AI The door swung open and there stood Lucien Moreau, rain dripping from his platinum hair onto the shoulders of a charcoal suit that cost more than three months of her delivery wages.
"Bonsoir, Aurora."
Rory's hand tightened on the doorframe. Behind her, Ptolemy let out a low warning growl from somewhere beneath Eva's mountain of research notes.
"Wrong flat."
She moved to close the door. His ivory-handled cane caught the edge, holding it open with surprising strength for such a delicate-looking thing.
"I think we both know that's not true."
The amber eye caught the hallway light. The black one swallowed it whole. She'd forgotten how unsettling that gaze could be, how it made her feel like he was reading two different versions of her at once.
"Eva's not here."
"I'm not looking for Eva."
The curry house below had closed hours ago, but the smell of tandoori still crept up through the floorboards, mixing with the petrichor of the storm outside and something else. Something that clung to Lucien like expensive cologne but wasn't. Sulphur, maybe. Or burnt sugar.
"You can't just show up here, Luc."
"And yet." He spread his hands, the cane now tucked under one arm. "Here I am."
Three months. Three months since that night in the warehouse district, since she'd watched him walk away through a door that led somewhere that definitely wasn't London, since she'd told him exactly what she thought of half-demons who made promises they couldn't keep.
She should slam the door. She should call Eva. She should do literally anything other than step aside and let him in.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Lucien surveyed the cramped flat with the expression of a man who'd grown accustomed to penthouses trying not to show his distaste for a shoebox. His gaze lingered on the three deadbolts, then on the stack of grimoires threatening to avalanche off the kitchen table.
"Still researching the Thornwood situation, I see."
"None of your business."
"Everything in this city is my business. That's rather the point of being a broker."
She crossed her arms. The gesture pulled her old Cardiff University jumper tight across her shoulders, and she watched his eyes track the movement before he could stop himself. Good. Let him remember what he'd walked away from.
"Why are you here?"
"Would you believe I was in the neighbourhood?"
"You live in Mayfair."
"I have interests in the East End."
"Since when?"
His mouth curved. Not quite a smile, not quite a smirk . That infuriating expression she'd spent weeks trying to scrub from her memory. "Since about three months ago, actually."
The implication hung between them like smoke.
Ptolemy emerged from beneath a pile of medieval manuscripts, winding between Rory's ankles with his eyes fixed on Lucien. The cat had always been able to sense the demon half. Eva said it was because cats had one paw in the spirit realm themselves.
"You're dripping on Eva's carpet."
"It's already stained with something that looks suspiciously like phoenix ash."
"That's none of your concern."
"Phoenix ash is quite dangerous if improperly stored."
"And half-demons who don't call for three months are quite unwelcome if they show up unannounced."
There it was. Out in the open now, ugly and honest.
Lucien's expression flickered . That perfect mask of urbane detachment cracking just enough to show something raw underneath. He set his cane against the wall with careful precision, buying time.
"I had matters to attend to. In Avaros."
"For three months."
"Time moves differently there."
"How convenient."
"It's actually quite inconvenient." He turned to face her fully. "Three months here was closer to a year on my father's side."
The words landed like stones in still water. A year. He'd been gone a year, his time. She thought of all the nights she'd spent staring at her phone, wondering if she'd pushed too hard, asked for too much, expected things a creature of two worlds couldn't give.
"That's not," she started, then stopped . "You could have sent word."
"Through what? The Royal Mail doesn't deliver to demon realms."
"You're an information broker. You know people."
"I know people who would have used any message to you as leverage against me." He took a step closer . "Against us. My father has enemies who would find a human woman with connections to me very ... interesting."
The radiator clanked in the corner. Outside, the rain intensified, hammering against the windows like impatient fingers.
"So you stayed away to protect me."
"I stayed away because I had no choice." Another step. "The doors between realms sealed when I crossed. Some sort of territorial dispute between the greater powers. I spent eleven months, my time, trying to find another way back."
"And now you're here."
"And now I'm here."
He stood close enough that she could see the faint scar along his jawline, the one he'd told her came from his first and only attempt to defy his father. Close enough to smell that burnt sugar scent, which she now realised wasn't sulphur at all but something uniquely him. The blood of two worlds mixing into something that shouldn't exist but did.
"I owe you an explanation," he said quietly . "I owe you more than that. But I need you to understand, I did not choose to leave."
"You chose to go through that door."
"To save your life."
"I didn't ask you to."
"No. You asked me to stay." His mismatched eyes held hers . "And I have regretted every day since that I couldn't."
The anger she'd been nursing like a small, hot coal began to gutter. She'd spent three months constructing a narrative where he'd used her, played her, vanished like every other man who'd promised her something real. It was easier than the alternative.
"You should have found a way to tell me."
"I know."
"I thought..." She stopped. Swallowed. "I thought you'd decided I wasn't worth the trouble."
Something dangerous flickered across his features. "Aurora."
"Don't."
"You are the only thing in two realms that has ever been worth trouble to me."
The words hung in the cramped flat, too big for the space, pressing against the walls lined with ancient texts and unwashed tea mugs.
"That's a very pretty thing to say."
"It's not pretty. It's inconvenient and complicated and it has made me extremely unpopular with my father's court." He reached up, his fingers stopping just short of her cheek . "I am not a man who does inconvenient things, Aurora. I am a broker. I deal in clean exchanges, mutual benefit, transactions that make sense. You make no sense. You are a human woman who delivers takeaway food and lives above a curry house and somehow you have become the only fixed point in my entire miserable existence."
Ptolemy chose that moment to yowl, breaking the tension like a needle through silk .
"Your cat disapproves," Lucien observed.
"He disapproves of everyone."
"Wise creature."
