Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXS8VERFE7GC0WFANBXQTS

The door swung inward on its last deadbolt and the corridor light spilled into the flat like a spotlight on a stage, catching dust motes and the spines of a dozen books. He filled the doorway—tailored charcoal cut against the cramped room, ivory-handled cane under one arm like a question mark. One eye took the light and held it amber; the other drank the shadows and offered nothing. "Lucien." She didn't say it like a greeting. The single-syllable landed sharp and small, a stone dropped into the pool they had both been avoiding. Her hand hovered on the doorframe, fingers curled around the chipped paint where she had once argued with Eva about leaving home. His mouth twitched. He stepped forward, boots muffled on the threadbare runner, and the flat seemed suddenly too small for two sets of history. "I knocked," he said. The word sat between them like an accusation. He had not called. He had not warned her. The cat—Ptolemy—cut a slow arc from the armchair and rubbed his flank against Lucien's ankle, vibrating like a tuning fork. Ptolemy draped himself across Lucien's shoe and blinked. Lucien bent, gloved fingers brushing the tabby's head. He did not step back. "You can't just open my door," Rory said. She let the shirt sleeve slip, revealing the faint crescent scar on her left wrist like a punctuation mark she had grown used to. "There are three deadbolts for a reason." He looked at the scar the way someone might regard a familiar bruise. No pity. Only calculation. He tightened his grip on the cane so his knuckles whitened. "I know how to pick deadbolts," he said. The room hummed with everything unsaid. Books leaned against one another like teetering witnesses. Scrolls unfurled on the table as if someone had been interrupted mid-argument. Coffee cooled in a mug rimmed with lipstick. The flat smelled of old paper and lemon soap and something jagged beneath the surface—demon-scent, faint and cold, like iron left in the rain. Rory closed the door behind her and thumbed at the locks, the familiar motion grounding. "Why are you here, Lucien?" He glanced around once, taking in the narrow kitchen, the stack of law textbooks under the bed, the string of fairy lights that Eva had insisted would make the place feel less temporary. He let a half-smile curl, then dropped it. "Needed to speak with you." She crossed the tiny room in three large strides and planted herself on the edge of the sofa, fingers pressed flat into the fabric. Her pulse thudded under her ribs like an impatient drummer. "You could have written." "I don't wear paper well tonight." He unbuttoned his coat with deliberate slowness and let it fall open. A thin hint of smoke rose with it, and for a second Rory imagined her wrists wrapped in his hands and the world reduced to heat. "Can I sit?" The question was courtesy, not permission. He eased onto the armchair opposite, the cane laid across his knees like a boundary. He watched her with a kind of candid attention that used to make her feel seen and exposed, and it cut deeper than anything he might have thrown at her in anger. "You left," she said then. The words came pointed, sharp as glass. "You were supposed to keep watch. You were supposed to be here." His jaw moved. He kept his voice level. "I got pulled." "Pulled where? Away from me?" She leaned forward. Her voice narrowed to a knife. "You promised." He laughed, a short bark that had no humour in it. "Promise isn't a coin you spend without consequence, Rory." "You promised me the truth." The room flared hot and then cold. She had never called him Lucien like that before; the formal name made the memory of their last night together feel official and recorded. She had lain awake afterwards, waiting for the endless list of excuses. He had given her none. He had left a place in her bed and in her life that slid into every empty hour like a missing verse. He reached into his coat and drew out a folded scrap of paper. He held it up between long fingers as though it might explain itself. "You left this on my table," she said, the edge of sarcasm cutting the edge of something raw. "No signature. No explanation why you vanished for three weeks." He shook his head once, slow. "There's always a signature, Rory." "Then sign it," she said, and the air between them sizzled because the easy banter had been a map to better days and now it showed nothing but borders. "Tell me why you left." Lucien set the scrap down and let his gaze slide to the ceiling, then back to the plaster above the bookcase where a small water stain looked like a map of an island. "If I had walked away without cause, you would be right to hate me. But I didn't walk away." "Then explain," she said. Her arms folded across her chest as if to guard something inside. She wanted to be vicious; she wanted to be small. She wanted him to fix the broken things with words. He had always been able to find the seams with his eyes. He had never been good at mending them. He reached out and tapped the scar on her wrist with the tip of his cane like someone testing a string to see if it would snap. The touch was precise, clinical. It made heat pool in her palms. "You were in danger," he said. "Someone was watching the flat. I found out too late." "You found out too late," she echoed. Rage flared and died like a match in a jar. "You could have told me." "I tried." He said it like a confession and then licked his lips. "I tried to get you out. But there were others. Choices are ugly." "Choices are always ugly for me," she said. The words landed like a verdict. She had left Evan because each choice had twisted into a chain. She had chosen law school because it looked like a straight road. Lucien's 'choices' had been another bind. "You were never an option when I needed protection. You were always the one to leave." Ptolemy climbed onto the coffee table and scattered a pile of loose research notes. One fell at Lucien's boot where his cane had left a semi-circle on the rug. He nudged the paper with his polished shoe as if assessing its usefulness and then folded his hands on his knee. "You left because of what I am," he said finally. That