Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNEZZDAA34Q2G0FKA6VKD1H

The knock came at half past ten — too late for deliveries, too early for neighbours with complaints. Aurora set down her coffee mug and crossed the cramped living room, Ptolemy winding between her ankles in protest at the disturbance. Three deadbolts. She undid them one by one, the familiar ritual of Eva's security second nature after three months of crashing on the sofa bed. The door swung open, and the air left her lungs. Lucien stood in the hallway lighting, a vision in charcoal wool and immaculate tailoring, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane. His platinum hair was slicked back as always, every strand in its precise place. But it was his eyes that stopped her breath — the amber one catching the warm light from the corridor, the black one fixed on her with an intensity that hadn't dimmed. "Rory." Her name in his voice, that velvet roll of the r, undid something in her chest. She hadn't heard it in four months. She'd told herself she didn't want to. "What are you doing here?" "May I come in?" The question was polite, controlled, as if he weren't standing at the door of a flat above a curry house in East London, as if the last time she'd seen him hadn't been in the aftermath of the mess with the Ashworth circle, as if he hadn't kissed her in the alley behind Silas' bar and then vanished for weeks until the silence became its own answer. "No." The word came out sharper than she intended. Or perhaps exactly as sharp as she intended. "You don't get to show up unannounced and ask to come in." He didn't flinch. Of course he didn't. Lucien Moreau had survived demon courts and human politics and whatever complicated thing he was — half of something most people didn't believe existed. A refusal was nothing to him. "Then I'll stand here." He tilted his head, and the amber eye seemed to catch fire. "You look tired." "People usually do at half ten at night." "You look beautiful." The compliment landed like a punch. Aurora stepped back, arms crossing over her chest, suddenly aware of her paint-stained jumper and the leggings she'd been wearing since that morning. She hadn't dressed for visitors. She hadn't dressed for him. "You didn't answer my question." "I know where you live," he said, as if that explained anything. When she stared at him, he continued, "I've known for weeks. I wasn't sure if you'd want to see me." "And now you decided to find out by showing up on my friend's doorstep?" "I decided to find out by showing up." He shifted his weight, and for the first time, she saw the flicker of uncertainty in him — a slight tension in his jaw, a microscopic relaxation of his shoulders that meant he was preparing for rejection. "I apologize for the method." "You apologize." "I mean it." Aurora laughed, a brittle sound that surprised even her. "You mean it. That's good. That's really good, Lucien. Do you know what would have been better? A phone call. A letter. A carrier pigeon. Anything except—" She gestured at him, at the perfect suit, the perfect hair, the perfect way he stood there like he had every right to be in her doorway. "This." "I called. You didn't answer." "Because I changed my number." "I know." "Then you could have—" "Sent a message through channels I know you'd intercept? Asked Silas? Called in favours with the people who owe me?" He shook his head slowly. "I didn't want to come to you through machinery, Rory. I wanted to see your face." Something in her cracked. She hated it — the way her eyes burned, the way her throat tightened. Four months of telling herself she'd dodged a bullet, that whatever had been building between them was just proximity and danger and the particular intimacy of surviving impossible things together. Four months of waking up in Eva's cramped flat and not thinking about amber eyes and the way his hand had felt cupping her face in that alley. "Why?" The word came out small. "Why now? Why here?" Lucien was quiet for a moment. In the silence, she heard the muffled sounds of the curry house below — pots clattering, the distant murmur of customers. Ptolemy wound around her ankle again, oblivious to the tension, and she wondered if she could simply close the door, lock the three deadbolts, and pretend this had never happened. But she wouldn't. She knew she wouldn't. That was the problem. "There was a job," he said finally. "Information gathering. A nest of lesser demons operating out of a warehouse in Limehouse. I handled it." "Good for you." "But while I was there, I found something. A record. A name." He paused, and his black eye seemed to darken. "Your ex. Evan." The name hit her like ice water. She hadn't heard it spoken aloud in months — had spent years building walls between herself and the memory of his hands, his voice, the slow suffocation of loving someone who treated her like property. She'd left Cardiff because of Evan. She'd fled to London because of Evan. She'd changed her name, her number, her entire life because of Evan. "What about him?" "He was there. At the warehouse. I don't know how he's connected to the demon operation, but he was there, and he's still in London, and—" Lucien stopped, his jaw tightening. "I should have told you sooner. I should have found a way to contact you properly. But I needed to see you first. To make sure you were safe." "I'm not safe." The words came out automatic, the defence mechanism she'd built in Cardiff. "I'm never safe. That's the whole point, isn't it? That's why people like you—" "People like me what?" "Deal in information. Sell it to the highest bidder. Show up at people's doors at half ten at night because they think they know what's best." She was shaking now, she realized. Fine tremors running through her hands. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to disappear for months and then come back with information about my abusive ex and expect me to fall into your arms." "I don't expect anything." "Then what do you want?" The question hung between them. Lucien looked at her — really looked, with both eyes, the amber and the black — and for a moment, the mask slipped. She saw the exhaustion beneath the polish, the worry carved into the lines around his mouth. He looked older than thirty-two. He looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. "I want," he said slowly, "to stop dreaming about you. I want to stop waking up in my flat in Shoreditch and reaching for a space where you should be. I want—" He broke off, laughed softly, a sound she'd never heard from him before. Defeated. Human. "I want to stop pretending I don't care whether you hate me." The confession cracked through her defences like a battering ram. Aurora felt her hands unclench, felt the tight fist around her heart loosen just slightly. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to slam the door and lock it and never see him again. But she couldn't, and they both knew it. "I don't hate you," she said quietly. "That's the worst part." Lucien closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was something raw in his expression — something that made him look less like the impeccably dressed fixer and more like a man standing in a doorway, hoping. "May I come in now?" Aurora looked at him — at the man she'd been trying to forget, the man who'd kissed her like she mattered and then vanished like she didn't, the man who'd just travelled across London to tell her that her past had found her again. She thought about the three deadbolts. She thought about Eva's books scattered across every surface, the research notes for the case they'd been working before everything fell apart. She thought about the way her heart beat faster when he was near, even after everything. She stepped aside. The door closed behind him, and she reached up to touch his face without thinking, her thumb brushing the sharp line of his cheekbone. He leaned into her touch, and his eyes fluttered closed, and for a moment, they were just two people standing in a cramped flat above a curry house, pretending the world outside didn't exist. "I've missed you," she whispered. "I know." His voice was rough. "I've missed you too." And then his mouth was on hers, and the four months of silence collapsed into nothing, and she decided — just for tonight — to stop asking questions and start believing in the possibility of something other than running.