Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNF68ZZC3DW5CWVMX3XVE6D

The third deadbolt slid back with a heavy metallic *thunk* that seemed to echo in the sudden quiet of the hallway. Rory hadn’t been expecting anyone. Eva was out of town at a conference, and the only people who visited this flat were either terrified witnesses seeking her friend’s magical expertise or takeaway delivery drivers who always looked relieved to escape the claustrophobic, paper-filled maze. She opened the door a crack, the security chain still engaged, and the breath caught in her throat. He stood in the dim, turmeric-scented hallway of the curry house, looking as though he’d just stepped out of the pages of a different, more elegant story. Lucien Moreau. His platinum hair was perfectly slicked back, not a strand out of place despite the drizzle clinging to the shoulders of his charcoal suit. The sharp lines of his jacket seemed to defy the shabbiness of his surroundings. And his eyes. One was the warm, disconcerting amber she remembered, the other a pool of absolute black. They fixed on her through the narrow gap in the door, and a lifetime of unspoken words seemed to pass between them in that single, silent look. “Aurora,” he said. His voice was a low baritone that vibrated through the wood of the door, familiar and utterly unwelcome. He never called her Rory. Her own voice, when she found it, was tight. “Lucien.” She made no move to unhook the chain. “You’re lost. The demonic gentlemen’s club is several blocks over.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips, there and gone so fast she might have imagined it. “I need to speak with you.” “We said everything there was to say. The last time. As I recall, it ended with you calling me a ‘reckless liability’ and me telling you what you could do with your proprietary information.” The memory was a fresh bruise, even now. She’d trusted him. More than trusted him. And he’d treated her like a loose thread to be snipped from his impeccably tailored world. “Circumstances have changed,” he said, his gaze unwavering. He shifted his weight slightly, and the polished ivory handle of his cane gleamed under the weak hall light. She knew what was hidden inside that elegant prop. She’d seen him use it. “I don’t care. My circumstances haven’t changed. I’m busy.” She began to push the door shut. “It’s about Evan.” Her hand froze on the door. The name was a key, turning a lock deep inside her, releasing a cold dread that pooled in her stomach. Evan. Her past. The reason she’d fled Cardiff for the dubious sanctuary of London, for this flat above a curry house and a life of magical odd jobs. She hadn’t heard that name in over a year. “What about him?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “He’s in London. And he’s asking questions. The wrong kind of questions, directed at the wrong kind of people. People who talk to me.” Lucien’s heterochromatic eyes were serious, all traces of his usual detached amusement gone. “He’s not the boy you left in Cardiff, Aurora. He’s… connected.” The chain felt suddenly flimsy, a child’s toy against the reality he was describing. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. With a trembling hand, she slid the chain free and opened the door fully. He stepped inside, and the flat seemed to shrink around him. He was too large, too polished for this space. His presence sucked the air from the room, making the towers of books and scrolls feel like precarious ruins. Ptolemy, Eva’s fat tabby, uncurled from a nest of parchment on the sofa, gave Lucien a baleful look, and stalked off into the bedroom with his tail in the air. Even the cat knew he was trouble. Rory closed the door, engaging all three deadbolts again with a series of definitive clicks. The sound did nothing to quell her racing heart. She turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest. The small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist seemed to pulse, a souvenir from a simpler time, a childhood fall from a tree. It felt like a lifetime ago. “Start talking,” she said. He leaned his cane against a stack of grimoires and began to methodically remove his leather gloves, finger by finger. It was a maddeningly slow, deliberate act. “Evan has fallen in with a syndicate that deals in supernatural artifacts. Dark ones. They have… recruitment methods. They find people with specific hatreds and offer them power to settle scores.” “And he’s looking for me.” It wasn’t a question. The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality. Evan’s rage had always been a cold, possessive thing. Her leaving had been the ultimate insult, one his brittle ego could never withstand. “He is,” Lucien confirmed, tucking his gloves into his pocket. His mismatched eyes scanned her face, taking in what she couldn’t hide—the fear, the old hurt resurfacing. “He believes you took something that belonged to him. His property.” “I’m not a thing,” she shot back, the old defiance