AI The rain was a steady percussion against the windowpane, a London drizzle that had settled in for the night. Rory was curled in Eva’s one good armchair, a heavy tome on pre-Babylonian warding rituals open on her knees, a cup of tea gone cold on the floor beside her. Ptolemy, Eva’s fat tabby, was a warm, purring weight on her feet. The flat was a familiar chaos of paper and ink, the smell of old books undercut by the ever-present ghost of cumin and turmeric from the curry house below.
The first knock was so soft she thought it was a branch against the glass. The second was firm, deliberate.
She went still. Eva was in Edinburgh for a symposium. No one else came here, not even Silas, who respected Eva’s borderline paranoid need for academic seclusion. Rory’s eyes flicked to the door with its three heavy deadbolts. Her heart did a quick, unpleasant tap against her ribs. A memory, unbidden: Evan’s fist hammering on her own door, the sound vibrating up through the floorboards. She pushed it down. That was then. Cardiff. This was now. Brick Lane.
Carefully, she marked her page and set the book aside. Ptolemy grumbled as she dislodged him . She padded to the door, barefoot on the worn rug, and stood listening. No sound from the hall. Through the peephole, the distorted view was of the narrow, poorly lit landing. A figure stood there, haloed by the weak yellow bulb. Tall, shoulders damp with rain, platinum blond hair slicked back from a pale forehead. He leaned slightly on an ivory-handled cane.
Rory’s breath caught. Lucien.
Complicated didn’t begin to cover it. He was a fixture in the shadowy edges of her new life, the one who’d provided the tip that led her to Silas, who’d brokered the agreement with Yu-Fei. He was polished, dangerous, and impossibly knowing. And six months ago, after a job that went sideways near the docks, he’d kissed her in the back of his town car—a kiss that tasted of expensive scotch and rain and something darker, infernal—and she’d kissed him back with a desperation that frightened her. The next day, he’d been cool, professional, as if it had been a transaction. He’d said, “A momentary lapse, Miss Carter. Best forgotten.” The hurt had been a sharp, clean thing, buried immediately under a layer of pragmatic ice. She hadn’t seen him alone since.
And now he was here, unannounced, at Eva’s door in the pouring rain.
Her hand hovered over the top deadbolt. She could pretend she wasn’t here. The light was off, the flat silent. But he knew. He always knew.
With a sigh that was more resignation than anything, she slid the bolts back, one after the other. The sound was loud in the quiet flat. She opened the door.
He looked… less impeccable. His charcoal suit was damp, clinging to his shoulders, and a few strands of his usually perfect hair had come loose, curling slightly at his temples. Raindrops beaded on the wool. He carried the scent of wet pavement and night air into the cluttered warmth of the flat. His heterochromatic eyes—one amber like a hawk’s, one pure, depthless black—found hers immediately. There was no surprise in them, only a weary assessment.
“Aurora,” he said. His voice was the same, a low baritone with that faint, unplaceable accent. It did things to her spine she refused to acknowledge.
“Lucien.” She kept her voice flat, leaning against the doorframe, blocking the entrance. “You’re lost. The den of iniquity is several streets over.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, not reaching his eyes. “A witty deflection. I expected no less.” He shifted his weight onto the cane. “May I come in? It is somewhat inclement.”
“Why?”
“I have information. Pertinent to your… current employer’s interests. And yours.” His amber eye gleamed in the low light. “It could not wait for a more socially appropriate hour.”
It was a excuse, and they both knew it. Lucien had a dozen ways to pass information without appearing on a doorstep. This was personal. She studied his face, the fine lines of tension around his mouth, the unusual disarray. Something was wrong. Not wrong in the general, underworld sense, but wrong with *him *.
Silently, she stepped back, opening the door wider.
He entered with a slight nod, his gaze sweeping the crammed bookshelves, the scrolls cascading off the desk, the precarious stacks of notes. Ptolemy, from his perch on the armchair, watched with unblinking amber eyes of his own. Lucien’s presence made the room feel smaller, the clutter more intense. He was a sharp, tailored line in the midst of comfortable chaos.
“You look well,” he said, not looking at her, instead examining the title of a book on her chair.
“You look wet.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing an old Cardiff University sweatshirt and joggers, her black hair tied in a messy knot. She felt acutely, defensively underdressed. “What information is so urgent it couldn’t be sent via your usual mysterious courier?”
He finally turned to face her fully. The rain had made his skin paler, almost luminous. “The Kiss of Mnemosyne. The artifact your friend Eva is so keenly researching. I have a lead on its current location.”
That got her attention. Eva had been chasing whispers of that relic for months. “Where?”
