AI The top deadbolt fought her. Rory shoved her shoulder into the doorframe, thumb dug into the little brass turn, and the lock finally gave with a clack that echoed down the narrow corridor. Curry and hot oil drifted up from the place below, mixing with the dusty paper smell that clung to Eva’s landing.
Another knock landed, flatter this time, like the knuckles had lost patience.
Rory pulled the door open a handspan.
Lucien filled the gap.
Charcoal suit. White shirt without a crease. Rain beaded on his shoulders and sat there like it belonged. He held his ivory-handled cane upright, the tip planted on the grimy mat. One eye caught what light the hallway offered and turned it to amber; the other stayed black as a bruise.
Ptolemy, who had been loafing on a stack of newspapers, sprang down with a soft thud and padded over, tail high, head tilted as if he owned the lease.
Rory’s fingers stayed hooked around the edge of the door.
“No.”
Lucien’s gaze flicked to the three locks, then to her hand, then back to her face.
“You kept the menagerie.”
“This isn’t my place.”
“That never stopped you.”
Her throat tightened in a way that didn’t match the temperature. She let the door swing another inch, enough to show she hadn’t forgotten how to be polite, not enough to count as welcome.
“You’ve got some cheek. Turning up here.”
Lucien’s mouth pulled into something that could have been a smile in a different room, in a different life.
“I ran out of invitations.”
Rory looked past him into the stairwell. Empty. No footsteps , no shadow waiting to step from the corner.
“You followed me from the restaurant?”
“I didn’t follow. I watched.”
“Same thing.”
Ptolemy rubbed against Lucien’s trouser leg like he’d known him for years. Lucien’s fingers hovered, then dipped to scratch the cat’s chin. Ptolemy purred, loud and traitorous.
Rory felt her knuckles whiten on the door.
“Get your hand off him.”
Lucien lifted his palm away, slow, like he handled a weapon that might go off.
“Jealous?”
Rory laughed once, sharp enough to cut.
“Of a cat? You’ve lost your mind.”
“I lost plenty. You didn’t open the door to count my losses.”
He shifted his cane to his left hand. His right hand stayed visible, empty, and Rory hated herself for noticing that; hated herself for cataloguing him like she used to, like it meant safety.
A droplet slid from his hairline, down the edge of his cheekbone. He didn’t wipe it.
“You don’t knock on people’s doors after what you did,” Rory told him.
“You didn’t answer my calls.”
“You don’t get to call.”
“That sentence used to sound different out of your mouth.”
Rory pushed the door another fraction and leaned into the gap. The hallway light sharpened the curve of her crescent scar on her left wrist where her sleeve rode up. She tucked her hand back as if the air had bitten it.
“What do you want, Lucien?”
His gaze snagged on the movement, then moved away as if he’d been burned . He looked past her shoulder into the flat, at the stacks of books, the unfurled scrolls pinned with chipped mugs, the wall where Eva had taped pages with frantic red circles.
“Eva in?”
“Not your business.”
Lucien’s jaw set. “I needed a door that opens.”
Rory’s pulse jumped, then fell into a steady, cold rhythm.
“Plenty of doors open for you.”
“Not tonight.”
A pause sat between them, heavy and damp. The curry-house extractor fan hummed below. Somewhere inside the flat, a radiator clicked.
Rory drew a breath and tasted paper dust.
“You’re bleeding?”
Lucien’s mouth twitched. “You always watched the details.”
“You’ve got it on your collar.”
A dark smear marked the edge of his shirt collar where it met the suit. Not much, but the colour turned her stomach in a way she refused to name .
Lucien’s shoulders stayed square.
“It’s not mine.”
“Lovely.”
Rory started to close the door.
Lucien’s cane tip slid forward, not fast, just placed in the narrowing gap. Wood met wood with a dull knock. He didn’t force it; he didn’t need to. The gesture alone filled the space with old memories of control, of him arranging the world like a chessboard and daring her to move.
