Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0XRXBCTCYN1Q9XS4A8PYV

Rory's hand froze on the kettle handle when the knock came. Not the casual rap of a friend or the impatient hammering of a delivery driver. Three sharp raps, precise as a metronome, followed by deliberate silence. She set the kettle down and padded toward the door, squinting through the peephole. Lucien Moreau stood in the cramped hallway of Eva's building, his platinum hair catching the sickly yellow light from the corridor fixture. He wore his standard uniform—charcoal suit, probably Savile Row, probably worth more than her monthly rent. His cane rested against his leg, ivory handle gleaming. The air left her lungs. Rory undid the first deadbolt, then the second, her fingers moving on autopilot. The third one stuck as it always did, and she jiggled it with more force than necessary before the mechanism gave. She opened the door just wide enough to see his face properly. His heterochromatic eyes—amber on the left, black as a void on the right—fixed on hers with the intensity of someone who'd crossed half the city to have this conversation. "This is unexpected." Lucien's mouth curved. Not a smile, exactly. Something sharper. "I've learned that life's most important moments rarely announce themselves with advance notice." "That's very poetic. Also not an answer to why you're standing outside Eva's flat at—" she glanced at her watch, a cheap digital thing that caught on her cardigan sleeve, "—half ten at night." "May I come in?" "No." He tilted his head, studying her with the patience of someone accustomed to getting what he wanted eventually. "You're wearing the cardigan I bought you." Rory looked down at the forest-green wool wrapped around her shoulders, as if she'd somehow forgotten what she had on. She had forgotten. That was the problem. She wore it often enough that it had stopped being *his* and started being just something she owned. "It's comfortable. That's all." "It's been three months." "Has it?" The words came out brittle. She made a point of not keeping count, though they both knew that was a lie. Three months, two weeks, four days. Not that she was tracking. "Time moves differently for people like you, I suppose." Lucien's jaw tightened. "People like me. Is that what we're calling it?" Ptolemy chose that moment to wind between Rory's ankles, purring like an outboard motor. She scooped up the tabby, using him as both shield and excuse not to look at Lucien directly. "You can't just show up here. We ended this. We agreed—" "You agreed. I listened. There's a difference." The flatness in his tone made her skin prickle. She'd heard him use that voice before, the one he deployed when negotiating with people who'd made very bad decisions. It meant he'd moved past anger into something colder. Determined. "You made your choice very clear when you walked away," Rory continued, stroking Ptolemy's head. The cat's purr intensified, indifferent to the tension thrumming between them. "Said we wanted different things. That this was... unsustainable." "I said those things because you needed to hear them. Because you were terrified of what I am, and you still aren't ready to face it." Lucien shifted his weight. The cane barely touched the ground, more for effect than necessity. He'd shown her once how fast he could move without it. "But I've realized something in these three months. Waiting for you to be ready means waiting forever." Rory set Ptolemy down and finally looked at him properly. There were new lines around his eyes, the kind that came from sleeplessness or stress. His suit was impeccable as always, but something about the way he carried himself suggested he'd been moving through the city with single-minded purpose. "What do you want, Lucien?" "Let me in. Let me explain without shouting it into a corridor." She almost said no. The instinct rose in her throat like bile. Getting involved with Lucien Moreau had been the reckless decision of someone trying to outrun their past, trying to prove they could be brave or wild or something other than the cautious girl who'd left Cardiff with nothing but a duffel bag and a phone number. He was supernatural, dangerous in ways she didn't fully understand, mixed up in London's underworld in capacities she'd learned not to ask about. He was also— He was also the first person in years who'd made her feel like someone worth knowing. She stepped back, pulling the door wide. Lucien moved into the flat with the careful deliberation of a man entering sacred space. Eva's flat was a disaster by most standards—books stacked on every available surface, scrolls scattered across the kitchen table, research notes pinned to the walls with such density they could double as insulation. He navigated it all with practiced ease, having been here before, in better circumstances. He set his cane against the armchair and turned to face her. "I've been arranging things," he began. "That's vague and ominous in equal measure." "It's meant to be practical." He unbuttoned his suit jacket, and Rory caught the faintest glimmer of something beneath it before he settled onto the sofa. "I've been securing certain protections. Guarantees, if you prefer. Legal frameworks that would apply to half-demon partnerships with humans, safeguards that ensure—" "Stop." Rory held up her hand. "You can't just reorganize the supernatural world on a whim, Lucien. That's not how this works." "Why not? I'm very good at getting what I want." "I'm not a problem to be solved." She moved to the window, looking out at the glittering sprawl of Brick Lane below. Someone had knocked over a bin, and rubbish scattered across the pavement. "That's what scared me. That you treated this like... like an acquisition. Like you'd research the problem and find the solution and present it to me as if I hadn't been struggling with it myself." Silence stretched between them. She heard him shift, heard the leather of the sofa creak beneath his weight. "I left because I was protecting you," Rory pressed on. "You said it yourself. I wasn't ready. Maybe I'm still not ready. But I needed to make that decision for myself, not have you make it for me by disappearing into your broker's den to arrange the future without consulting—" "I'm not disappearing anymore." His voice had lost its edge. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm here. I showed up. Unannounced and unwelcome, apparently, but I showed up because the alternative—letting you walk around London thinking I didn't want to fight for this—was unbearable." She turned from the window. He sat with his hands folded, looking smaller than usual without the cane, more mortal. The amber eye was bright in the lamplight, the black one absorbing it entirely. "You hurt me when you left," Rory said quietly. "Yes." "You didn't explain. You just went quiet, and then you were gone, and I spent weeks wondering if I'd imagined the whole thing." "Yes." She wanted him to justify it, to argue, to give her something to push against. Instead, he just sat there, accepting the weight of it. "I don't know if I can do this again." "Then don't," Lucien said. "Tell me to leave. I'll go, and I won't come back. But I needed you to know that I tried. That I came here and I laid this at your feet because you deserve that much."