Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT01FAMN2X2V4J1D8KTHH84

The knock came at half past eleven—a sound so unexpected in the quiet of the flat above Silas' bar that Rory froze with her coffee cup halfway to her lips. Nobody visited her here. Nobody knew where she lived, except Eva, and Eva always texted first. She set the cup down and crossed the small room in three strides, her hand finding the deadbolt she'd installed herself after the incident with Evan. The metallic click seemed too loud in the silence. She pulled the door open. Lucien stood in the hallway, rain dripping from the brim of his charcoal hat, his ivory cane clutched in one gloved hand. The half-light from the stairwell caught his face—the sharp cheekbones, the pale hair slicked back from his forehead, those impossible eyes: one amber, one black as a sealed door. He looked older than she remembered. Or maybe just more tired. "Rory." Her name in his voice undid something in her chest that she'd spent months cementing shut. She made herself lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, a barrier between them. "Lucien. This is a surprise." "It's meant to be." She waited. He didn't elaborate. Rain continued its steady percussion on the window at the end of the hall. Behind her, she heard Ptolemy jump down from the kitchen counter—his usual soundtrack when strangers appeared. "That's your opening line?" She heard the edge in her own voice, the sharpeness she'd promised herself she wouldn't give him. "You're not even going to pretend you were in the neighborhood?" "I was in the neighborhood," he said, and the corner of his mouth twitched—his old, infuriating half-smile, the one that used to make her forget whatever argument they were having. "Aldgate is three blocks away. I walk everywhere." "Bullshit. You take cabs. You told me once that walking was for people who hadn't discovered the pleasures of leather seats." "People change." "Do they?" His gaze dropped to her left wrist, then back to her face. She knew he was looking at the scar—the crescent-shaped mark from when she was nine, when she'd slipped on the wet rocks by the Severn and nearly drowned before her father fished her out. She never told him how she'd gotten it. He never asked. But he'd noticed it that first night at Silas' bar, three years ago, when she'd been new to London and running deliveries for Yu-Fei and trying so hard to disappear into the background of her own life. He'd noticed everything, that night. She'd hated him for it. "Can I come in?" he asked. "No." "Rory." "We talked about this." She heard her voice waver and hated that too. "We talked, and you said you'd handle it, and then you disappeared for four months. Four months, Lucien. Not a word. Not a single—" "I was dealing with my father." The words landed like stones in still water. She went quiet. "The Avaros situation," he continued, his voice flat, practiced—like he'd rehearsed this, like he'd chosen each word to minimize the damage. "It required my presence. There was no way to contact you safely, and even if there had been, you would have insisted on coming, and I couldn't—" "I could have helped." "You were still healing from Evan." He said it gently, which made it worse. "You were starting over. I wasn't going to drag you into hell with me." "You decided that for me." "Yes." The honesty in his voice was the worst part. She stepped back from the door, letting him into the narrow hallway. He moved past her, close enough that she caught the scent of his cologne—something dark and woodsy, expensive, probably French. Of course it was French. She closed the door, but didn't turn around immediately. She needed a moment. The flat was small—just one bedroom, a kitchenette, a bathroom with a door that didn't lock properly. She'd hung curtains over the windows that didn't quite fit, and the radiator made a noise like a dying animal every twenty minutes. It wasn't much, but it was hers. The first thing that had been hers alone in years. "You have a cat now," Lucien observed. "Ptolemy." She turned to face him. He was setting his cane against the wall by the door, removing his hat, running a hand through his hair—the platinum strands falling loose from their careful arrangement. Without the hat and the suit jacket, he looked younger. More like the man she'd first met. "He's a rescue." "He doesn't look like he was rescued. He looks like he owns the place." This was familiar—this easy back-and-forth, the way they'd always slipped into conversation like water finding its level. That was the danger of it. That was why she'd let things get complicated in the first place. She led him into the main room, gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen. "Coffee? I was making some when you interrupted." "No thank you." He remained standing as she poured herself a cup, his eyes moving over the space—the stacks of books on every surface, the takeaway menus pinned to the wall, the small altar she'd made on the windowsill with a candle and a photo of her mother. "You look well." "London agrees with me." "You look happy." She took a long sip of coffee, letting the heat of it burn her tongue. "I'm not unhappy." "That's not what I