Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT09XBAMA6XKPX4KGA852X2

The door swung open before Rory could knock a second time. Lucien stood in the narrow doorway, his platinum hair uncharacteristically disheveled, shirt untucked from his trousers. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The smell of curry drifted up from the restaurant below, mingling with the musty scent of old paper that always clung to Eva's flat. "You're not Eva," Lucien said finally, his French accent thicker than she remembered. "Neither are you." Rory crossed her arms. "She said I could stay here while she's in Prague. Gave me her spare key." His mismatched eyes — one amber, one black — flickered to the key dangling from her fingers. A muscle twitched in his jaw. "She failed to mention that particular arrangement to me." "Funny. She failed to mention you'd be here at all." Ptolemy threaded between Lucien's ankles, the tabby's purr audible even over the distant clatter of pots from the kitchen below. Rory watched the cat wind around the Frenchman's expensive Italian shoes, leaving ginger fur on the charcoal wool of his trousers. He didn't seem to notice. Or care. That was new. "Well." Lucien stepped back from the doorway, a gesture that might have been invitation or surrender. "I suppose you'd better come in before Mrs. Okonkwo sees you loitering in the hall. She'll have questions neither of us want to answer." Rory pushed past him into the cramped space, her shoulder brushing his chest. She felt him tense at the contact. Good. Let him be uncomfortable. Let him feel even a fraction of what she'd felt three months ago when he'd walked out of that warehouse without looking back. Eva's flat looked worse than usual. Books towered in precarious stacks against every wall. Research notes covered the small kitchen table, held down by empty teacups and a crystal paperweight shaped like a scarab. Lucien's ivory-handled cane leaned against the radiator, and his jacket hung over the back of the single dining chair — signs he'd been here long enough to settle in. "How long?" Rory asked. "Three days." He closed the door behind her, and the three deadbolts clicked into place one by one. "Eva asked me to feed the cat while she was away." "She asked me to water her plants." They both looked at the windowsill, where a row of brown, withered succulents sat in painted ceramic pots. Lucien's expression didn't change, but Rory could have sworn she saw his lips twitch. "I've been focused on other matters," he said. "Clearly." She dropped her bag on the floor and moved toward the kitchen, needing distance, needing something to do with her hands. The kettle sat on the counter, still warm. She filled it anyway, the rush of water from the tap filling the silence between them. "Aurora." "Don't." "We should discuss—" "No." She slammed the kettle onto its base and jabbed the switch. "We really shouldn't." Behind her, she heard him exhale. The floorboards creaked as he moved closer, and she gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles whitening. "You didn't return my calls," he said. "You made fifteen. I thought the message was clear enough." "I was concerned." "You were guilty." She turned to face him, and there he was, closer than she'd expected, close enough that she could see the shadows under his eyes. When was the last time he'd slept? "There's a difference, Lucien. I know you struggle with that distinction, but most people learn it by the time they're thirty-two." His jaw tightened. "That's unfair." "Is it?" The kettle rumbled, building toward a boil. Ptolemy jumped onto the counter between them, tail swishing, oblivious to the tension crackling through the air. "I did what was necessary," Lucien said quietly. "The demon would have killed you. Both of us. I made a choice." "You made a deal. With your father's people. Behind my back." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she hated herself for it. "You didn't even tell me what it cost you." "Because it doesn't matter." "It matters to me!" The words hung between them, raw and honest in a way she hadn't intended. Lucien's expression shifted — something vulnerable flickering across his features before he locked it away again. "Rory." He said her nickname like it hurt him, like the single syllable was being dragged from somewhere deep in his chest. "What I gave them... it cannot be undone. Knowing wouldn't change anything." "It would change how I look at you." "Precisely why I didn't tell you." The kettle clicked off. Steam rose in a thin plume, curling toward the water-stained ceiling. Neither of them moved to make tea. Rory studied his face — the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the thin scar that ran along his hairline that she'd traced with her fingertips once, in a moment of weakness, in the