Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTX6ARPGN1P8Y90YG3Y3S0E

The door swung open and Rory's stomach dropped. Lucien stood in the hallway, platinum hair catching the flickering light from the curry house sign below. His mismatched eyes—one amber, one black—fixed on her face with an intensity that made her throat tight. Three months. Three months since she'd walked away from him in the rain outside Silas' bar, and he looked exactly the same. Charcoal suit pressed to perfection, ivory-handled cane in one hand, mouth set in that infuriating line between amusement and something darker. "You have three deadbolts on this door." His accent wrapped around the words, familiar and wrong all at once. "Eva is paranoid as ever, I see." Rory blocked the doorway with her shoulder. "She's not here." "I know." "Then why are you here?" "Because you are." Lucien tilted his head, platinum strands falling across his forehead. "May I come in, or shall we have this conversation where your neighbours can listen?" Mrs. Kowalski's door clicked open down the hall. Rory bit back a curse and stepped aside. He moved past her into the cramped flat, cane tapping against the worn floorboards. Books cascaded across every surface—Eva's organised chaos that Rory had learned to navigate over the past three months of crashing here. Ptolemy, Eva's tabby, raised his head from the armchair and promptly ignored their visitor. Rory closed the door. Didn't lock it. "How did you find me?" "I'm an information broker, ma chérie. Finding people is what I do." Lucien surveyed the flat, gaze lingering on her delivery bag slumped against the wall, then on the takeaway containers stacked by the sink. "Though I confess I'm surprised to discover you've been in London this entire time." "Eva needed help with research." "Eva." He turned that strange two-toned stare on her. "Always convenient, how Eva needs you precisely when you're running from something." Heat flashed through her chest. "I wasn't running." "No?" Lucien set his cane against the bookshelf with deliberate care. "Then what do you call disappearing without a word? Not answering your mobile? Avoiding every place you knew I'd look?" "Smart decision-making." His jaw tightened. For a moment neither of them moved, the air between them charged with everything they hadn't said that night in the rain. Rory's fingers found the small crescent scar on her left wrist, tracing its familiar curve. "You had Silas lie to me." Lucien's voice dropped lower, accent thickening. "For two weeks, I believed you'd left London entirely. Gone back to Cardiff, perhaps. Or found somewhere new to disappear into." "I didn't ask him to lie." "But you didn't correct him either." Rory crossed her arms. "What do you want, Lucien?" "What do I—" He laughed, sharp and bitter. "What I've wanted for three months. An explanation. A conversation. Anything other than silence." "We had our conversation." "We had you walking away mid-sentence." He closed the distance between them, and Rory's back hit the door. "We had you deciding for both of us what we could or couldn't handle." She met his eyes, refusing to flinch. "You're half-demon. Your father is some lord in Avaros. The supernatural underworld wants you dead or worse half the time, and the other half wants to use you. I'm not—I can't—" "Can't what?" His hand came up, palm flat against the door beside her head. "Can't handle it? Can't trust me? Can't admit you felt something?" "All of the above." The words came out quieter than she intended. Lucien's expression shifted. The anger melted into something raw, exposed. "I told you things I've never told anyone. About Marseille. About my mother. About why I came to London in the first place." "I know." "And you said you understood." "I did understand. I do." Rory pressed her shoulders against the door, needing the solid surface behind her. "That's the problem, Lucien. I understood exactly what it meant. What being close to you would cost." "So you decided to pay in advance by leaving?" "I decided not to become another casualty in your world." She pushed off the door, forcing him back a step. "You've got enemies who'd gut me just to make you feel something. Who'd use me against you without blinking. And maybe you're fine with that risk, but I've already done the whole 'loving someone who brings chaos into my life' routine. It didn't end well." "I'm not him." Ice crystallised in Lucien's voice. "I'm not your ex." "I know you're not Evan. But that doesn't change—" "Doesn't change what? That I'm dangerous?" He laughed again, uglier this time. "You knew what I was from the beginning, Rory. I never hid it. Never pretended to be anything other than exactly what I am." "And what are you, exactly?" She stepped closer, anger rising to match his. "Because some days you're the charming fixer who helps people navigate supernatural messes. Other days you're the cold-blooded broker who trades information and doesn't care who bleeds from it. Which one am I supposed to trust?" "Both." His amber eye caught the light, gold and fierce. "All of it. That's the point—I wanted you to see all of it and still—" He stopped. Swallowed. Rory's heart hammered against her ribs. "Still what?" "Still choose to stay." The confession came out rough, stripped of his usual polish. "Still look at me the way you did that night at Silas' before the job went wrong. Like I was worth something beyond my contacts and my blade." The air between them thickened. Ptolemy meowed from his perch, a long questioning sound that neither of them acknowledged. "Lucien." Rory's voice came out unsteady. "That's not fair." "None of this is fair." He reached for her, fingers ghosting along her jaw. "But I'm here anyway. I tracked you down across London, called in favours, had Silas finally crack after plying him with that awful Irish whiskey he hoards. I did all of that because three months without you has been—" His throat worked. Rory lifted her hand, fingers curling around his wrist. She could feel his pulse beneath her touch, quick and human despite everything else about him that wasn't. "Has been what?" "Unbearable." The word fell between them, confession and accusation both. "I keep seeing you in places you've never been. Turn around in my office expecting you to be cataloguing my files and making sarcastic comments about my organisational system. The other night I bought takeaway from Golden Empress just to—" He stopped himself, jaw clenched. "Just to what?" Her thumb pressed against his pulse point. "Just to smell jasmine rice and hear someone complain about traffic. Just to pretend for ten minutes that you might walk through my door with spring rolls and that sharp wit of yours." His free hand came up, cradling her face with unexpected gentleness. "I'm not asking you to dive into my world headfirst, ma chérie. I'm asking you to let me protect you while we figure out what this is. Was. Could be." Rory's eyes burned. "You can't protect me from everything." "No. But I can try." His forehead dropped to hers. "Let me try."