Rory’s eyes dropped to the ivory handle.
“So you brought your little stick. That meant to make me feel safe?”
Lucien’s voice came quieter. “It meant I got here.”
Rory held the door, felt the temptation to slam it, to listen to the reverberation and pretend that counted as closure. She didn’t. Her gaze travelled up his suit, caught on the line of his throat, the wet strand of platinum hair that had slipped loose. She looked at his eyes last, always his eyes last, because they made her chest behave like a traitor.
“You can’t come in.”
Lucien’s eyelids lowered.
“You let me in before.”
“Before you left.”
“Before you ran.”
Rory’s teeth clicked shut. Ptolemy chose that moment to weave between Rory’s ankles and step into the hall, as if he had decided to escort the guest personally. Rory bent, scooped him up, and the cat’s warmth pressed into her forearms like a reminder that living things didn’t respect boundaries.
Lucien watched the cat, then her hands.
“You still pick up strays.”
Rory tightened her grip on Ptolemy, felt his purr against her ribs.
“You still think everyone belongs to you.”
Lucien’s gaze lifted. “No. I learned what happens when I think that.”
The words sat in his mouth like something he hated tasting. That alone made Rory’s anger waver, just enough to irritate her.
“You learned?” She shifted her weight . “You didn’t learn. You left me on a pavement outside King’s Cross with blood on my trainers and your number blocked.”
Lucien flinched, small, controlled. The black eye didn’t change. The amber one caught the hallway light and made it look like flame under skin.
“You were alive.”
Rory’s laugh cracked.
“That’s the bar? That’s your defence?”
Lucien leaned in a fraction, stopped at the threshold, like some line burned into the floor held him there.
“I didn’t leave because I didn’t care.”
Rory’s stomach clenched.
“You don’t get to put that word in the air like it fixes it.”
Lucien’s fingers tightened on the cane handle.
“Then let me speak. For once, let me speak and don’t bolt the door while you pretend you don’t hear me through the wood.”
Rory stared at him. She felt the lock’s cold metal at her fingertips. She remembered his hands at the small of her back on nights when the city felt too loud; remembered how he’d leaned close, voice low, offering a solution to every problem. She remembered the morning she’d woken to an empty chair, his coffee untouched, his note too neat.
Don’t look for me. You’ll regret it.
She swallowed.
“This is Eva’s flat.”
Lucien’s gaze flicked to a stack of papers near the sofa, where a page showed a sketch of a circle and runes around it. He didn’t comment. He never did, not without a price.
“I know where it is.”
“That means you’ve been near me.”
“I’ve been near you for months.”
Rory’s mouth went dry.
“You’re proud of that?”
“No.” Lucien’s shoulders rose and fell. “I couldn’t bring myself to knock.”
Rory hated that her chest softened. She shoved it back down.
“And now you can?”
Lucien’s eyes held hers.
“Someone else will knock if I don’t come in.”
The hallway seemed to narrow. Rory smelled rain and iron and the faintest trace of something sharp beneath it, like smoke crushed into fabric.
“You dragged trouble to Eva’s door.”
“I dragged it away from yours. This was the nearest place with enough locks to slow it.”
Rory glanced at the deadbolts. Eva had installed them after the third break-in and the fourth “wrong” visitor.
“You’re not welcome,” Rory repeated, softer this time because the words had lost their edge.
Lucien’s mouth flattened.
“Then treat it like an emergency. Let me in. Give me ten minutes. Then throw me back into the street with your conscience intact.”
Ptolemy wriggled in Rory’s arms, impatient. His tail flicked against her wrist, right over the scar, and she felt a sting of sensation that grounded her.
Rory looked at Lucien’s collar again. The smear had thickened where the rain had dragged it.
“Ten minutes,” she muttered.
Lucien didn’t move.
Rory’s eyes narrowed . “Don’t make me regret it.”