back of a cab at three in the morning when they'd both had too much to drink and the space between them had felt impossible to maintain. "Your eye," she said slowly. "The black one. It wasn't always that dark, was it?" He didn't answer. He didn't need to. "God." She pressed her palm to her forehead. "Lucien, what did you give them?" "Enough." He reached past her for the kettle, his arm brushing hers, and began making tea with the careful precision of someone desperate for distraction. "Enough to ensure the binding would hold. Enough to keep you alive." "I didn't ask you to—" "You were dying." His voice was flat, controlled, but his hands trembled slightly as he poured the water. "The demon's poison was spreading through your bloodstream, and there was no other way. No human medicine, no mortal remedy. I made a call." "You should have let me make it." "You were unconscious." "Then you should have let me die!" The teacup shattered against the floor. They both stared at the broken pieces, the spreading puddle of tea, the tabby cat leaping down from the counter with an offended yowl. Lucien's hand hung frozen in the air where he'd released the cup, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. "I couldn't." Rory's chest ached. She wanted to scream at him, wanted to shake him until he understood what he'd done, what he'd sacrificed, what it meant that he'd traded pieces of himself to demons without even consulting her. She wanted to hate him for making that choice. Instead, she knelt down and started picking up the broken ceramic. "Leave it." His hand closed around her wrist — gentle, careful, his fingers brushing the crescent-shaped scar from her childhood. "You'll cut yourself." "I'm not that fragile." "I know." His thumb traced the scar, almost absently. "I've always known." She looked up at him, this infuriating man with his secrets and his deals and his heterochromatic eyes, one of which he'd apparently bargained away to save her life. He was still holding her wrist. She wasn't pulling away. "Why?" she asked. "And don't give me some noble bullshit about duty or debts or the greater good. Why, Lucien?" He helped her to her feet, his grip sliding from her wrist to her hand. They stood in the middle of Eva's cluttered kitchen, surrounded by ancient texts and dying plants and the remnants of a broken teacup, and she watched him struggle with words that shouldn't have been difficult. "Because." He stopped. Started again. "Because when I thought of a world without you in it, I couldn't breathe. Because every moment since Marseille, since I understood what I was, I've told myself that caring for anyone is weakness. A vulnerability my father's kind would exploit." His thumb brushed over her knuckles. "And then you walked into Silas's bar with that ridiculous delivery bag and asked if anyone had ordered the kung pao chicken, and I knew — I knew I was already lost." "That was two years ago." "I'm aware." "You've spent two years pushing me away." "Also aware." Rory laughed, though nothing was funny. The sound came out wet, dangerously close to tears. "You're an idiot." "Yes." "A self-sacrificing, secretive, infuriating—" "Also yes." "—beautiful idiot." His breath caught. The amber eye seemed to glow faintly in the dim light of the kitchen, and she wondered how much of him was still human, how much of that humanity he'd traded away for her sake. "I can't promise to be better," he said quietly. "I can't promise I won't make impossible choices to keep you safe. But I can promise to try — to tell you first. To trust you with the weight of it." His free hand rose to her cheek, his palm warm against her skin. "If you'll let me." "You shouldn't need my permission to be honest." "No. But I'm asking for it anyway." She should walk away. She should grab her bag and her key and find a hotel for the night, put distance between them until she could think clearly. Three months of silence, of hurt, of replaying that moment in the warehouse when he'd spoken words in a language that made her ears bleed and the demon had frozen, bound by whatever terrible bargain he'd struck— But his hand was still on her cheek. And she was still leaning into it. "If you ever make a choice like that again without telling me," she said, "I will personally drag you to the Crossroads and sell you to the highest bidder." "Understood." "And you're going to explain exactly what that deal cost you. All of it." "...Understood." "And you're going to buy Eva new teacups." A smile ghosted across his lips — the first genuine one she'd seen from him in months. "Anything else?" Rory reached up and grabbed a fistful of his expensive shirt, pulling him down until their foreheads touched. His breath mingled with hers, warm and unsteady. "Yeah," she murmured. "Shut up and kiss me before I change my mind." He did.