AI The knock came at half-past eleven, three sharp raps that cut through the curry-scented air drifting up from the restaurant below. Rory set down her mug of cold tea and crossed Eva's cramped living room, weaving between stacks of leather-bound volumes and scattered research notes. Ptolemy lifted his tabby head from his perch on a tottering pile of scrolls, ears pricked forward.
She'd been expecting Eva back from the British Library. She hadn't been expecting him.
The door swung open on its three deadbolts, and there stood Lucien Moreau, impeccable as ever in charcoal wool despite the drizzle that had turned London grey for the past week. Water beaded on his platinum hair, slicked back in that way that always made her want to mess it up. His ivory-handled cane was tucked under one arm, and his mismatched eyes—one amber, one black—fixed on her face with an expression she couldn't quite read .
"Aurora."
No one called her that anymore. Not since him.
"You've got to be fucking joking." She didn't move from the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. "How did you even find me here?"
"I'm an information broker, chérie. Finding people is what I do." His mouth curved, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. "May I come in?"
"No."
"It's raining."
"I noticed."
Lucien's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Anyone else would have missed it, but Rory had spent three months learning the geography of that face, mapping its tells and secrets. She knew what it looked like when he was lying , when he was afraid , when he was about to do something monumentally stupid. Right now, he looked like a man trying very hard to appear calm.
"I wouldn't be here if it weren't important," he said quietly . "You know that."
She did know. That was the problem. Lucien Moreau didn't do social calls. He didn't show up unannounced at flats in Brick Lane unless something had gone very wrong—or was about to.
Rory stepped back from the door. Not an invitation, exactly. Just enough space for him to read it however he chose.
He chose to enter. Of course he did.
The flat seemed to shrink around him as he crossed the threshold, his tailored suit and careful elegance utterly at odds with Eva's organised chaos. He glanced around at the towers of books, the constellation maps pinned to the walls, the half-eaten takeaway containers that Rory kept meaning to throw out.
"Charming," he murmured.
"It's not mine. I'm staying with a friend."
"The researcher. Eva Chen ." He said it like he already knew, which he probably did. "I've heard she's quite thorough."
"She's not here, if that's what you're wondering." Rory crossed her arms over her chest, acutely aware that she was wearing an oversized jumper with a tea stain on the sleeve and hadn't brushed her hair since morning. Not that it mattered. Not that she cared what she looked like in front of him . "So whatever this is, you'll have to deal with just me."
Lucien turned to face her fully, and something flickered across his expression—surprise, maybe, or something softer. "I wasn't looking for her, Aurora. I was looking for you."
The words hung in the air between them, weighted with everything they'd never said. Three months of late nights and whispered secrets, of his hand on the small of her back in crowded rooms, of almost and not quite and then nothing at all . He'd disappeared without a word, and she'd told herself it was for the best. That whatever had been building between them was too complicated, too dangerous, too tied up in a world she was still learning to navigate .
She'd almost believed it.
"You don't get to do that," she said, her voice harder than she'd intended. "You don't get to vanish for six months and then show up at my door like nothing happened."
"I know."
"Do you? Because you're standing in my friend's flat at nearly midnight, dripping on her research, and I don't recall inviting you."
"You didn't." He set his cane against the arm of Eva's battered sofa, a deliberate gesture. Staying, whether she liked it or not. "But I needed to see you, and I wasn't certain you'd answer if I called."
"I wouldn't have." A lie, and they both knew it. Her phone had sat silent for six months, and every time it rang, some treacherous part of her had hoped—
Ptolemy chose that moment to leap down from his scroll pile and wind between Lucien's ankles, purring loudly. Traitor.
"Your friend has good taste in familiars," Lucien said, bending to scratch behind the cat's ears .
"He's just a cat."
"Nothing in this world is just anything, chérie. You should know that by now."
The old endearment slipped out so easily, like no time had passed at all. Rory felt it land somewhere in her chest, a small sharp pain she refused to acknowledge.
"Why are you here, Lucien? Really."
