Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTY5992P7Q2QGCPNVQ4D1VX

The door swung open and Rory stood there in an oversized Cardiff University hoodie and bare feet, a mug of something steaming in her left hand. The crescent scar on her wrist caught the hallway light. She didn't speak. Didn't move. Just stared at Lucien Moreau standing on Eva's landing like he'd materialized from the stale curry-scented air itself. He looked wrong against the peeling wallpaper. Charcoal suit cut so precise it belonged in a different postcode, a different city, possibly a different century. His ivory-handled cane rested against the floor between his feet. One amber eye, one black — both fixed on her with the careful neutrality of a man who had rehearsed this moment and was already deviating from the script. "No." "I haven't said anything yet." "You're standing outside Eva's flat at half eleven on a Tuesday. Whatever you're about to say, the answer is no." Ptolemy threaded between her ankles and peered out at the visitor with considerably more interest than his temporary guardian. The tabby sniffed the air once, twice, then retreated to whatever nest of scrolls he'd claimed as his throne. Lucien's gaze tracked the cat, then returned to Rory. A muscle shifted in his jaw. "May I come in?" "I just said—" "You said no to whatever I was about to say. I hadn't yet said anything. Now I'm asking if I can come in." "Technically that's still something." "Rory." The way he said her name — not Aurora, not Carter, but that single syllable that somehow carried the full weight of Marseille vowels and London rain — cracked something in the careful blankness she'd assembled on her face. She stepped back from the door. Not an invitation. Just a retreat. He took it as both. The flat swallowed him whole. He was too tall for it, too sharp, too deliberately composed for a space that looked like a library had suffered a nervous breakdown. Towers of books lined every wall. Research notes papered the kitchen table, the counters, most of the floor near the sofa. Three deadbolts gleamed on the door behind him — Eva's particular brand of paranoia made manifest in brass. Rory locked all three. The muscle memory of it bothered her. She'd done that exact sequence with him on the other side of the door before, months ago, back when his presence in a room still felt like something she'd chosen rather than something that happened to her. "Eva's in Glastonbury until Thursday," she said, because the silence was doing something dangerous. "If this is about the Marchetti thing, you can email her like a normal person." "This isn't about Marchetti." "Then what?" He set his cane against the wall by the door. The deliberateness of it — the laying down of arms — wasn't lost on her. Lucien without the cane looked almost vulnerable. Almost. The effect was spoiled by the fact that he still moved through the cluttered space like he owned the lease. "You left London for three weeks." "I went to Cardiff. My mum was ill." "I know. Yu-Fei told me." "So you came to my friend's flat in the middle of the night because my boss told you I visited my sick mother. That tracks. Very normal behavior." His composure fractured — just a hairline crack, barely visible unless you knew where to look. Rory knew where to look. She'd spent too many evenings in dim corners of bars and back seats of cabs mapping the architecture of that face, cataloguing which expressions were performance and which were real. "You didn't tell me you were going." "I didn't realize I was supposed to." That landed. She watched it land. Felt the small, vicious satisfaction of it and immediately wanted to take it back. He turned to the window. The orange light from Brick Lane painted half his profile in sodium glow, left the other half in shadow. He looked like a painting hung in the wrong gallery. "You weren't supposed to," he said. "That's precisely the problem." Rory set her mug down on a stack of someone's doctoral thesis on ley line intersections. The ceramic ring it would leave was tomorrow's concern. "Lucien, what are you doing here?" "I don't know." "That's not an answer." "It's the only honest one I have." She leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms. The hoodie's sleeves swallowed her hands. She must have looked ridiculous to him — bare feet, messy hair, standing in a flat that smelled like old paper and Ptolemy's tuna. He was looking at her like she was something worth the trip across the city at this hour, and that was precisely the problem with Lucien Moreau. He looked at people like they mattered, and you couldn't tell if it was real until it was too late. "Last time we spoke," she said, "you told me it was better if we kept things professional." "I did." "Your words. Not mine. Professional. Clean. Simple." "I remember what I said." "Good. Because I'm the one who had to sit across from you at that table in Silas' bar for three hours going over ward maps like nothing had happened. Like the night before hadn't—" She stopped. Bit the inside of her cheek. "Professional. That's what you wanted." He turned from the window. The full force of those mismatched eyes hit her, and she held her ground because she'd held it against worse. Against Evan's fists. Against her father's silence. Against every version of herself that