AI The chain rattled before the door was halfway open.
He stood in the corridor like he owned the light, a charcoal suit that ate the shadows and left nothing but his face, slicked-back blond hair, one eye amber, the other black. Up close, he smelled of citrus and something older, metal and smoke, the way a match smells just before it dies. Ptolemy arched and spat, claws skittering on the floorboards.
"Lucien."
Two syllables meant to shut a conversation down, not start one. His smile curved like a promise and a threat at once.
"Rory." He stepped into the flat without waiting for an invitation, the ivory handle of his cane tapping a neat rhythm on the lino. "You look exactly how I last saw you, which is to say, dangerous and unreadable . A most satisfying combination."
She closed the door behind him, fingers finding the first deadbolt out of habit. Eva's flat had three locks, three different levels of denial. That was the point: some people liked to be safe. Others liked to count how many safe things they had left.
"Don't stand there," she said, and she locked the first bolt hard. Her thumb ran over the small crescent scar at the base of her wrist. The motion steadied her. "What are you doing here?"
"Precisely what you imagined." He moved farther inside, and the flat exhaled at his passage, the stacks of books shifting like a jury rearranging itself. He took in the cramped room with a single slow sweep, as if cataloguing evidence rather than admiring . "Trouble, it seems."
"You ring, you send messages, you make yourself scarce, then you show up unannounced at three in the morning, and you call that help?" Her voice did not waver . It was spare, rehearsed. Emotion hid in the joints. He had a knack for finding where she kept the thin places.
Ptolemy planted himself on Lucien's dress shoes, tail flicking, as if claiming him for the household . The cat purred against fine fabric, which made her skin go cold in a way no one intended.
"Don't be ridiculous." He crouched, the movement elegant, and removed a gloved hand slowly , deliberately , like someone peeling a bandage off a secret. His fingers were long, the nails immaculately trimmed, and he allowed the cat to sniff the scent of his skin. "I only wished to see if you were still breathing. Curiosity, a poor one's compassion. Call it what you prefer."
She did not smile. There had been a time when his polished words had cut through her defences. There had also been a time when she had believed his absence meant he had chosen to leave. She had patched herself with work and silence . The memory of how he had left, without explanation, a bitter knot in her chest, tightened.
"You could have texted. You could have used the key you still have, if you're going to act like a gentleman intruder."
His amber eye caught the light, and it was a keener thing than any argument. "Keys are less dramatic."
"You like drama."
"I prefer efficiency." He straightened, cane tapping once, twice . "And I prefer not to let you die for lack of a better word."
The flat tilted on the axis of that sentence. She felt the old reflex, flaring and stupid, to argue everything that had been left unspoken . He had saved her, once. He had also left her when she needed someone to look back with her. The ledger of wrongs sat between them like a third, insolent person.
"You can't just arrive and claim guardianship," she said, tone clipped . "That's not how anything works."
"It has always been how you operate." He smiled with a patience that did not belong to him. "You make lists, you barricade doors, you read aloud to yourself from old law texts and call it preparation. Admirable. Slightly lacking in companionship."
"Companionship does not come with an ivory cane."
"The cane has many functions." He tapped it against the floor as though testing for a fault line . "It conceals a blade, for example. Practicalities, Rory. London does have unpleasant permutations."
The name slipped out of him like a private concession. It made the air between them thinner.
"You always called me Rory in person and Miss Carter over breakfast," she said. "Decide and stick to it."
He laughed, low, amused. "A compromise then. Rory, I did not come to trade barbs. I came because someone mentioned your name in a place where names are currency."
The flat, with its paper stacks and ink rings, had always smelled like ideas and old smoke . Now that scent seemed to close in on them. He had a way of saying things that meant more than the words.
"Evan?" The word tasted like rust. The last time she had spoken it she had felt the blood under her skin rise. The memory came quick: the slamming door, the bruises she answered for, the way fear had become routine until she had split it off and fled in the night.
Lucien's expression shifted, the light catching the two-colour of his eyes and making him look less human and more like a diorama, perfectly arranged. "Not exactly," he said. "But connected to him. There are men who keep records, Rory. Names, addresses, debts. He asked after you."
"Asked?" She felt all her defences flare. "How did he find out where I am? I changed everything. I moved. I made all the sensible choices."
"You did." He stepped closer, close enough that she could count the faint flecks of gold at the edge of his amber eye. "You did everything sensible, except you assumed sensible would be enough. It rarely is."
"You're being melodramatic." She pushed at him with a flat hand, not hard. His suit smelled of danger and citrus. "Who says he knows? Who said anything at all?"
"A woman at the docks." Lucien's voice lowered. "A woman who buys secrets, and sells them with polite manners. She named a price for silence . He paid twice. Names were exchanged like coins."
He paused, and when he spoke his words had the weight of currency. "You are not safe alone, Aurora."
"Don't call me that here."
He looked at her then, and for a beat the room seemed to expand and compress around his attention. He reached out before she could brace herself, thumb tracing the crescent scar at her wrist with an intimacy that was not permission-giving.
