Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0D3T65980WYJQXK1PTE9E

A dull thump rattled the flat’s front door, followed instantly by nervous scrabbling on the other side. Aurora paused mid-pace, toe stubbing the heap of research notes sliding off Eva’s teetering coffee table. She’d spent the last hour alphabetising grimoires and pretending she didn’t care about anything outside the four walls and the lazy purring from Ptolemy sprawled over her duffle. The knock came again—one-two, the rhythm clipped and impatient. Aurora set down a battered copy of Demon Law: Volume II. Butterflies gnawed her stomach with thin, icy teeth. She eyed the three deadbolts. Eva never returned before midnight, didn’t bother knocking even then. Aurora’s pulse flickered when the second lock rattled. She called through the frame, “Lost, are you?” An accented scoff filtered through the wood. “Je peux sentir le curry d'ici. Open the door, chérie. My arm’s getting tired.” Her hand froze, fingertips brushing the worn scar on her wrist as if it could anchor her. Lucien. The thrill sat swords-edge beside dread. The deadbolts sounded deafening, one after the next. The door creaked open an inch—narrow enough for a single wary eye. Through the gap, he leaned on the frame: tall, expensive, irritation curling his mouth. Lucien Moreau still wore secrets and old wounds as neatly as his suit; his platinum hair slicked and immaculate despite the June rain. That cane of his—ivory glinting—rested over one gloved hand. Aurora slid her gaze from the amber of his right eye to the black left, as if balancing a knife on a fingertip. “You’re lost, then.” He exhaled. “Let me in before your neighbour’s nosiness ends up in somebody’s police report.” She stepped aside, not an inch more than the law required. Lucien’s cologne seeped through the doorway: pepper, old paper, a hint of sulphur that memory wouldn’t scrub away. He closed the door with care, gaze flicking over towers of books and post-its shrinking under Ptolemy’s slow stretch. He swept off rainwater with a deliberate flick of his sleeve. “How’s the academic hermitage?” His tone tangled with contempt and something softer, maybe envy. “Eva leave you any tea, or just the privilege of cat-sitting?” Aurora slouched against the wall, arms folded, weight on her good leg. “Nothing stronger than green tea and a shelf of curses I’m meant to categorise. Why are you here, Lucien?” She stabbed at efficiency, but her voice rasped with something brittle. His eyes lingered on the bruise-dark circles beneath hers. “I came by to collect—” He gestured at the table where the envelope sat, thick with whatever infernal documents Eva traded with half-London’s supernatural riff-raff. “But I might’ve expected you.” The line set his mouth harder. “You never were much for staying gone.” Aurora snorted, brushing hair behind her ear to keep her nerves busy. “You never were much for apologies.” The cat hopped down, chose Lucien’s shoes to claim this time, and Auroras heart stuttered watching him reach to scratch Ptolemy’s head. “Still bribing felines for information?” “Still running from the things that want you?” The reply slipped out before she could worry it over; a knife gleaming in candlelight. His gaze flickered, but he didn’t flinch. The game was always questions, never answers, and every word another move. “I’m not running,” she replied, quiet but vicious as a snap of frost. “London’s far enough. You’d know about distance.” He drummed gloved fingers on the cane’s head, gaze falling to her left wrist. “You ever sleep, Aurora?” Her laughter refused to be kind. “Any reason you’re counting my hours? Or did you just miss my dazzling conversation about demon loopholes?” He hesitated like a man in front of a locked case. The rain outside gathered strength, rattling window panes until the whole flat shivered. “I didn’t want it ending like that.” The words ducked out, raw, nothing layering them. No smirk. No measured wit. Bare as the first day they’d crossed into this fog-wrapped city. Aurora blinked, shock raw. The room pressed close—a stack of manuscripts, the cat, the smell of dust and vindaloo. She felt her spine slot down the wall until she half-sat on the old radiator, shoes worrying a patch of threadbare rug. “You had options, Moreau. You built the wall yourself.” Ptolemy sneezed at the cane, disgruntled as always by tension, and Lucien stepped closer. “And yet you stayed behind it. Tell me, have you forgiven yourself yet?” The question hit. Aurora bit her lower lip, resisting the urge to spit fire. Words, when they finally came, sawed up her throat. “You mean about Evan? Or what happened in Marseille?” A muscle jumped on his jaw, and he leaned the cane against Eva’s cluttered writing desk. “We can take turns listing regrets, but you’ll win on volume.” A smirk that barely remembered how to live touched her lips. “Your French guilt complex is showing.” So close now that she counted flecks of dark in his golden eye. His hands curled loose at his sides, one bare, one gloved. “I came to return your mother’s book.” The revelation startled the air between them. He drew a battered hardback from his pocket—its jacket wrapped in waterproof cloth. The cover bled faded embroidery. Aurora flinched. “I thought you pawned it.” He slid it across the coffee table, careful. “I borrowed it. You can scold me later. Read the margin notes on page one-fifty-four.” She reached out, spine pressed still to the radiator, caught the book’s edge. Her fingers brushed his, skin hot from the touch. She wanted to reel away and carve some biting line, but she only opened the cover. Her mother’s looping script unravelled beneath her thumb. Margins crowded with annotations in ink faded to dusk-blue—and further down, a note in sharp, angular French. Lucien’s handwriting. Never run alone. She read it once, twice, then set the book aside with hands that shook. Words finally found her. “Why bring it now?” His face closed, a mask cracking at the edge. “That night you vanished, I—” He faltered, searching words in a tongue not meant for tenderness. “I stopped looking after myself. Eva said to bring you something you wouldn’t throw away.” Aurora squeezed the book, pressing the worn cover. “I wouldn’t throw you away.” He snorted, bitterness purring under the sound. “Only misplaced me.” But softness threaded the words. He ran a thumb under her wrist, brushing the scar. Heat pricked her skin. Aurora barely breathed. “Careful, Lucien,” she whispered, not pulling away. No one moved. Rain sang at the windows. Ptolemy curled on the duffle and yawned. Finally, he retreated the inch she hadn’t known he’d claimed. “I’ll collect Eva’s package, then go.” She thrust the book against his chest, harder than she meant to. “Stay. For tea.” Her words tried for casual, but her grip lingered on him. “There’s… enough for two. Provided you’re still allowed mortal cups.” He graced her with that brief, irreverent half-smile. “Just don’t make it more than two sugars. I hear it’s bad for my… soul.” Aurora rolled her eyes and started for the kettle, shuffling past heaps of demonology and the ghost of every old sorrow. Lucien trailed, silent except for the soft thump of his cane against overgrown carpet. Unsaid things swelled between them, but the air thinned. Not forgiveness, not yet. But room. Ptolemy flicked his tail, restless. Aurora asked, “Why’d you write it in French?” Lucien, now half-buried in a pile of notes, considered her with an unreadable smile. “Some secrets want to be translated. Others want to stay close to the tongue.” Her eyes didn’t leave him while the kettle hissed, like she could map all the reasons she’d ever left him behind. Tea, book, scar, silence. Pieces of a broken mosaic, waiting for hands patient enough to begin again.