Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0C3EM616JDDWR24DYT22B

The knock was soft. Three precise raps, the kind that didn’t ask, but announced. Rory was ankle-deep in Eva’s research, surrounded by a fortress of leather-bound tomes on the floor. Ptolemy, the tabby, hissed from his perch on the radiator before streaking under the sofa. She hadn’t been expecting anyone. Eva was in Edinburgh, chasing down a lead on a kelpie. Rory stood, her knees cracking in protest, and edged towards the door. Through the peephole, the world was a fish-eye lens of the dim hallway. He was a smear of expensive charcoal grey, his face distorted but unmistakable. Lucien. Her breath hitched. She hadn’t seen him in eight months. Not since the night at the old docks, the air thick with the stench of rotting fish and spilled magic, when he’d handed her a sealed envelope and told her, in that calm, infuriating tone, that it was safer if she forgot his face for a while. She’d thrown the envelope back at him. It had fluttered to the wet ground between them. She hadn’t said a word. Just walked away, the echo of his cane on the cobbles following her for blocks. Now he was here, standing outside Eva’s door on Brick Lane as if he’d just come for tea. Rory’s hand hovered over the three deadbolts. Every instinct screamed to stay silent, to let him think the flat was empty. But he’d know. He always knew. She slid the bolts back, one after another, the sound like gunshots in the quiet flat. She pulled the door open just enough to frame herself in the gap. The distortion was gone. He looked exactly the same. Impeccable. His platinum hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place. The charcoal suit was tailored to perfection, hugging his broad shoulders and narrow waist. One hand rested on the ivory head of his cane. And his eyes—one a warm, molten amber, the other a bottomless black—held her with an intensity that felt like a physical touch. “Rory.” His voice was a low baritone, smoother than she remembered. It did things to her spine she’d spent months trying to forget. “You’re supposed to be in Marseille,” she said. Her voice came out flat, a dull blade. “Plans change.” “Did you get lost? This isn’t your part of the river.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his mismatched eyes. “May I come in? The scent of lamb bhuna is… pervasive out here.” “Eva’s not home.” “I’m aware. I came to see you.” The admission hung between them. Rory’s left wrist, where the small crescent scar shone pale against her skin, began to throb with a phantom ache. An old habit, a nervous tell. She fought the urge to cover it. “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying, Lucien. We’re done. You made that clear.” He leaned a fraction of an inch on the cane. “We were never done. We were paused. There is a difference.” “Semantics.” “It is the difference between a comma and a full stop. May I please come in? It is a matter of some… delicacy. And it involves you.” Curiosity was a trap. She knew that. But the part of her that was still the girl who’d fled Cardiff, the part that loved puzzles and dangerous information, that part was already turning the bolts. She stepped back, opening the door wider. “Fine. Five minutes.” He moved past her into the cluttered room. He took up space differently than other people. Not by bulk, but by a sheer, quiet certainty. He surveyed the chaotic landscape of books and scrolls, his gaze analytical, missing nothing. He didn’t sit. He stood in the center of the room, a monolith of order amidst the beautiful chaos. “You’ve been busy,” he remarked, nudging a stack of papers with the tip of his cane. “What do you want, Luc?” He turned to face her fully. The amber eye seemed to catch the weak London light filtering through the window. The black one drank it. “Your name has surfaced. In a context you will not enjoy.” A cold trickle traced her spine. “What context?” “The auction houses of Avaros. There is a new collector. He specializes in unique… artifacts. Items of power with a trace of human soul still clinging to them.” Lucien’s voice was clinical, but his grip on the cane tightened, the knuckles whitening. “He has developed a particular interest in the children of barristers from Cardiff who dabble in the nocturnal trades. Especially ones with a crescent-shaped scar on their left wrist.” The air left Rory’s lungs. She instinctively curled her wrist into her chest. “How?” “The same way anyone learns anything. Someone talked. Someone who was not as careful as they should have been after a dockside disagreement eight months ago. Your little display of temper drew attention we had worked very hard to avoid.” The accusation was a slap. “My display? You’re the one who gave me a severance package and a ‘good luck, don’t call me’!” “I gave you distance! A clean break! So the things that follow me would not find you!” For the first time, his calm facade cracked. A ripple of raw frustration, of something hotter and darker, moved beneath the surface. He