Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0BYS4623D23J8YV8FT27P

The knock came at half past eleven, three sharp raps that cut through the quiet of Eva's flat like a blade. Ptolemy lifted his head from the stack of grimoires he'd claimed as a bed, ears swiveling toward the door. Rory set down her mug of cold tea and crossed the cramped space, stepping over a pile of scrolls Eva had left scattered across the floor before disappearing to chase down some lead in Whitechapel. The curry house below had closed hours ago, and the building held that particular silence of a London night — distant sirens, the rumble of a late bus, nothing more. She checked the peephole out of habit. Her hand froze on the first deadbolt. Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hallway, his platinum hair catching the sickly fluorescent light from the stairwell. He wore charcoal as always, the cut of his suit pristine despite the hour, his ivory-handled cane tucked under one arm. His mismatched eyes — amber and black — stared directly at the peephole as if he could see her through it. Knowing him, he probably could. Rory's pulse kicked against her throat. She hadn't seen him in three months. Not since that night in the warehouse off Canary Wharf, when everything had gone sideways and she'd walked away from him standing in the rain, his hand outstretched, her name still hanging in the air between them. She slid back the first deadbolt. Then the second. Her fingers hesitated on the third. "I know you're there, Rory." His voice carried through the wood, that familiar French accent curling around her name like smoke. "I can hear your heartbeat." "That's creepy," she said flatly, and pulled the door open. He looked the same. Of course he did — half-demons didn't age the way humans did, and Lucien had always carried himself like time was something that happened to other people. But there were shadows under his eyes she didn't remember, a tension in the set of his jaw that hadn't been there before. "You changed your hair," he said. Rory's hand went involuntarily to her shoulder, where her black hair now ended in a blunt cut. She'd taken scissors to it herself two weeks after the warehouse, standing in Eva's tiny bathroom at three in the morning, needing something she could control. "You're observant as ever." She didn't move from the doorway. "What do you want, Lucien?" "May I come in?" "That depends on why you're here." His mouth curved, but it wasn't quite a smile. "Still so careful. You never did trust easily." "I trusted you." The words came out sharper than she intended. Ptolemy made a sound of feline judgment from somewhere behind her. Lucien's expression flickered — something raw and quickly shuttered. He shifted his weight, and for the first time Rory noticed he was leaning more heavily on his cane than usual. Not an affectation tonight. An actual need. "You're hurt," she said. "A minor disagreement with some associates of our mutual friend in Southwark. Nothing that won't heal." "Minor disagreements don't usually leave you limping." "You noticed." That almost-smile again. "I'm touched." Rory wanted to slam the door in his face. She wanted to drag him inside by his perfectly knotted tie and demand to know where he'd been, what he'd been doing, why he'd let three months pass without a single word when he knew — he *knew* — how she felt about silence, about being left to wonder. Instead she stepped back, holding the door wider. Lucien moved past her with careful grace, his shoulder brushing hers in the narrow entrance. He smelled the same. Sandalwood and something darker, something that reminded her of old churches and older sins. She hated that she remembered. The flat was a disaster, as always. Eva's research had consumed every available surface — books on demonology stacked beside takeaway containers, scrolls pinned to the walls with pushpins, a whiteboard covered in her cramped handwriting. Lucien surveyed it all with the practiced eye of an information broker, cataloging and filing. "Your friend has been busy." "Eva's always busy." Rory closed the door and slid all three deadbolts home. "Sit down before you fall down. I'll get the first aid kit." "I didn't come here for medical attention." "Then why did you come?" He turned to face her, and for a moment all the careful masks fell away. The polished fixer, the smooth-talking broker, the man who always had an angle — gone. What remained was something rawer. Someone who looked like he hadn't slept in days. "Because I couldn't stay away any longer." Rory's breath caught. She covered it by moving to the cluttered kitchen, yanking open drawers until she found the first aid kit Eva kept stocked with supplies both mundane and otherwise. When she turned back, Lucien had lowered himself onto the edge of Eva's worn sofa, his cane propped against the armrest. Ptolemy had emerged from his book-nest to investigate, sniffing suspiciously at Lucien's polished shoes. "Take off your jacket," Rory said. "Demanding." "You want to bleed