"It's smaller than I remember," he murmured.
She jerked her hand away so fast the motion was rude. "Hands off."
"I apologise. Bad reflex." He withdrew, palms held out as an offering, as if his carefully managed composure needed to be displayed like a treaty. "I came to tell you to leave. Leave now. There are people on the other side of your life who would like to make you an example."
"Leave? Where am I supposed to go, Lucien? To some hotel with too many empty beds and too little sense? I have a life here. I have a job. Yu-Fei expects deliveries, and Eva will cut me for ruining her carpets if I arrive with this flat empty."
"Your life is a collection of things that make sense until they do not." He smiled again, softer this time. "Give me a night. Let me arrange a safe place. Allow me to be useful."
"And in return you get what? The privilege of leaving again when things get rough?"
He did not answer immediately. He tapped the cane once, as if listening to a distant metronome . When he spoke, the sentence was small and honest. "I do not intend to leave, this time."
That declaration should have meant something. It did not sound like the Lucien who left under the cover of polite excuses, who had a thousand ways to disappear. It sounded like someone staking a claim . The old wound flared: I cannot trust you. Then another, quieter pull: I wanted you to stay.
Before she could craft another retort, the living room door shook. A hard punctuation, not the polite rap of neighbours but the kind of knock that was more insistence than request. The three deadbolts on Eva's door trembled under the force. Someone outside shouted a name.
"Aurora Carter." The voice called, flat and male. "Open up. We know you're in there."
The air in the flat changed with that syllable. Lucien's posture narrowed, the way a predator 's shoulders do when it smells the metal of its prey. Ptolemy, who had been all softness, flattened his ears and growled, a low sound that seemed too wise for a tabby.
"Who is it?" Her voice did not sound like the same person who had been trading barbs a minute ago. It came smaller, focused. Her fingers found the second bolt, twisting it, twisting. She had always been methodical ; she had practised fleeing, locks and alarms like a litany.
Lucien moved and, without asking, took his cane in both hands, and the ivory handle flicked open along a seam she had not noticed. The blade inside caught what little light there was and sent it back in a thin, indifferent flash.
"Stay behind me." He did not ask. It was the sort of command that carried the weight of truth and history both. Ptolemy leapt to the windowsill and hissed at the corridor, as though letting the intruder know he would not go unremarked .
"You're not staying if he comes through this door." She felt the old, hot coil of fury again, protectiveness and pride bundled in a single impulse. "If he steps into this flat, I'm not letting you carry him anywhere."
"Good." He let the blade nestle back into the cane with a soft click. "I prefer not when others get formal with me until I ask."
The knocking increased, the voice sharper now, as if the man outside had a key to intimidation and intended to use it. "Aurora Carter, open the door. You can make this easier or we make it unpleasant."
Lucien's eyes, amber and black, slid to hers. For all his cultivated composure, something older, predatory, lived there. He had a history with violence and a practiced touch with people's fragile pieces. He had also left her once. In a heartbeat, she weighed history against survival and decided which she preferred.
"You're not going to be the reason I run," she said quietly.
"If I am," he replied, "I will be the first to catch you when you trip."
Wood protested in the corridor. Something metallic scraped like a blade being drawn along a hinge. The third deadbolt, the last defence, sat under her thumb. The choice stood between them like a hinge on a door, creaking slowly toward whatever lay beyond.
Lucien's hand brushed hers, a brief contact that set the hair along her arm upright. Ptolemy's purr crescendoed into a protective thrum. Outside, someone laughed, low and patient.
The lock clicked. The intruder had a patience edge carved from malice. The sweetest part of London sank into a slow, sharp silence . Lucien's jaw set. The cane's ivory carved a neat, white line in his grip.
"One step and I will cut the light out of this building," he said softly , words that were less threat than promise. "And you will wish you had been kinder."
The handle of the door gave under pressure, a splintering whisper that tasted like inevitability . The corridor light beyond the peephole pooled across their faces in a cold, clinical smear. Whatever stood outside was patient enough to wait the half-second for everything to fall apart on the inside.
Aurora's finger left the final deadbolt, breath held like a fragile, borrowed thing. The door groaned. The hinges shuddered. She felt every tiny, jagged memory of him sitting between them, the unfinished sentences, the absences like sharp edges. Lucien shifted forward, blade now only hinted at the seam of his cane, a single movement away from violence. He had not promised to stay before. Now he stood in a doorframe of splinters and shadow, and for the first time since he had left, the promise felt like a vow .
Someone outside muttered, the voice close enough now to hear the scrape of a boot. "Open up, Aurora. We can do this the easy way."
Lucien's lips curved. The smile was not for her. It was for the moment before the storm. He tightened his grip on the cane.
He had a reputation for being precise. He had a reputation for speaking four languages and for walking away when the tide turned. Tonight, he was nothing but a man in a suit with a blade in his hand and a look that promised to answer every question with a fight.
The door gave. Wood splintered and let shape into the light.