiar ivory handle of his cane gleamed.
For a long moment, they just looked at each other through the crack. His heterochromatic eyes—one a warm, predatory amber, the other a bottomless black—held hers. She saw no surprise in them. He’d known she’d be here.
“Rory,” he said. Her name was soft on his tongue, a quiet contrast to the London traffic humming distantly below.
“Lucien.” Her own voice was flat, a practiced neutrality she’d perfected during her Pre-Law days. It was a shield. “Eva’s not here.”
“I know.” He didn’t smile . “I came to see you.”
The admission hung between them, simple and dangerous. Aurora’s fingers tightened on the edge of the door. The small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a relic from a fall off a garden wall in Cardiff, seemed to pulse with a phantom ache. The last time they’d spoken, it had been in this very flat, the air thick with things said and things left screamingly unsaid. He’d asked for something she couldn’t give, not then, maybe not ever. And she had told him to leave.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked, stalling .
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “I make it my business to know things. Especially things that concern you.” His gaze flicked past her, into the cluttered flat. “May I come in? It’s starting to rain in earnest.”
It was a lie. The drizzle was barely a mist. But it was a polite lie, an offering of a normal excuse for an profoundly abnormal situation. Aurora hesitated, her mind racing through the out-of-the-box solutions it was known for, and finding none that didn’t end with her slamming the door or letting him in. With a sigh that felt like a surrender, she slid the chain free and opened the door fully.
“Fine. But wipe your feet. Eva’s fussy about the carpets.”
He stepped inside, and the flat seemed to shrink around his presence. He meticulously wiped the soles of his polished shoes on the worn doormat, a gesture of such mundane civility it was almost jarring. He leaned his cane against the wall by the door, and Aurora’s eyes tracked the movement. She knew what was concealed within that elegant piece of wood. Knew the lethal precision of the man who carried it.
He took in the room: the towers of books threatening to topple from every surface, the scrolls unfurled across the small dining table, the faint, perpetual scent of old paper and turmeric from the restaurant below. Ptolemy, Eva’s tabby cat, uncurled from a nest of parchment on the sofa, stretched, and then trotted over to wind himself figure-eights around Lucien’s ankles, purring like a small engine.
“Traitor,” Aurora muttered under her breath.
Lucien bent down, scratching the cat behind its ears with a surprising gentleness. “He remembers who brings the expensive salmon.” He straightened up, his amber eye catching the lamplight. “You’re staying here while Eva is away?”
“It’s quieter than my place above Silas’s bar,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She was still in her delivery uniform—a dark t-shirt and jeans—and felt acutely underdressed next to his sartorial perfection. “What do you want, Lucien?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he walked slowly towards the table, his gaze scanning the titles of the books. His fingers, long and elegant, hovered over a cracked leather spine but didn’t touch. He had a respect for knowledge, she’d learned that much about him.
“There is… a situation,” he began, his voice low . “A delicate matter involving a client. It requires a particular kind of insight. Your kind of insight.”
“My insight?” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “You mean my ‘cool-headed, out-of-the-box thinking’? I’m a delivery driver, Lucien. I bring people their sweet and sour pork. I’m not in your world.”
“Aren’t you?” He turned to face her fully, and the intensity in his mismatched eyes pinned her to the spot. “You have been since the moment you walked away from that life in Cardiff. Since the moment you came to London. This city has a underside, Rory, and you’ve been living on its edge whether you admit it or not.”
He took a step closer. The air grew thick, charged with the memory of their last encounter . She could smell his cologne, something clean and sharp like bergamot and ozone, a scent that had haunted her for weeks after he’d left.
“I told you I was done,” she said, her voice quieter now, the bravado fading . “After the thing with the Smuggler’s Guild… I can’t do that again. I won’t.”
“This isn’t about the Guild. This is about a girl. A human girl, like you. She’s missing. Her family can’t go to the police for… reasons. They came to me.” He paused, letting the implication hang in the air. “I need someone who can think like she would think. Someone who understands the fear of being in over their head. Someone with a conscience I, frankly, lack.”
It was a calculated appeal, and it was working . He knew her Achilles’ heel—a stubborn, frustrating need to help, a relic from her mother’s nurturing nature that had survived her father’s ruthless logic and Evan’s abuse. He was using it against her.
“Why now?” she whispered, looking away from his penetrating gaze, focusing instead on a crack in the plaster near the ceiling. “Why come to me now, after all these weeks?”
He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped of its usual polished veneer, raw and quieter than she’d ever heard it.
“Because I have tried to forget the sound of your voice, Aurora Carter. I have tried to forget the way you look at a problem, as if you can see all the hidden gears turning. I have tried, and I have failed.” He took another step, closing the distance between them until she could feel the warmth radiating from him. “So I decided to stop trying.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She dared to look at him again. The amber eye was molten gold, burning with a heat that had nothing to do with his demonic heritage and everything to do with the man. The black eye was an abyss, promising secrets and dangers she knew she should run from. The attraction was a live wire between them, a force that had always been there, humming beneath the surface of every conversation, every shared glance. It was the reason their parting had been so agonizing. The hurt was there, too—a fresh wound from his absence, an older bruise from his demand for a commitment to a world she feared.
“You can’t just say things like that,” she said, her own voice unsteady . “You can’t show up here and… and use a missing girl to tell me you missed me.”
“It’s not a tactic, Rory. It’s the truth. The job is real. My reason for bringing it to you is… complicated.” He lifted a hand, slowly , as if approaching a skittish animal . His fingertips brushed a strand of her straight black hair away from her face, the contact sending a jolt through her system. His touch was warm. Surprisingly human. “I am not a good man. You have always known this. But my regard for you is the truest thing I possess.”
Tears she hadn’t known she was holding back pricked at the corners of her bright blue eyes. She was angry at him for his timing, for his brutal honesty, for the way his mere presence unraveled the careful peace she’d built. But the wall around her heart, the one she’d reinforced after Evan, after the terrifying brush with the Smuggler’s Guild, was cracking under the weight of his words .
“Tell me about the girl,” she said finally, the words a surrender and an accusation .
A shadow of relief crossed his features. He didn’t smile , but the tension in his jaw eased slightly . His hand fell back to his side.
“Her name is Elara ,” he began, his voice returning to its usual, composed cadence, though it remained soft. “She worked as a conservator at the British Museum. She disappeared three nights ago from a restricted section of the library. The only thing out of place was a single book left open on a desk. A bestiary. And it was open to an entry on a creature from Avaros.”
Aurora’s blood ran cold . Avaros. His father’s realm. This was no ordinary missing persons case. This was a thread pulled from the fabric of his own tangled history, and he was handing her the other end. She looked from his serious face to the chaotic , safe, mundane mess of Eva’s flat, and knew with a terrifying certainty that her quiet life was once again over. The door had been opened , and Lucien Moreau had walked back in, bringing all the complication, danger, and undeniable allure of the shadows with him.