was the center of everything. He had never hid his heritage—half-demon, with a father from Avaros—but he had navigated it like fog, making lines where he could. Rory had once told him she admired the way his demonic edge made him honest. She had said it like a compliment and like a dare. "What I am doesn't make me a coward," he said. "It makes me a target." Rory's laugh came out small and brittle. "And leaving is the brave thing? Taking the path that inconveniences me?" "It wasn't about inconvenience," he said. He turned the cane in his hands, the ivory glinting. "It was about survival. About buying you time you didn't know you needed." "You don't get to tell me what I need." He exhaled, a soft sound that seemed to cost him. "I didn't tell you. I ordered a cab and a burner phone and a roof with a view. You slept. You thought you were alone." Her throat tightened. Memory crashed in—his voice in the dark, curses thrown like rope, the slam of a car door. The taste of copper in the air from when she'd bitten her lip raw. "You talk like you were my guardian angel," she said. "You weren't there to sign my birthday card, Lucien. You weren't there when I called Evan's bluff. You vanished when I needed someone who would answer a door at night." He didn't rush to defend himself. Instead he leaned forward, and for a moment his face was a map of lines that told the rest of his story without words. The amber eye softened. The black one remained a cold cliff, depthless. "Do you remember the night in Marseille?" he asked quietly. Her jaw tensed. They had not spoken about that evening in years. It had been before London, before Brick Lane and before Evan's bruises. It had been when they were younger, worse at keeping demons at bay. "You left me in Marseille," she said. The memory was a smell—salt and gasoline and the wicked tang of fear. "You said you'd be back before sunrise. You weren't." "I didn't leave you," he said then, and it wasn't a defence so much as a correction. "I was taken. I was taken and I fought. I cut my way out." She stared at him, the past unfurling. His hands were steady on the cane, knuckles knotted like someone who had seen too much. "You were taken by them," she said. "The Avaros people." He nodded once. "They wanted leverage. I escaped them. But the cost of that escape was stepping into other people's paths. Sometimes you step into a room and gravity changes. You have no idea why until you feel it." "Then you should have told me," she said. "This patronising 'for your own good' line—save it for someone who hasn't been keeping a ledger of how often you decide my life for me." Lucien's face cooled. "You keep a ledger, Rory. I keep a ledger. They don't add up." She pushed off the sofa and paced the narrow span between the kitchenette and the bookshelf like a metronome setting a tempo. "I don't know if I can trust you," she said. The admission felt final and fragile, like a plate put on a shelf. "Not after you walked." He watched her with a look that was not pity; it was appraisal. "Trust is built," he said. "Not found in the pocket of a coat." "Then start building." He folded his hands and let silence swell. Outside, a tram sighed down Brick Lane and voices from the street threaded through the thin walls. In the flat, time felt smaller, focused on two people whose histories boxed one another in like lines on a map. Lucien stood and put his cane upright. He crossed the room in a handful of steps and stopped at the kitchen counter, setting the cane against the microwave as if to anchor himself somewhere solid. "There's a reason I'm here," he said. "And it's not only to rummage through old debts." She halted. The word 'reason' had both hope and threat braided through it. "Then say it." He looked at her then, and his gaze settled not on the scar or the books or the trail of notes Ptolemy had left, but on the small, unconscious movements she made when she tried to be larger than the space she occupied. "I've been followed," he said. "For the last week. People who used to be content to pull strings in Avaros have moved their gaze to Earth. I need to know you are safe. I need to make sure the place you sleep isn't a map to your wrists." Her laugh was a short exhale. "So you're back because you're worried about me. How very noble." "I'm not noble," he said. "I just know what their patience costs." "You don't get to decide that for me," she said again, but the edge had tempered. It was a claim of ownership, not of anger. She had practised it in solitude. Lucien walked back to the armchair and sat. The cane clicked against the floor. He folded his fingers over the handle and met her eyes full on, an offer and a challenge in equal measure. "Stay with Eva tonight," he said. "She has three deadbolts and a cat who will report suspicious scents. Let me station outside for as long as I have to." She stared at him. The image of him standing in the rain outside her window had been something she had conjured alone at night, a silhouette with one amber eye bright as a coin. The idea of him watching over her made her bristle in ways she didn't like. "And if I refuse?" He smiled then, and it was both rue and something softer. "Then I'll wake you at three a.m. with pounded fists on your door, and you'll be furious enough to let me in." She opened her mouth to retort, and the cat leaped onto her knee, urgent and insistent. Ptolemy's purr rumbled against her thigh like a small engine, and the familiar noise broke the moment into something less brittle. "Fine," she said at last. "Tonight. But no more ghosting." "You get one night of official bodyguard service," he said. "Then we renegotiate." She looked at him and found she couldn't pull her catalogue of grievances into a weapon sharp enough for what she felt. The room softened at the corners. Books seemed less like witnesses and more like shelter. Outside, Brick Lane carried on without regard for their reconciliation. "One night," she repeated. The phrase was both surrender and beginning. He inclined his head, the briefest of bows that carried with it more apology than any paragraph could hold. He picked up his cane. The ivory caught the light and flared like a promise.