Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0QJ6Y258B17RZDV0SBY1X

The first deadbolt clicked, then the second. Rory’s fingers hesitated on the third. Through the peephole, the corridor warped Lucien into a fisheye spectre—charcoal shoulders, silver hair, the ivory flash of his cane tapping impatiently against the threadbare carpet. She pulled the chain anyway. He stood exactly as memory had fossilised him: spine rigid, platinum strands slicked back to expose the cruel architecture of his cheekbones. His left eye—amber, volcanic—fixed on her without blinking. The right, pupil blown wide and black as oil, drifted to the gap between door and frame. Three inches of safety. She didn't close it. Her bright blue eyes narrowed, chips of arctic ice cutting through the dim corridor light. "You've added hardware." His voice carried the Marseilles lilt, polished by years of London grime. He gestured with the cane toward the trio of locks. "Paranoia suits you." "Eva's idea." Rory leaned against the jamb, blocking entry. The crescent scar on her left wrist peeked beneath her sleeve, pale against the darkness of her hair that fell straight to her shoulders. "She thinks someone's coming for her research." "She's correct." The bluntness of it struck her chest. Behind her, Ptolemy vaulted from the windowsill, tabby tail bottle-brushing as he vanished into the bedroom. Animals never lied about what Lucien carried in his blood. "You can't come in." The words scraped her throat. Six months ago, he'd left her in a Soho rainstorm with nothing but the bruise of his thumb against her jawline and the conviction that half-demons didn't get to keep human things. Lucien tilted his head. The motion sent shadows dancing across his face, turning the amber eye molten while the black one swallowed light whole. "I haven't crossed the threshold, Aurora. Yet." He never called her Rory. Never allowed the diminutive that suggested softness, permitted by Eva and the delivery regulars at the Golden Empress. He insisted on the full constellation name, as though invoking something celestial might sanctify the demon in his marrow. She should shut the door. Instead, her hand dropped to her side. He entered. The cane tapped once, twice, finding purchase on the cluttered rug. Books tottered in stacks against every wall—Eva's occult research, spilling from shelves onto the kitchenette counter, scrolls unravelling like entrails across the sofa. He navigated the chaos with the precision of a man who walked through battlefields. "You didn't answer my messages." "You didn't send any." "Precisely." He turned. At five-eleven, he cleared the low ceiling by mere inches. Close now, close enough that she could see the tension bracketing his mouth, the way his left hand flexed near his breast pocket where a handkerchief would be. He'd worn the charcoal suit she remembered, tailored to hide the infernal strength coiled in his shoulders. The last time she'd seen him unbutton that jacket, she'd traced the sigils branded beneath his collarbones, had tasted salt on skin that ran too hot for human norms. "You left." The scar on her wrist ached, phantom pain from a childhood accident that suddenly felt recent. "No explanation. Just—gone. And now you walk in here like—" "Like what?" He advanced. She retreated until her spine hit the windowledge. Outside, Brick Lane choked with noon traffic, tourists hunting for vintage leather. Inside, the air thinned. "Like a man who discovered his continued presence was poisoning the woman he—" He stopped. The black eye twitched, a flutter of darkness. "The cabal knows about Cardiff. About Evan. About why you really fled." The abusive ex's name struck her like physical force. She hadn't spoken it aloud in months, had buried it under shift work and Yu-Fei's imperial menus. Her fingers curled, nails biting palms. "That's not possible." "It's inevitable." Lucien set the cane across two tottering book piles, freeing his hands. One reached for her. She flinched. He arrested the motion, hovering mid-air. His thumb found the scar on her wrist with the delicacy of a thief dismantling a tripwire. "The demon I denied, the heritage I claimed didn't matter—it follows me. They followed me. To you." His skin burned. Not metaphorically; the half-demon biology ran feverish, and where his thumb traced the crescent shape, her nerves ignited. She should pull away. The door stood open. Eva would return from the British Library archives by four. "You said we were a mistake." Rory's voice dropped to a whisper. "That night in the rain. You said—" "I lied." The amber eye caught the weak London sunlight filtering through dirty glass, turning it to torchlight. "I lie beautifully, Aurora. It's my father's gift. But look at you." His other hand rose, bypassing her cheek to tuck a strand of black hair behind her ear, lingering at the pulse point. "Three deadbolts. A cat that spits at shadows. You're building fortresses because of what I brought to your door." She caught his wrist. The bones moved wrong beneath her grip—too many articulations, a structure that recalled serpents more than men. His breath hitched, a sharp intake that revealed teeth overly pointed for comfort. "Then why come back?" She tightened her grip. "If you're so dangerous, if you're walking catastrophe, why stand in Eva's kitchen smelling like expensive cologne and brimstone?" "Because." He leaned in. The brimstone intensified, a warning and a summons. His lips hovered near her temple, not touching, generating heat. "I tried the alternative. Six months of absence. Of letting you believe you were discarded like refuse. It didn't take." Her free hand found his chest, meaning to push but curling into the charcoal wool instead. His heart thundered against her palm, rapid and arrhythmic, a double-beat that suggested two hearts or one torn in conflicting directions. "You're insufferable." The words escaped on an exhale she didn't know she held. "Monstrous." His mouth twisted in something that wasn't quite a smile. "The locks aren't for you." "I know." "Then why—" "Because I need you to use them." He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes, the heterochromatic gaze stripping her bare more efficiently than hands ever had. The black pupil bled into the amber, an eclipse consuming light. "Against what's coming. Against me, if necessary. But first—" He didn't finish. The cane rolled off the books, clattering to the floor, blade unsheathed by the impact. Neither looked at it. Rory's fingers climbed to his collar, finding the sigils beneath the fabric, the branded skin she remembered. He exhaled, a sound like tectonic plates shifting, and his forehead dropped to hers. "I never asked for a knight." Her voice cracked. "Good." His hand settled against her jaw, thumb pressing the corner of her mouth. The heat scalded. "You got a demon instead. Much worse. Much more... persistent." Outside, a car horn blared up from the curry house delivery bay. Inside, Ptolemy yowled from the bedroom, sensing the shift in atmospheric pressure. Rory didn't move. The crescent scar pulsed beneath Lucien's thumb, marking time like a heartbeat, counting the seconds before Eva's return, before the cabal's arrival, before the inevitable crash of half-demon hunger against human fragility. She didn't step back.