He straightened, and for a moment she saw past the carefully constructed mask—saw the exhaustion in the set of his shoulders, the tension around his mouth, the way his black eye seemed darker than she remembered, more consuming. His demon half, the part he never talked about, the inheritance from a father who existed only as a shadow in his past.
"Something's coming," he said. "Something that concerns both of us. I tried to handle it alone—I thought I could keep you out of it—but I was wrong. And now I need your help."
"You need my help." She laughed, but there was no humour in it. "That's rich. You're the one with the contacts, the connections, the entire supernatural underworld eating out of your hand. What could you possibly need from me?"
"Your mind." He held her gaze, utterly serious. "The way you think, the way you see patterns where others see chaos. I've worked with dozens of people in this city, Aurora, and none of them think like you do. None of them would have survived what you survived last year."
"I barely survived. We both know that."
"But you did survive. And now—" He broke off, ran a hand through his rain-damp hair, disrupting its careful arrangement. The gesture was so uncharacteristically vulnerable that Rory felt her anger waver despite herself. "There are things I should have told you before I left. Things I should have explained."
"Then explain them now."
"It's not that simple."
"It never is with you, is it?" She moved past him to the window, staring down at the rain-slicked street below. A couple hurried past under a shared umbrella, laughing at something. Normal people living normal lives. "You deal in secrets, Lucien. It's what you are. But you can't build anything real on secrets. Not a partnership, not a—" She stopped herself before the word could escape.
"Not a what?"
She turned back to face him. He'd moved closer while she wasn't looking , near enough that she could smell his cologne—sandalwood and something darker, something that reminded her of smoke and old books and late nights in his Mayfair office.
"It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me." His voice dropped, soft and rough at the edges. "Everything about you matters to me, Aurora. That's why I left."
The admission hit her like a physical blow. She stared at him, searching his face for the lie, the angle, the manipulation. Finding nothing but a terrible, naked honesty.
"That doesn't make any sense."
"I know." He reached for her hand, then stopped himself, his fingers hovering an inch from hers. "My father's people came looking for me last spring. They wanted to use you—to use what you meant to me—as leverage. So I cut ties. Made it look like you were nothing to me, just another contact in a long list of contacts. I thought if I stayed away long enough, they'd lose interest."
Rory's heart was pounding now, loud in her own ears. "And did they?"
"No." His black eye seemed to absorb the lamplight, a void in the centre of his face. "They're here, in London. And they know exactly who you are."
She should be afraid. She should be furious. Instead, all she could focus on was the space between them, the way he was looking at her like she was something precious and breakable and entirely beyond his reach.
"You absolute bastard," she said quietly. "You let me think—for six months, I thought—"
"I know what you thought." His voice cracked on the words. "I know what I let you believe. And I will spend the rest of my life regretting that choice, Aurora, but I will not regret keeping you alive. Even if you hate me for it."
"I don't hate you." The confession escaped before she could stop it. "That's the problem. I've tried—god knows I've tried—but I can't seem to manage it."
Something shifted in his expression. Hope, maybe. Or fear. With Lucien, they often looked the same.
"We don't have much time," he said. "If you want me to leave, I'll go. I'll find another way to handle this. But if there's any chance—any chance at all—that you might be willing to work with me again..."
He let the sentence trail off, leaving the choice to her.
Rory thought about the past six months. The sleepless nights, the unanswered questions, the small scar on her left wrist that she'd catch herself touching when her mind wandered. She thought about the life she'd built here in London, fragile but real, a delivery job and a flat above a bar and friendships that didn't require her to be anything other than what she was.
She thought about how none of it had felt quite complete.
"Sit down," she said finally, gesturing to the sofa. "And tell me everything. From the beginning."
The relief that washed over Lucien's face was almost painful to witness. He sank onto Eva's sofa, his usual grace momentarily abandoned, and when Rory sat beside him—close enough to touch, though neither of them did—something loosened in the air between them.
Ptolemy jumped into Lucien's lap, purring, and Rory watched his long fingers stroke the cat's fur as he began to speak. Outside, the rain kept falling, washing London clean.