wanted to fold inward and disappear. Lucien Moreau and his beautiful, terrible face were not going to be the thing that broke her composure tonight. "What I wanted," he said, "and what was wise were not the same thing." "Don't do that. Don't dress it up." "I'm not—" "You are. You always do. Four languages and you use every single one to talk around what you actually mean." He closed the distance between them by two steps. Not enough to crowd her. Enough to make the air between them feel like a living thing with its own pulse. "You want me to say it plainly." "I want you to say it in any language at all. Pick one. I don't care." "I was afraid." The word sat between them like a grenade with the pin still in. Rory blinked. Of every combination of syllables she'd braced for — excuse, deflection, another eloquent sidestep — that one hadn't made the list. Lucien Moreau did not admit to fear. Lucien Moreau navigated the supernatural underworld of London with the serene confidence of a man who had already calculated every possible outcome and found them all manageable. Lucien Moreau fixed problems for people who could kill him with a thought, and he did it in a three-thousand-pound suit without breaking a sweat. "Afraid of what?" "Of the specific way you looked at me that morning. Like I was someone worth trusting." She exhaled through her nose. Steady. Controlled. The way you breathe when you're trying not to let the earthquake show. "And that scared you." "My father was a demon, Rory. From a realm built on the principle that everything and everyone is a transaction. I inherited his eyes. Among other things." His hand opened at his side — a gesture of surrender or display, she couldn't tell. "People who trust me tend to regret it. I didn't want you to become one of them." "So you decided for me." "Yes." "Without asking what I wanted." "Yes." "Do you know what I wanted?" "I imagine you're about to tell me." "I wanted you to stay for breakfast." The simplicity of it cracked something open in the room. Ptolemy jumped onto the counter behind her, knocking a scroll to the floor, and neither of them flinched. They were locked in now, held together by the weight of a sentence that contained nothing supernatural, nothing dangerous, nothing more complicated than eggs and toast and the sound of a kettle — a morning she'd imagined in specific, aching detail and then boxed away when he'd buttoned his shirt and called a cab instead. Lucien's throat worked. A swallow. His composure was gone now, not cracked but dissolved, and what remained underneath was something she'd only seen once — that night when the light had been low and his guard had been lower, when his hands had shaken against her jaw and he'd kissed her like he was stealing something he knew he'd have to give back. "Rory." "Don't say my name like that unless you mean it." "I mean it." He crossed the remaining distance. Close enough that she could see the individual threads in his lapel, the slight shadow under his black eye where sleepless nights had gathered like a bruise. Close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to. She kept her arms crossed. "I mean it, and I should have said it months ago, and I didn't because I am a coward in a very expensive suit." A laugh escaped her. Involuntary. Sharp. It surprised them both. "That's the most honest thing you've ever said to me." "I know. It's deeply uncomfortable." She uncrossed her arms. One hand emerged from the hoodie sleeve and found his lapel. Fisted the fabric. Not pulling him closer. Just holding him in place so he couldn't perform another tactical retreat in the guise of nobility. "If you walk out of this flat tonight, don't come back." "I know." "I mean it. I'm not doing this again. I'm not sitting across from you pretending I don't—" She caught herself. Swallowed the rest of the sentence. "Three deadbolts on that door, Lucien. I'll use all of them." His hand came up and covered hers where it gripped his lapel. His fingers were cold. She'd forgotten that about him — the perpetual chill of his skin, the demon half of his blood running cooler than it should. She'd spent that whole night trying to warm him up and thinking she'd finally managed it. "I'm not leaving." "Say it again." "I'm not leaving." His thumb traced the crescent scar on her wrist, the pad of his finger moving over it like he was reading braille, decoding some old hurt that had nothing to do with him. "Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not unless you tell me to go." She pulled him down by the lapel. The kiss was nothing like the first one — no stolen quality, no desperation, no sense of borrowed time. It tasted like cold air and the chai she'd been drinking and something underneath that was just him, that particular alchemy of human warmth and something other. His hand found the back of her neck. Hers released his lapel and slid up to his jaw, fingers tracing the sharp line of bone, and she felt the exact moment when the tension left his body — a full-system surrender, every calculated defense powering down at once. They separated by inches. His forehead dropped against hers. Both eyes — amber and black — were closed. "I'll make breakfast," he murmured. "You can't cook." "I'll learn." Ptolemy yawned from the counter and knocked another scroll to the floor.