on Eva's couch, be my guest. She'll hex you into next week." Lucien's laugh was low and rough. He shrugged out of his jacket with a wince he couldn't quite hide, and Rory saw the dark stain spreading across his white shirt, just above his hip. She'd been right. Not minor at all. She knelt beside the sofa, her hands steadier than her heart. "Lift your shirt." "If you wanted me undressed, you only had to ask." "Shut up, Luc." The nickname slipped out before she could stop it. His sharp intake of breath had nothing to do with her fingers probing the wound — a deep gash, already starting to close with the accelerated healing his demon blood afforded him, but sluggish. Whatever had made it was laced with something nasty. "Iron blade," he confirmed, reading her expression. "Nasty trick." "Who?" "It doesn't matter." "It matters to me." She pressed gauze against the wound harder than strictly necessary. He hissed. "You show up at my door after three months of nothing, bleeding from an iron wound, and you won't even tell me who did this?" "Would it change anything?" Rory sat back on her heels, the first aid kit forgotten. "I don't know, Lucien. Would it? Because from where I'm sitting, nothing's changed. You're still keeping secrets. Still deciding what I get to know and what gets locked away in that calculating head of yours." "That's not—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "That's not fair." "Fair?" She stood, putting distance between them. "You want to talk about fair? You left me standing in that warehouse. You told me you'd explain everything, and then you just — vanished. No calls, no messages, nothing. I didn't know if you were alive or dead." "I was protecting you." "I don't need your protection!" The words echoed in the cramped flat. Ptolemy bolted for the bedroom, and somewhere below them, the curry house's ancient pipes groaned in sympathy. Lucien rose from the sofa, one hand pressed to his bandaged side. He crossed to her in two uneven steps, close enough that she could see the ring of gold around the pupil of his amber eye, the absolute void of his black one. "Yes," he said quietly. "You do. You have no idea what's coming, Rory. What's already in motion. The people I deal with, the things I've learned — if they knew how much you mattered to me—" He cut himself off, but the words hung between them anyway. Rory's chest ached. "Then tell me. Stop trying to carry this alone and just *tell me*." "I can't." His voice cracked on it. "Not yet. Not until I know I can keep you safe." "That's not your choice to make." "Isn't it?" He reached up, and his fingers hovered near her face without quite touching. "You walked away from me, remember? You made it very clear you didn't want my complications in your life." "I walked away because you shut me out." She caught his wrist, her fingers pressing against the pulse point. Even his heartbeat ran warmer than human. "There's a difference." "Is there?" They stood frozen, his wrist in her grip, his body close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him. The moment stretched, fragile as spun glass. "I dream about you," Lucien said, so quiet she almost missed it. "Every night since the warehouse. I dream about the look on your face when you turned your back on me. And I deserve it. I know I deserve it. But I couldn't—" He drew a ragged breath. "I couldn't keep staying away. Even knowing it's selfish. Even knowing I should leave you out of this entirely." "You're a bastard," Rory whispered. "I know." "You lied to me." "I omitted. There's a difference." A sound escaped her, something between a laugh and a sob. "You're impossible." "So I've been told." She should push him away. Every rational instinct screamed at her to step back, to demand answers before letting him any closer. But the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist ached the way it always did when she was about to do something reckless, and Lucien was looking at her like she was the only real thing in a world of shadows and schemes. "If you disappear on me again," she said, "I will hunt you down myself. And I won't be gentle about it." His breath caught. "Rory—" "I mean it, Luc. No more vanishing acts. No more protecting me from things I have a right to know. Either you're in this with me, all of it, or you walk out that door right now and you don't come back." The silence stretched. Ptolemy crept back into the room, winding between their legs with pointed disinterest. "I can't promise you safety," Lucien finally said. "I can't promise you answers tonight. But I can promise you—" He turned his wrist in her grip, lacing his fingers through hers. "I can promise I won't leave. Not again. Not unless you tell me to go." Rory studied his face, searching for the lie. The calculation. The angle he was always playing. But there was nothing there except exhaustion and hope and something that looked terrifyingly like surrender. "You're bleeding through your bandage," she said. "I know." "You should sit down." "Probably." Neither of them moved.