took a sharp, controlled breath. “It seems I underestimated both the collector’s tenacity and his sources.” “So this is my fault now?” Her voice rose, echoing in the small flat. “You vanish without a word, you leave me to pick up the pieces of that mess, and now you waltz back in here to tell me I’m on some demon’s shopping list because I didn’t disappear politely enough?” “I am not blaming you.” He bit the words out. “I am stating a fact. And I am here to fix it.” “How? Another envelope? Another ‘for your own good’ and then another eight months of radio silence?” He was across the room in three swift strides, the cane forgotten, its tip leaving a faint indentation in Eva’s rug. He didn’t touch her, but he was close enough that she could smell the subtle scent of his cologne—sandalwood and frost. Close enough to see the faint scar through his left eyebrow, a detail she’d memorized in darker, quieter moments. “Do you think I wanted that?” His voice was a low, urgent rasp. “Do you think it was easy for me to walk away from the one person in this godforsaken city who looked at me and saw a man, not a transaction or a monster?” The words hung there, charged and brittle. Rory’s heart hammered against her ribs. All the hurt, the lonely nights spent wondering what she’d done wrong, the anger that had been her fuel—it all curdled into a sharp, aching lump in her throat. “You saw a solution,” she whispered. “A problem to be managed. That’s what you do, Lucien. You manage things.” His amber eye flashed. “I was managing the only thing that mattered! Your survival!” “And you didn’t think I deserved a say in it? A choice? You just decided. Like you always do.” “Because the choice was between having me in your life and having a life at all!” The shout was silent, contained in the fierce tension of his jaw, the stark planes of his face. “This world, my world, it consumes beautiful things. It grinds them up for power. I have watched it happen. I refused to let it happen to you.” The confession was ripped from him. It lay bare between them, ugly and real. The polished fixer was gone. In his place was just Luc—a man standing in a messy flat, haunted and furious and scared. Rory’s defiance faltered. The wall of anger she’d built brick by brick over the months had a crack. She saw the shadows under his eyes, the new fine lines at their corners. The cost of those eight months. “You don’t get to make that call for me,” she said, but the heat was gone from her words. “I know.” He looked away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I know that now. It was the worst mistake I have ever made. And I have made many.” He brought his gaze back to hers. The black eye seemed to swirl, depths upon depths. “But the threat is real, Rory. It is here, now. And my methods, however flawed, are the only ones I have to keep you safe. Please. Let me try again. Differently this time.” He didn’t move. He waited. The ball of anxiety in her chest loosened, unspooling into a tangled mix of fear, residual anger, and a treacherous, undeniable pull. The attraction had never died. It had just gone quiet, buried under the hurt. Now it hummed back to life, a live wire in the scant space between them. “Differently how?” she asked, her voice barely audible. “Together.” The word was simple. Final. “No more unilateral decisions. No more disappearances. You are infuriatingly clever and stubbornly capable. I will not treat you as anything less. We face this. As partners.” Partners. The word was a key, turning in a lock she’d thought was sealed forever. Ptolemy chose that moment to slink out from under the sofa, winding himself around Lucien’s immaculate trouser leg, leaving a trail of grey fur. Lucien glanced down, a flicker of surprise on his face. “He hates everyone,” Rory said, a weak, watery laugh escaping her. “I have been told I have a way with felines.” Lucien looked back at her, and the ghost of his real smile finally touched his eyes, softening the hard line of his mouth. “And with complicated women who are too smart for their own good.” She didn’t smile back. She just stared at him, at the man who had broken her trust and was now standing in the wreckage, offering to help rebuild it. The smell of curry from downstairs seeped under the door. A siren wailed somewhere on Commercial Street. The ordinary world kept turning, oblivious. “Five minutes are up,” she said. His expression didn’t change, but the light in his amber eye dimmed a fraction. He gave a single, slow nod. He reached for his cane. “I’ll see myself out.” “I didn’t say you had to leave.” The words were out before she could stop them. She crossed her arms, a defensive gesture. “I need to know everything. Every detail about this collector. How he got my name. What he wants. And I have some… research of Eva’s that might be relevant. It’s going to take more than five minutes.” Lucien stilled. The hope that flashed across his face was so raw, so quickly schooled back into neutrality, that it made her chest hurt. “As you wish.”