AI The third deadbolt slid back with a clunk that echoed through the quiet flat. Rory pulled the door open, a half-formed excuse for her tardiness ready on her lips—she’d forgotten the tamarind paste Eva wanted, had to loop back to the Empress—but the words dissolved into the damp Brick Lane air.
Lucien Moreau stood on the narrow landing, the amber light from the curry house sign below painting one side of his face in garish neon. He leaned on his ivory-handled cane, his other hand tucked into the pocket of a charcoal overcoat tailored to sharp perfection. Rain glistened on the shoulders of the wool, caught like tiny diamonds in the slicked-back platinum of his hair. His heterochromatic eyes—one amber, one black as a starless sky—fixed on her, and for a beat, neither moved.
"Rory," he said. His voice was the same: low, unhurried, accented in a way that suggested Marseille by way of several other, darker places.
She hadn't seen him in four months. Not since the night at the warehouse by the docks, the smell of ozone and burnt herbs, his hand on her arm pulling her back from a precipice she hadn't even seen. He'd looked at her with something like fury, something like fear, and told her to stay away from him. To forget his face. She’d called him a coward. The last thing she’d heard was the sharp, retreating tap of his cane on wet cobblestones.
Now he was here. At Eva's door. Unannounced.
"Aurora?" Eva's voice floated from the kitchen, accompanied by the hiss of a kettle. "Did you get the—"
Rory stepped aside, her movement wooden. She kept her grip on the doorframe. "Come in."
Lucien crossed the threshold. He brought the damp chill of the evening with him, along with the faint, clean scent of sandalwood and something metallic, like a storm on iron rails. He paused just inside, his gaze sweeping the cramped space—the towers of books threatening to topple from every surface, the scrolls cascading over the arm of the sofa, the tabby cat Ptolemy blinking at him from a nest of ancient-looking maps on the floor.
Eva appeared in the kitchen doorway, a chipped mug in one hand. She froze, her eyes widening behind her glasses. "Lucien."
"Eva." He inclined his head, a gesture both polite and utterly detached. "My apologies for the intrusion."
"You're not intruding." Eva’s voice had gone tight, professional. She set the mug down on a stack of journals. "Is this business?"
"It is." His eyes flicked back to Rory. She hadn't moved from the door. "And it isn't."
"Right." Eva looked between them, her mouth pressing into a thin line. She scooped up Ptolemy, who offered a half-hearted mrrp of protest. "I'll just... take Ptolemy for his evening constitutional. The alleys are lovely this time of night."
"Eva—" Rory started.
"He needs the air!" Eva called over her shoulder, already shrugging into her coat by the door. "Don't wait up!"
The door clicked shut behind her. The sudden silence in the flat was dense, suffocating. The hiss of the kettle had stopped. From the street below, the muffured laughter of late-night diners spilled up, a wave of normalcy that broke against the quiet between them.
Lucien set his cane against the arm of the sofa. He didn't take off his coat.
"Why are you here, Luc?"
He smiled, a thin, humorless twist of his lips. "You haven't called me that in a while."
"You haven't been around to call anything." She crossed her arms, the wool of her jumper rough against her skin. "Eva said you dropped off the grid. Even your usual haunts went quiet."
"I was occupied."
"Doing what?"
"Surviving." The word landed flat, final . He turned his back to her, examining a sheaf of Eva's notes pinned to a corkboard. His posture was perfect, the line of his shoulders rigid under the fine wool. "There was... fallout. From the warehouse. From helping you."
A cold knot tightened in her stomach . "What kind of fallout?"
"Ambitious people don't like loose ends. Or meddlesome half-breeds who spoil their rituals." He traced a line of text on the page with a gloved finger. "My father's associates have long memories. They consider my interference a familial insult."
She stared at the back of his head, the elegant sweep of his hair. "You said they couldn't touch you here. That London was neutral ground."
"I was mistaken." He turned then, and the light from the desk lamp caught the amber of his left eye, making it glow like banked embers. The black one remained depthless, absorbing the light. "Or I lied. To you. To myself. Does it matter?"
"Yes. It matters." Her voice cracked. She hated the sound of it. "You just vanished. After everything we—" She cut herself off, teeth clicking together.
"After everything we what, Rory?" He took a step toward her. His movements were fluid, precise, the tap of his cane absent now. He didn't need it, not really ; it was part of the persona, the prop of the impeccable fixer. "Shared a few close calls? Exchanged some heated words in the dark? You have a talent for finding trouble. I have a talent for extracting people from it. It was a business arrangement."
The words were calculated , clean, designed to wound. They found their mark. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. "Is that why you kissed me? After the thing with the ghouls in Stepney Green? Just part of the service?"
A muscle jumped in his jaw. His gloved hands flexed at his sides. "That was a mistake."
"The biggest one you've made?"
"No." He held her gaze. "The biggest one was walking away from the warehouse. Letting you think you could handle what was coming next on your own."
"I handled it."
"Did you?" His gaze dropped to her left wrist, exposed where her sleeve had ridden up. The small, crescent-shaped scar from a childhood bicycle accident gleamed pale against her skin. "I heard about the fire at the archives. I heard three of Valerius's enforcers were found in the Thames with their throats cut. That didn't sound like your style."
"It wasn't." She didn't elaborate. The memory of that night was a closed room in her mind, the door locked, the key melted down. "I had help."
"From whom?"
"Does it matter?"
He was close enough now that she could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the tension in the set of his mouth. The sandalwood-and-iron scent of him was dizzying. "It matters to me."
"Why?" She didn't back up. The door was behind her, but retreat felt like surrender . "Why now? After months of silence , you just appear at my friend's door? What do you want, Lucien?"
"I want you to leave London."
She laughed, a short, sharp sound with no humor in it. "Not a chance."