asked." She set the cup down harder than she meant to. "What do you want, Lucien? Why are you here?" He was quiet for a moment. Then he moved toward her, stopping just out of arm's reach—close enough that she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the slight paleness of his complexion that hinted at his heritage. Half-demon, she'd learned that first night. Half something else entirely, something that made the light bend wrong around him sometimes, something that made his black eye swirl with colors that human eyes weren't meant to see. "I dreamed about you," he said. She laughed—a sharp, unkind sound. "That's your excuse? You had a dream?" "It wasn't a dream. Not the way you mean." His heterochromatic eyes held hers, that impossible amber and black, like two different suns. "In Avaros, dreams are... different. The barrier between thought and reality thins. What I saw—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "It doesn't matter. I'm here now." "It matters to you. That's why you came." "Yes." She turned away, pressing her palms against the counter, steadying herself. This was the problem with Lucien. He never did anything by halves. When he cared, he cared completely, with everything he had—and when he left, he left completely, and she was left to pick up the pieces of a heart she'd never meant to give him in the first place. "Do you remember the night we met?" she asked, not looking at him. "Silas' bar. You were new to London. You'd just started working for Yu-Fei." "You sat down at my table without asking. I was reading, and you said—" She paused, smiling despite herself. "You said, 'That book isn't half as interesting as you're pretending it is.'" "You were reading Montaigne. In a pub. At nine o'clock on a Tuesday." "I was escaping my flat. My ex had just—" She stopped, the old wound still tender after all these years. "You saw that. You saw right through me, and you didn't leave. You just... stayed." "Of course I did." "That's the problem." She finally turned to face him. "You stay, and then you leave. There's no in-between with you. It's either everything or nothing, and I can't—I can't do that again, Lucien. I spent three years with Evan learning what it feels like to be loved conditionally. I won't do it again." Something shifted in his face—the careful mask slipping, just for a moment, revealing something rawer beneath. "I'm not Evan." "I know you're not." "Then what am I?" It was the question she'd been dreading since the door opened. She crossed the room, stopping in front of him, close enough to see the pulse jumping in his throat. Up close, he was all angles and edges—the sharp cut of his jaw, the cool efficiency of his movements, the way he held himself like a man constantly ready for battle. But his eyes were soft, soft in a way he'd never let anyone else see. "You're the one who got away," she said quietly. "That's what you are. And I've spent the last four months trying to be okay with that." "Rory—" "I loved you." The words came out before she could stop them, like water from a cracked dam. "That's the thing I never said. I loved you, and I let you leave anyway, because you asked me to trust you, and I did. I trusted you, and then you were gone, and I had to learn how to live with that." The silence stretched between them, heavy and thick. She watched his throat work, watched him struggle for words—a first, for a man who spoke four languages fluently and could talk his way out of anything. "I loved you too," he said finally. "I still do. That's why I came tonight. That's why I came back." She closed her eyes. His hand found hers—cool fingers, gentle, the barest trace of something otherworldly in his touch. She didn't pull away. "I can't promise it will be easy," he continued. "My father—the situation in Avaros—there's going to be more fallout. More secrets I can't share. More times I'll have to leave without explanation." "Like before." "Not like before." His thumb traced circles on her palm. "Before, I left because I thought I was protecting you. Now I know better. You don't need protecting. You need someone who stays." "Do you? Stay?" "If you'll let me." She opened her eyes. He was watching her with that impossible gaze—amber and black, like dawn and midnight wrapped into a single look. She thought about the scar on her wrist, the one she'd carried since childhood. She thought about the years she'd spent learning to trust herself again after Evan, learning to stand on her own two feet in a city that had tried to swallow her whole. She thought about Lucien—his lies, his secrets, the way he saw her even when she didn't want to be seen. "Okay," she said. "Okay?" "Stay. Tonight, at least. We can figure out the rest tomorrow." He smiled—a real smile, full and unguarded, the kind she'd only seen a handful of times in all the years she'd known him. He pulled her closer, and she let him, pressing her face against his chest, breathing in that familiar dark woodsy scent. Tomorrow would bring questions, complications, the messy work of learning to trust again. But tonight, in the small flat above Silas' bar, with the rain outside and Ptolemy watching from the kitchen doorway, it was enough. It was a beginning.