Lucien stepped back half a pace, angled his cane away from the gap, and Rory pulled the door open . The flat yawned behind her, warm and cramped. Papers shifted in the draft. A loose scroll edge fluttered like a nervous hand.
Lucien crossed the threshold. His suit brushed the doorframe, too clean for the scuffed paint. Water dripped onto Eva’s mat and darkened it.
Rory shut the door behind him and slid the first deadbolt home. The metal thunk sounded final in a way she didn’t deserve to enjoy. She reached for the second lock.
Lucien turned his head. “You lock me in or lock them out?”
“Both.” Rory slid the second bolt into place and then the third, each click a beat of control returning to her palms. She set Ptolemy down. The cat trotted off to sniff Lucien’s shoes, then wandered towards the kitchen as if nothing about this night counted as unusual.
Lucien stood in the middle of the narrow entryway, cane upright, posture too composed for a man who had just admitted he’d run.
Rory folded her arms.
“Ten minutes starts now.”
Lucien’s gaze moved over the flat, landing on the stacks of books, the open notebook on the table with Eva’s small, sharp handwriting, the mug stained with old tea.
“You lived here for a bit.”
“Crash-landed here,” Rory corrected.
Lucien’s eyes returned to her face.
“You looked different at Golden Empress. Busy. Fast.”
“You watched me work.”
Lucien’s throat bobbed. “I watched you breathe.”
Rory stepped back, the space between them shrinking, the air thickening with the kind of closeness that had nothing to do with furniture.
“That’s not romantic. That’s stalking.”
Lucien’s expression tightened.
“Call it what you want. You stayed alive. That mattered.”
Rory walked past him, forcing him to turn if he wanted to keep her in view. She grabbed a dish towel from the back of a chair and tossed it at his chest. The fabric hit the suit and slid down.
“Wipe your face. You’re dripping on Eva’s notes.”
Lucien caught the towel before it fell, held it like he didn’t know what to do with ordinary domestic things.
“I didn’t come for housekeeping.”
“Then what did you come for?” Rory leaned a hip against the edge of the cluttered table. “A confession? An apology? A favour?”
Lucien’s gaze dropped to the towel in his hands. He pressed it to his cheek, and the movement exposed the side of his neck. A thin line of red marked his skin just above his collar, like a blade had kissed him.
Rory’s stomach turned again.
“You’re hurt.”
Lucien lowered the towel.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Rory pushed off the table and closed the distance in two steps. She reached out before she remembered she hated him. Her fingers stopped a breath from his collar.
Lucien’s eyes flicked to her hand, then up to her face. His breath warmed her knuckles.
“Don’t,” he whispered, the word rough.
Rory held her hand in the air, caught between urge and pride.
“You walk into my life bleeding and tell me not to?”
Lucien’s shoulders stayed rigid. “You touch me and you remember things.”
Rory’s smile tasted like salt.
“I remember things without touching you.”
Lucien’s gaze locked on hers. The amber eye looked almost human in the flat’s yellow light. The black one swallowed it.
“I need a place to sit for ten minutes,” Lucien murmured. “And I need you to listen for footsteps on the stairs. That’s what I came for.”
Rory pulled her hand back, slow, like she withdrew it from a flame.
“Sit.” She pointed to Eva’s battered armchair, half-buried under a pile of journals. “Move the books if you want. Just don’t crease anything.”
Lucien walked to the chair. He didn’t shove the journals to the floor. He lifted them one by one and stacked them with neat precision on the coffee table, as if he respected the chaos because it belonged to someone else. Then he sat, cane resting across his knees, shoulders still square.
Rory stayed standing, arms crossed again, but her eyes kept dragging to the cut on his neck.
Outside the flat, a muffled thud travelled up the stairwell, like a shoe catching a step.
Rory’s head snapped towards the door. Her pulse kicked.
Lucien’s fingers tightened on the cane.
“Now you hear it,” he muttered. “Lock number four wouldn’t have hurt.”