"It isn't safe."
"It hasn't been safe since the day I met you. That's never stopped me before."
"This is different." He reached out, gloved fingers brushing her arm just above the scar. His touch was electric , a jolt that went straight to her spine. "The players have changed. The stakes have escalated. Valerius was a thug with ambition. What's coming... it's older. Hungrier. It doesn't play by the rules of the shadow markets."
"And you think I do?"
"I think you have a habit of walking into the dark without a light." His fingers tightened, a brief, almost imperceptible pressure. "I can't protect you this time, Rory."
"I never asked you to."
"You didn't have to." He released her arm, his hand dropping back to his side. "I failed you once. I won't survive failing you again."
The raw honesty in his voice stunned her. It was a crack in the armor, a glimpse of the man beneath the impeccable suits and the multilingual composure. The man who'd pressed her against a rain-slicked wall in an alley off Whitechapel, his mouth desperate on hers, his hands cradling her face like she was something precious, something breakable.
"You didn't fail me," she whispered.
"I left."
"You had your reasons."
"Reasons are poor comfort when you're burning." He looked away, his profile etched in stark relief against the cluttered bookshelves. "I went back to Avaros. To my father's domain. I made a... a bargain. For information. For a path forward."
Her blood went cold . "What kind of bargain?"
"The kind with teeth." He touched his chest, just over his heart. "I am bound now, more than ever, to the currents of that realm. To his will. My presence here is a risk. To you, to Eva, to anyone close to me. But I had to see you. To warn you."
"You could have called."
"And say what? 'Run, the monsters are coming, and they're wearing my father's face?'" He shook his head. "Some things require a personal touch."
"Or you just wanted to see if I'd still be here." The words escaped before she could stop them, tinged with a bitterness she'd thought she'd buried.
He went very still. His heterochromatic eyes locked onto hers, and for a moment, the pretense, the polished distance, evaporated. She saw the exhaustion in the lines around his mouth, the shadows under his eyes, the faint, silvery traceries of old scars peeking above his collar—new ones, ones she didn't recognize.
"I thought about you," he said, his voice so low it was almost a vibration in the quiet room. "Every day. In that place, where the light is a memory and the air tastes of ash. I thought about the sound of your laugh. The way you chew your lip when you're thinking. The precise shade of blue in your eyes. It was the only thing that felt real."
The confession hung between them, fragile as spun glass. Outside, a siren wailed in the distance, fading into the hum of the city.
Rory stepped forward, closing the last of the distance. She reached up, her fingers brushing the cold, damp wool of his coat, then higher, to trace the line of his jaw. He caught his breath, his eyes drifting shut for a second.
"You're a fool, Lucien Moreau."
"I know."
"You should have stayed gone."
"I tried."
Her thumb smoothed over his lower lip. "What does your bargain get you? Exactly?"
"Knowledge. A name. The source of the convergence that's poisoning the ley lines under the city." He opened his eyes. The amber one seemed to burn. "It's here, Rory. In London. And it's waking up."
"And you're going to stop it."
"I'm going to try."
"Alone?"
He didn't answer. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
She kissed him.
It wasn't gentle. It was all the unsaid things, all the months of silence and worry and anger, poured into the press of her lips against his. A collision. He made a low sound in his throat, his arms coming around her, pulling her tight against him. The taste of him—rain and that faint metallic edge—flooded her senses. His gloves were rough against her neck, his other hand splayed against her back, holding her as if she might vanish.
He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers. His breathing was ragged. "This is a terrible idea."
"Your best ones usually are."
"I'm not... I can't promise you anything. Not safety. Not tomorrow."
"I don't want your promises." She fisted her hands in the lapels of his coat. "I want your help. Stop trying to send me away. Let me in."
He studied her face, his expression a war of longing and dread. "You have no idea what you're asking."
"I'm asking to stand beside you. Not behind you. However this ends."
"It could end badly."
"Most things do." She managed a weak smile. "But I'd rather face it with you than wonder what happened to you in the dark."
He closed his eyes again, a surrender. When he opened them, resignation had softened the hard edges of his face. "Stubborn. Impossible woman."
"You knew that when you kissed me in Whitechapel."
A ghost of his old smirk touched his lips. "I did."
He lowered his head and kissed her again, slower this time. Deliberate. A seal on a pact. When they parted, the world had narrowed to the space between them, warm and charged with a fragile, desperate hope.
Downstairs, the curry house door banged open, releasing a burst of laughter and the rich smell of spices. The ordinary world, carrying on.
Lucien rested his forehead against hers once more. "Eva will be back soon."
"She'll understand."
"She'll have opinions."
Rory smiled, a real one this time. "She always does."
He straightened, his hands sliding from her back to cradle her face. His thumbs brushed her cheekbones. "There's a place. A tavern in Southwark, called the Gilded Oar. It's neutral ground, even for my father's kind. Meet me there tomorrow night. Nine o'clock."
"And then?"
"Then we start." He released her, stepping back. The distance felt like a physical ache . He retrieved his cane, the movement smooth, the fixer's mask slipping back into place. But his eyes stayed on her, warmth lingering in the amber, shadows held at bay in the black. "Bring your quick thinking. And a weapon you're comfortable with."
"I have a repurposed kitchen knife."
He almost smiled. "It'll do."
He moved to the door, paused with his hand on the latch. He didn't look back. "Don't be late, Aurora Carter."
He was gone before she could reply, the door clicking shut softly behind him, leaving her alone in the flat with the smell of rain and sandalwood and the echo of his words in the air. Outside, the city glowed, a web of light and shadow, hiding its secrets in plain sight. She pressed her fingers to her lips, still tasting him, and knew with a certainty that settled deep in her bones: the running was over. The real fight was just beginning.