“That is the complication. It is currently in the possession of a collector who is… averse to visitors. He is hosting a private acquisition party tomorrow night in Mayfair. I have an invitation. I require a companion with a plausible reason to be there, someone who can assess the artifact’s authenticity without raising suspicion. An academic, perhaps. A research assistant.”
“You want me to go with you.” It wasn’t a question.
“I do.”
“And you couldn’t have called? Sent a note?”
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “The security around this event is… particular. The invitation was delivered in person, with conditions. Discussion over unsecured lines is unwise.”
She didn’t believe him . Not entirely. There was a restless energy in him , a crack in the polished veneer. She took a step closer, into his space. He didn’t retreat. She could smell the rain on him , and beneath it, his usual scent of sandalwood and something cold, like stone deep underground.
“What’s really going on, Lucien?”
His mismatched eyes held hers. The black one seemed to swallow the light. “Perhaps I simply wished to see you.”
The words, so quietly uttered, hung between them. They were a breach in the wall he’d built, and they cost him . She could see it in the tension of his neck, the white-knuckled grip on the head of his cane.
The old hurt rose, bitter and bright. “A momentary lapse?” she quoted, her voice barely a whisper .
He flinched. “Yes.”
“Which part? The kiss, or the part where you dismissed it?”
“Aurora…” He said her name like it was a burden, a thing he had no right to carry.
“Don’t,” she said, but there was no force behind it. She was tired. Tired of the puzzles, the danger, the careful distance she had to keep from everyone, including herself. He was here, real and damp and somehow vulnerable, and the six months of silence collapsed into the narrow space between them.
“I dismissed it,” he said, his voice rough, “because it was not a lapse. It was an intention. A profound and regrettable intention.”
“Regrettable?”
“I am not a man for… sunlight, Rory.” He used her nickname, and it was a shock to her system, intimate and disarming. “What I am, what my lineage entails, it thrives in the shadows. It corrupts. I have spent a lifetime building walls to keep that corruption contained. You…” He lifted his hand, then let it fall. “You have a brightness to you. A resilience. Even after everything. To draw you into my orbit is a selfish act. That night, I was selfish. I am trying, now, not to be. The business with the artifact is real. My need for your expertise is real. The rest… is a complication I should not have revived by coming here.”
She stared at him . At the rain-damp suit, the fierce, ashamed pride in his strange eyes, the way he stood as if braced for a blow. He was offering her a way out, a return to cold professionalism. All she had to do was take it.
She thought of Evan, whose corruption had been purely human, and whose cruelty had been hot and violent. Lucien’s was cold, ancient, and he fought it with every tailored seam, every polished syllable. He was trying to protect her from a darkness he carried inside. The gesture was, in its own twisted way, more noble than anything she’d ever known.
“You’re an idiot,” she said softly .
His brow furrowed . “Pardon?”
“A spectacular idiot.” She closed the last of the distance between them. She could see the individual droplets of rain on his eyelashes. “You don’t get to decide what corrupts me. I’ve survived a human monster. I think I can handle a half-demon with a guilt complex and a taste for good tailoring.”
His breath hitched. The amber eye burned; the black one was unreadable , a void. “It is not a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.” She reached out, tentatively, and touched the back of his hand where it gripped the cane. His skin was cool. “You showed up here, in the rain, past midnight, because you needed to see me. Not just for a job. Admit it.”
A long moment passed. The only sounds were the rain, Ptolemy’s purring, and the frantic beat of her own heart. Slowly, his grip on the cane loosened. He turned his hand, his long fingers threading through hers. The contact was electric , a current that shot straight up her arm.
“I admit it,” he whispered, the words a surrender . “I have missed you. A daily, relentless agony. A weakness I cannot afford.”
“Welcome to the human condition,” she said, and she pulled him gently forward.
He came, his cane tapping softly on the floorboards. His free hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb brushing over the curve of her cheekbone. His gaze was intense, searching. “This is a very bad idea.”
“The worst,” she agreed, and rose onto her toes to meet him .
The kiss was nothing like the first. That had been hunger and shock and the adrenaline of a narrow escape. This was slow, deep, an exploration and an apology. It tasted of rain and regret and a fierce, trembling hope. He kissed her with a devastating tenderness that unspooled something tight and knotted inside her chest. Her hands found the damp wool of his lapels, holding on as if he were the only solid thing in a tilting world.
When they finally broke apart, foreheads resting together, his breathing was as unsteady as hers. The polished fixer was gone . In his place was just Luc, a man who looked utterly , terrifyingly undone.
“The party is tomorrow,” he murmured against her skin. “We will need a cover story.”
“Later,” she said, pulling him further into the room, towards the chaotic , book-strewn sanctuary of Eva’s flat. The deadbolts on the door were already thrown, the world shut out. For now, there was only the rain, the warmth , and the complicated, undeniable truth of his arms around her.