She should step back. Should create distance, demand more answers, protect herself from the gravity of him. Instead, she found herself cataloguing the new lines around his eyes, the slight gauntness to his cheekbones that hadn't been there before.
"You look terrible."
"Thank you for noticing."
"I mean it. You look like you haven't slept in weeks."
"Sleep is difficult when one's mind is occupied." His hand finally made contact, fingertips brushing her jaw with a tenderness that didn't match anything she knew about demons. "I dreamed of you, Aurora. Every night in that wretched realm, surrounded by creatures who would eat their own young for power, I dreamed of your flat in London and the way you laugh at my suits and the precise shade of blue your eyes turn when you're angry with me."
"I'm angry with you now."
"I know. They're magnificent."
She caught his wrist, feeling the pulse that beat too slow to be human beneath her fingers. "This doesn't fix anything."
"I know that too."
"Three months of silence , Luc. Three months of wondering if you were dead or if you just didn't care."
"I cared. I care. That is rather the problem."
The rain continued its assault on the windows. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, ordinary London carrying on while something distinctly extraordinary unfolded in Eva's cluttered flat.
"What do you want?"
"I want to know if I'm too late." His voice dropped, losing that polished edge she'd always associated with him. "I want to know if three months, or a year, has killed whatever was between us. If you've moved on. If I should turn around and walk back out that door and never darken your threshold again."
The question deserved a careful answer. It deserved consideration, measured evaluation, the kind of cool-headed thinking she was supposedly known for.
"You left your cane by the door."
He blinked, thrown by the non sequitur. "I... yes?"
"The blade's inside. Your only weapon."
"I'm aware."
"You walked into this flat, where I could have any number of protective wards set up, and you left your weapon by the door."
Understanding dawned in his mismatched eyes. "You wouldn't need a ward. You'd just hit me with one of Eva's grimoires."
"The heavy one. Binding sigils of the Northern Courts. Twelve hundred pages."
"That would definitely leave a mark."
She hadn't realised she was still holding his wrist until she felt his pulse quicken beneath her fingers. Not human-fast, but faster than before .
"I'm still angry."
"Understandable."
"This doesn't mean I forgive you."
"I wouldn't expect it to."
"And if you ever disappear for three months again without finding some way to contact me, I will track you down myself and make you regret it."
His mouth curved into something that was definitely a smile this time, sharp and genuine and utterly devastating. "Is that a threat, Miss Carter?"
"It's a promise, Monsieur Moreau."
The door to Eva's bedroom slammed open, and her best friend appeared wielding what looked like a cricket bat covered in runic symbols.
"Rory, I heard voices, is everything, oh." Eva's sleep-wild hair and oversized pyjamas made an interesting contrast to the weapon raised over her head. "Oh, it's you."
Lucien inclined his head. "Good evening, Miss Walsh."
"It's two in the morning."
"Then technically it's morning."
Eva lowered the bat, but only slightly . "You've got some nerve."
"So I've been told."
"Three months, you absolute—"
"Eva." Rory cut her off, not releasing Lucien's wrist. "We're handling it."
Her friend's eyes dropped to their connected hands, then rose again with an expression that promised a very long conversation later. "Fine. But if he does anything suspicious, I'm not responsible for what happens. That bat has a hair trigger."
"Noted."
Eva retreated, but left her door conspicuously ajar. The faint glow of a protection ward flickered to life around the frame.
"Your friend is rather protective."
"She's met demons before."
"I'm only half."
"The half that matters, according to her research."
Lucien's free hand came up to cover hers where it still gripped his wrist. His skin was cooler than a human's, but not cold. Not dead. Just different.
"I should go. Let you sleep. This conversation should happen in daylight, when we're both thinking clearly."
"You came at two in the morning."
"I came straight from the crossing point. It opened an hour ago. I didn't," he paused, "I couldn't wait."
Something cracked in her chest. Something she'd been trying very hard to keep frozen.
"Stay."
His breath caught. Actually caught, like he wasn't expecting the word. "Aurora."
"Stay until morning. The couch is terrible and Eva will probably throw things at you, but stay. We'll talk when the sun comes up."
"And tonight?"
"Tonight you tell me about Avaros. About what happened. About why it took eleven months your time to find your way back."
"That's not a happy story."
"I don't need happy." She finally released his wrist, but only to take his hand properly, lacing her fingers through his. "I need true."
The rain softened outside, settling into the gentle rhythm that would likely continue until dawn. Ptolemy, apparently satisfied that immediate violence was off the table, curled up on a stack of manuscripts and began to purr.
Lucien looked at their joined hands, then at her face, then at the chaos of Eva's flat with its toppling books and arcane symbols and three deadbolts on the door.
"I've spent a year in a demon realm surrounded by creatures of unimaginable power," he said slowly . "And nothing there frightened me as much as knocking on that door tonight."
"Good."
"Good?"
"It means you actually care about the answer."
He laughed, soft and surprised, and she remembered why she'd fallen for him in the first place. Not the suits or the mysterious background or even those unsettling eyes. It was this, the way she could crack his polished surface and find something genuine underneath.
"Come on." She tugged him toward the couch. "You can start with why time moves differently in Avaros."
"That's rather complicated physics."
"I dated a man who thought the earth was flat for six months. I can handle complicated."
"That's a horrifying admission."
"Don't start. You're still on thin ice."
He settled onto Eva's terrible couch, pulling her down beside him with careful deliberation. "Where would you like me to begin?"
"The beginning."
"That's several thousand years of demonic history."
"Then you'd better start talking."
Outside, London carried on through the rain-soaked night, unaware that something had shifted in a cramped flat above a curry house. Something that might have been broken three months ago, but perhaps wasn't beyond repair.
Lucien began to speak, his voice low and careful, and Rory listened as the story of another world unfolded in the dark.