Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF3WV8WP691BR81W2G8PT2

The first thing Aurora noticed was the sound of the deadbolts. Three of them, sliding back in sequence—the distinctive rhythm of Eva's paranoia, the one quirk she'd never managed to shake. The second thing she noticed was Ptolemy, who had been dozing on the back of the couch, suddenly rigid with his ears flat against his skull, a low growl vibrating in his throat. "Rory." Eva's voice came from somewhere behind her, tight with something that might have been warning. "Don't open it." But Aurora was already crossing the room, her bare feet silent on the worn carpet, her hand reaching for the handle. She told herself it was just curiosity. She told herself she hadn't spent three weeks wondering if he'd come looking, if the last words they'd exchanged had left the same bitter taste in his mouth that they'd left in hers. She told herself a lot of things in those three seconds before she pulled the door open. Lucien Moreau stood in the hallway like he owned the building, one hand resting on the head of his cane, the other loose at his side. The fluorescent light above him caught the platinum of his slicked-back hair and made his eyes seem to glow—amber and black, that unsettling asymmetry that had captivated her from the first moment she'd seen him across a crowded room in a club that didn't exist on any map. He was wearing charcoal, as always, the fabric impeccable, the cut highlighting shoulders that looked like they'd been built for suits rather than the other way around. Three weeks. Three weeks since she'd walked out of his apartment in Shoreditch without looking back. Three weeks since she'd told him she couldn't do this, couldn't be the woman who fell for a man whose family history included roasting souls over open flames in a dimension she'd never see. Three weeks of pretending she didn't check her phone every time it buzzed, hoping it was him, dreading it was him, hating herself for either response. "Rory." He said her name like a test, like he was checking to see if it still fit. "It's Aurora." The words came out sharper than she intended. Or perhaps exactly as sharp as she intended. "And how did you find me?" He tilted his head, a gesture that reminded her far too much of Ptolemy when the cat was deciding whether to purr or scratch. "You forget who I am. Finding people is rather the point of what I do." "This is my friend's flat." "Eva Ashworth. Twenty-seven. Works in records management at the Tower of London—not the tourist attraction, the actual repository. Childhood friend of yours from Cardiff. Sent you a plane ticket when you left your ex." A pause, those mismatched eyes flickering over her face. "She's also the reason you started running deliveries for Yu-Fei, isn't she? Put in a good word." Aurora's jaw tightened. "That's private." "Everything is private until it isn't." He didn't move from the doorway, but something in his posture shifted, a softening at the edges that made her chest ache. "May I come in?" "No." "Ptolemy seems to have already made up his mind." She glanced down. The cat had wound between her ankles and was now staring up at Lucien with an expression of profound suspicion, his tail lashing. "He hates everyone," Aurora said, but she didn't step back, didn't close the door. The hallway felt too small, the space between them charged with everything they hadn't said. "Even people who feed him premium salmon. He's a snob." "Reykjavik," Lucien said. "What?" "The salmon. It was Reykjavik, not the standard grocery brand. He preferred it, but he was too proud to show it." Aurora stared at him. "You fed my friend's cat?" "I fed *you*." His voice dropped, barely above a whisper, and suddenly the air felt thicker, harder to breathe. "I fed you, and you let me, and then you left." There it was. The accusation she deserved, wrapped in a voice that somehow made it sound like grief. "I had to leave." She heard herself say it, the words scraped from somewhere deep. "You know why." "I know what you *said*." He stepped closer, just one step, but it was enough to close the distance enough that she could smell his cologne—something expensive and understated, with a hint of something underneath that she'd never been able to name. Demon, maybe. Or just him. "What you *believed* might be different." "It doesn't matter what I believed. What matters is what you are." "And what am I, Rory?" She flinched at the name, at the way it sounded in his accent, the soft 'r' and the way he drew out the vowels. "A half-demon whose father—" "My father is a creature I have never met, who lives in a realm I cannot reach, and who has no more influence over my choices than the Queen has over the weather in Marseille." His eyes blazed, that amber one flaring bright. "I did not choose my lineage any more than you chose yours. The difference is, you have the luxury of pretending your blood is clean." "That isn't fair." "Life isn't fair." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Do you know what I remember, Rory? I remember you showing up at my club with a delivery for a woman who wasn't there. I remember you trying to bluff your way past my bouncer, all five-foot-six of righteous indignation. I remember the way you looked at me when I finally came out to see what the commotion was about—like I was a puzzle you couldn't solve." "You were. You are." "And yet you stayed. For months, you stayed." He reached out, slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. His fingers brushed the crescent scar on her left wrist—the one she'd told him came from a childhood accident, the one that was actually from Evan, from the night she'd finally gathered the courage to leave. "You stayed, and you let me in, and then you ran." "I didn't run." Her voice cracked. "I walked away. There's a difference." "Tell me." "I was scared." The admission cost her something, she could feel it leaving her body like water from a cracked vessel. "Not of you—well, yes of you, but not in the way you're thinking. I was scared of how much I felt. How fast it was happening. How easy it was to pretend that the world was normal when I was with you, even though it's not, it's never been normal, and I—" She stopped, breathing hard, her eyes burning. Lucien watched her, his expression unreadable. "And you what?" "I couldn't keep pretending." She looked up at him, let him see all of it—the fear, the want, the terrible hope she'd been trying to drown for three weeks. "You scare me, Lucien. Not because of what you are, but because of what I feel when I'm around you. It was easier to walk away than to wait for you to realize you didn't want me the way I wanted you." For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he raised his free hand—the one not gripping his cane—and touched her face, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone with a gentleness that made her knees weak. "You impossible woman," he murmured. "You absolute disaster of a human being. Do you think I came here because I wanted information? Do you think I tracked you down through three layers of misdirection and a warding that would have stopped anyone less determined because I was bored?" "I don't know why you came." "I came because I couldn't stop thinking about you. I came because every time I close my eyes, I see you standing in my kitchen at three in the morning, eating cereal out of the box because you claimed it was superior to any bowl. I came because—" He stopped, swallowed, and for the first time since she'd known him, Lucien Moreau looked uncertain. "I came because I don't know how to let you go, and I was hoping you might tell me to leave." Aurora's hand moved before she could stop it, rising to cover his where it rested against her cheek. His skin was warm, warmer than human, a heat that had nothing to do with fever. "You should leave," she whispered. "Should I?" "No." She pulled his hand away from her face but didn't let go, threading her fingers through his. "But you should stay, too. If you want. If you're sure." He stepped forward, and she stepped back, and together they crossed the threshold of Eva's flat, leaving the hallway and its fluorescent light behind. The door swung shut behind them with a soft click—neither of them noticed Ptolemy slinking out into the hall, mission accomplished, off to find somewhere warm to sleep. Somewhere inside the flat, a phone buzzed. Then another. Then a third, as Eva, checking her messages from work, realized that her three deadbolts had just been rendered completely pointless. But that was a problem for later. Right now, there was only Lucien, and Aurora, and all the things they'd left unsaid finally finding their way into the open air between them.