flaring. “I left. That’s all.” “You know that’s not how men like him see it. And now he has resources. Dangerous ones.” He took a step closer. The scent of him, sandalwood and something colder, like frost on stone, cut through the smells of old paper and spices. “You are not safe here.” “I have three deadbolts and a neighbour who practices defensive hexes. I’ll be fine.” The bravado sounded hollow even to her own ears. Another step. He was close enough now that she could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the perfect cut of his suit jacket. “Hexes will not stop what he has access to. This is not a neighbourhood dispute, Aurora. This is my world. And it is unforgiving.” “Your world,” she repeated, the words tasting like ash. “The one you so kindly informed me I was too much of a ‘liability’ to be a part of. Why are you here, Lucien? Really? To warn me? Out of the goodness of your half-demon heart?” His jaw tightened. For a moment, the polished facade cracked, and she saw a flash of something raw beneath it. Frustration. Anger. Something else. “We both said things that night.” “You said them. I just agreed and left.” The memory was a physical pain. The heat of the argument in his tastefully oppressive office, the way he’d shut down, walling himself off behind a mask of cold practicality. The way she’d walked out, her pride the only thing keeping her from crumbling. “I was trying to protect you,” he said, the words low and strained. “By pushing me away?” “By making you leave! This life… it grinds down anything good. Anything pure. It would have consumed you, Aurora. I saw it happening.” His amber eye seemed to glow with a faint inner light. The black one remained an abyss. She gave a bitter laugh. “You don’t get to decide what consumes me. You don’t get to make those choices for me. I wasn’t some precious object for you to put on a shelf to keep safe, Lucien. I was your…” She trailed off. They had never put a name to it. The late nights trading information, the effortless rhythm they’d found, the electric charge that arced between them whenever their hands accidentally brushed. It had been something. Until he decided it was nothing. “You were becoming my greatest vulnerability,” he finished for her, his voice barely a whisper. He looked away, his gaze sweeping over the chaotic room before returning to her, weighed down by a honesty she’d never heard from him before. “And I was yours. That is a luxury we cannot afford.” The truth of it hung in the air between them, stark and terrifying. The attraction that had drawn them together was the very thing that made them a threat to each other. In his world, attachment was a weakness to be exploited. The fight went out of her. The anger dissolved, leaving behind a weary ache. She uncrossed her arms, her shoulders slumping. “So what now? You deliver your warning and go back to your shadows? Leave me to wait for my obsessed ex-boyfriend and his new artifact-wielding friends to kick my door in?” He closed the final distance between them. He didn’t touch her, but his proximity was its own kind of contact, a warmth that radiated from him, a gravitational pull she had to consciously resist. “No,” he said, his voice firm. “Now. Properly.” His gaze dropped to her lips for a heartbeat, so fast she might have imagined it. “He will not touch you. I will make certain of it.” The air crackled. All the history, the hurt, the unsaid things, coalesced into that small space between their bodies. The cautious, pragmatic part of her brain screamed that this was a bad idea, that letting Lucien back in was just trading one kind of danger for another. But the rest of her, the part that remembered the thrill of working beside him, the part that had lain awake too many nights wondering what his skin would feel like under her fingertips, was tired of being pragmatic. She was tired of being scared. “Why?” she asked, her own voice soft now. “Why now, after all this time?” He finally raised a hand, but didn’t touch her. He simply hovered his fingers near her cheek, close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin. “Because I was a fool,” he confessed, the admission seeming to cost him something. “And because the thought of him anywhere near you makes me want to tear this city apart stone by stone until I find him.” The raw possessiveness in his tone should have frightened her. Instead, it sent a shiver of something else entirely down her spine. It was the most honest thing he had ever said to her. She didn’t move away. She held his mismatched gaze, seeing the demon and the man, the broker and the protector, the one who pushed her away and the one who had come back. Outside, the rain began to fall harder against the window, a steady drumbeat against the glass. Inside, the only sound was their shared breath in the silent, book-filled room. The past was at the door, and the only thing standing between her and it was the complicated, dangerous man she had never quite stopped wanting.