AI The knock was insistent, three sharp raps that cut through the muffled sounds of Brick Lane filtering up through the floorboards. Rory looked up from the grimoire she was attempting to decipher, her heart giving a single, hard thump against her ribs. It wasn’t the tentative tap of a neighbor or the impatient fist of a delivery driver. This knock was deliberate, confident, and entirely unwelcome.
Ptolemy, the tabby cat sprawled across a folio of star charts, lifted his head and twitched an ear towards the door. Rory’s gaze flicked from the cat to the three deadbolts she’d slid home not an hour ago. Eva’s paranoia had become her own ritual. She marked her place in the book with a stray receipt and stood, the worn floorboards creaking under her weight . The air in the flat, heavy with the scent of old paper and turmeric from the restaurant below, suddenly felt thin.
She approached the door, her movements quiet. She didn’t bother with the peephole; its fish-eye lens distorted everything into a meaningless blur. Instead, she pressed her palm flat against the cool wood, as if she could feel the presence on the other side. A foolish hope, a desperate fear—both whispered a name she hadn’t spoken in months.
Rory slid the first bolt. The brass mechanism made a solid chunk. The second followed, then the third, the sounds unnaturally loud in the tense silence . She took a breath, bracing herself, and pulled the door open.
The man standing in the dim hallway was a study in monochrome disruption. He leaned lightly on an ivory-handled cane, his posture impeccable even in repose. A tailored charcoal suit clung to his lean frame, a stark contrast to the peeling paint and grimy lighting of the landing. And his eyes—one a warm, liquid amber, the other a fathomless black—found hers immediately. Lucien Moreau.
“Aurora,” he said, his voice a low, smooth baritone that curled around her name like smoke. It was the voice that had murmured promises in the dark and delivered truths that cut deeper than any blade.
Rory’s grip tightened on the doorknob. Her own voice, when it came, was flat, stripped of all inflection. “Lucien.”
“May I come in?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question. It was a statement of intent, wrapped in a veneer of politeness. His gaze drifted past her shoulder, taking in the chaotic sanctuary of books and scrolls. “It appears you’ve been… busy.”
She didn’t move. “What do you want?”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, not quite reaching his mismatched eyes . “Is it so impossible to believe I came to see you?”
“Yes,” she said, the word blunt and final. The memory of their last encounter hung between them, a chasm of unspoken accusations and a bitterness that had yet to sour into indifference. He had used her, or she had used him; the distinction had blurred into a painful, tangled mess. He was a fixer, a broker of secrets in a world she’d been desperately trying to escape. He was poison, and she’d sworn she was done with toxins.
His smile faded. “A matter has arisen. One that concerns you. May I,” he repeated, his tone shifting from vaguely amused to lethally serious, “come in?”
Reluctance was a lead weight in her stomach , but curiosity, that treacherous thing, pricked at her. With a curt nod, she stepped back, allowing him to cross the threshold. He moved with a liquid grace that belied the cane, his presence immediately dominating the cramped space. He didn’t look at the mess; his attention was fixed solely on her.
Rory closed the door, sliding the bolts back into place with a series of definitive thuds that sealed them in together. The sound seemed to echo in the sudden quiet. When she turned, he was standing by Eva’s cluttered desk, his gloved fingers hovering over an ancient-looking map she’d been studying.
“Don’t touch that,” she said, sharper than she intended.
He withdrew his hand, a picture of effortless compliance. “My apologies.” His heterochromatic eyes swept over her, taking in her worn jeans, the simple t-shirt, the straight black hair she’d hastily tied back. “You look tired, *mon petite chou *.”
The old endearment, spoken in that fluid French of his, was a deliberate provocation. It ignited a spark of anger that felt better than the cold numbness. “Don’t call me that. And I’m not your little cabbage. What’s the matter, Lucien? Did one of your underworld deals go sour? Need a legman who knows how to keep her mouth shut?”
He tilted his head, the slicked-back platinum hair catching the lamplight. “Always so quick to assume the worst of me.”
“Experience is a harsh teacher.”
“Indeed.” He took a slow step towards her. Ptolemy, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, let out a low growl from his perch on the sofa. Lucien glanced at the cat, a flicker of genuine amusement in his amber eye. “The sentinel disapproves.”
“He has good instincts.” Rory crossed her arms over her chest, a defensive gesture she hated but couldn’t suppress. The small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist seemed to pulse , a reminder of a simpler, if painful, kind of hurt. This was different. This was a wound that had never properly healed. “Just say what you came to say.”
“Evan,” Lucien said, and the name landed between them like a shard of ice .
Rory went very still. The sounds of the street, the faint sizzle from the kitchen below, the hum of the refrigerator—everything receded into a dull roar. The face of her ex, all charming smiles and controlling hands, flashed in her mind. She had fled Cardiff, fled him, because of Lucien’s intervention. Because Lucien had shown her the depth of the trap she was in. And then, in the aftermath , he had offered her another kind of cage.
“What about him?” she managed, her throat tight .
“He’s in London.”
The floor seemed to tilt. Rory’s cool-headedness, her prized asset, threatened to shatter. She took an involuntary step back, bumping into a precarious stack of books. They wobbled but didn’t fall. “That’s not possible. He wouldn’t… he doesn’t have the resources.”
“He has new friends,” Lucien said softly . His gaze was intense, pinning her in place. “The wrong kind. The kind I warned you about. The kind that are very interested in a woman who associates with… well, with people like me.”
The implication was clear. Her past with Evan had collided with her present entanglement with Lucien. She was the connection. The vulnerability.
“Why are you telling me this?” she whispered, the anger draining away to be replaced by a cold, familiar dread. “To scare me? To prove you were right? That I still need your protection?”
He closed the remaining distance between them. He was close enough now that she could smell the faint, clean scent of his cologne, something dark and spicy, mingling with the smell of rain on his coat. He lifted a hand, and for a heart-stopping moment, she thought he might touch her face. Instead, his gloved fingers gently brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek, the leather cool against her skin. The gesture was intimate, possessive, and it sent a traitorous shiver down her spine .
“I am telling you,” he said, his voice barely a murmur, “because regardless of what you think of me, regardless of the… complications… between us, I will not allow that man to lay a hand on you again. Ever.”
The raw conviction in his tone undid her. It was the same ferocity that had drawn her to him in the first place, a dangerous loyalty that felt more like a claim. She saw the hurt in his black eye, the one that held the echo of his demonic heritage, a reflection of the hurt she had caused when she’d pushed him away. She saw the lingering attraction in his amber one, the heat that had once consumed them both.
“Things were left unsaid, Aurora,” he continued, his gaze holding hers captive. “Words were spoken in anger that I regret. But my… concern for your safety was never a lie.”
Her arms uncrossed, her hands falling uselessly to her sides. The fight went out of her, leaving her exposed. “I know,” she admitted, the words a fragile concession. The space between them crackled with everything that was unspoken —the remembered heat of his mouth, the sting of his betrayals, the terrifying possibility of a future where he was the only thing standing between her and the shadows of her past.
He didn’t move closer. He simply stood there, a solid, immovable fact in her chaotic world, his mismatched eyes seeing straight through all her defenses to the scared woman underneath. The door was bolted shut, the city roared on oblivious outside, and inside Eva’s book-strewn flat, the complicated, painful, undeniable history between them finally had them cornered.