AI The buzzer rasped over the noise from the curry house downstairs.
Rory wiped her hands on her joggers and crossed the tiny living room, nudging a stack of photocopied grimoires aside with her hip. Ptolemy lifted his head from the back of the sofa, ears flicking, then dropped down and padded after her with the lazy entitlement of a small god.
She peered through the peephole.
Platinum hair. Charcoal suit. Cane upright in a gloved hand.
Her stomach clenched so fast she knocked her forehead against the door. For a breath she froze with her fingers still on the middle deadbolt. She could walk away, pretend she hadn’t heard. Brick Lane throbbed outside, someone shouted, a car horn blared. Inside, the buzz of fluorescent light in Eva’s kitchen filled the silence .
She had already undone one bolt.
“Idiot,” she muttered at herself, and slid the other two free.
The door opened on a strip of cold stairwell air and Lucien Moreau.
He filled the frame as if Eva’s narrow doorway offended him. Rain glistened on the shoulders of his coat; his hair lay darker where drops clung near his temples. One amber eye, one flat black, ran over her face, her bare feet, the oversized university sweatshirt that had seen better days.
“Aurora.”
Her given name rolled off his tongue softer than memory allowed. That alone made her spine stiffen.
“You’re lost.” Rory leaned on the door, blocking the gap with her shoulder. “City bankers are two streets over, on Shoreditch High. This is the nerd lair.”
The corner of his mouth quirked, not quite a smile .
“I remember the address. May I come in?”
“No.”
Ptolemy wound around her ankles, then brushed against Lucien’s polished shoe as if to offer a second opinion. The cat’s tail curled around the cane, then flicked away.
Lucien dropped his gaze to the cat, then back up.
“You’re alone,” he said. “Good.”
“Good for who, exactly?”
“For both of us, I hope.”
He moved his weight forward a fraction. Not enough to count as force, enough that she felt the pressure of his presence. Up close he smelled of rain, expensive soap, and a hint of smoke that wasn’t from cigarettes.
Rory folded her arms across her chest.
“Eva’s not here,” she said. “She’s at the library, making the National Archive beg for mercy. You should come back when she can tell you to get lost herself.”
Lucien’s jaw tightened at Eva’s name, the briefest tic.
“I came to speak with you.”
Rory barked out a laugh even she didn’t recognise.
“With me. Didn’t know I was on your client list these days.”
“You were never a client.”
“That’s one word for it.”
She started to swing the door shut.
His hand flashed out, palm flat against the wood. The cane stayed next to his leg; he used his body as the wedge. For a second they stood like that, the old cracked paint pressing into her shoulder, his hand splayed above her head.
“Rory. If I meant you harm, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
He met her glare without flinching.
“No. It’s supposed to get me three minutes of your time.”
“I gave you three months,” she snapped.
The words slipped out before she decided to let them. They hit him harder than her shoulder ever could. Something in his eyes flickered , the amber darkening.
Rain hissed against the stairwell window. Someone thudded up the stairs below, then past, not stopping at their landing. Rory realised she still smelled faint garlic and onion from the kitchen; her stomach twisted again for a different reason this time.
Three minutes. She could throw him out after that, slam all three bolts, go back to pretending he had vanished with the rest of the bad decisions.
She stepped back.
“You’ve got two,” she said. “Shoes off. Eva’s rule.”
His brows rose. For an impossibly dressed half-demon fixer, he adapted fast. He bent, loosened his laces with precise movements, slipped out of wet leather and lined them beside her scuffed trainers. His socks were black, no holes. Of course.
He crossed the threshold. The flat seemed to shrink around him. Books towered from every surface, piles of notes slumped in corners. The curry house vent rumoured spices through the thin floor. Ptolemy hopped onto the arm of the sofa, tail twitching with interest at this new entertainment.
Lucien’s gaze moved over the chaos.
“Still hiding in other people’s paper,” he murmured.
“You’re down to one minute fifty.”
He shrugged off his coat and draped it on the back of a chair without being asked . Droplets spattered onto the floorboards. Under the coat, his waistcoat strained the line between formal and ready for a fight. A bruise lurked at his throat, half-hidden by his collar. Another dark shadow edged his right cheekbone.
Rory stared.
“You got into a bar fight with a filing cabinet?”
“This is me, being careful.”
“Careful used to look less… purple.”
“Things change.”
He rested the cane against the table. Up close, she caught the hairline stress along the ivory handle, as if something strong had gripped it too hard. He followed her glance.
“Occupational hazard.”
“And yet you keep the occupation.”
“You keep yours.”
He nodded toward the Golden Empress delivery jacket slung over the back of the sofa, her helmet on the floor beneath it. She resisted the urge to kick both under the table.
“I like not starving.”
“There are safer ways.”
“Says the man bleeding from the face.”
“I have bled from worse.”
The vein near his temple beat a fraction faster as he spoke. His control frayed around the edges; only someone who had sat across from him in worse light than this would notice.
Rory rubbed her thumb over the small scar on her wrist, then caught herself and dropped her hand.
“Clock’s ticking, Lucien.”
He drew in a slow breath.
“I owe you an apology.”
Her laugh came out raw.
“Bit late, isn’t it? You cancelled the plan, walked out, then ghosted harder than my ex. And the ex was a necromancer.”
“I didn’t cancel the plan.”
“You walked away in the middle of a job. Left me in a warehouse with three hungry ghouls and a phone with no signal. We talking about the same night?”
“I left to stop the fourth ghoul from tearing through the front of the warehouse and into the street.”
“You didn’t mention that in your graceful exit.”
“If I had, you’d have followed.”
“Yeah, that sounds like me.”
He moved toward her, one slow step across the threadbare rug.
“You’re alive,” he said. “They weren’t fast enough to kill you.”
“No thanks to you.”
“You killed two.” His eyes dipped to her hands, the small scar. “Stubborn as ever.”
“Don’t you dare make survival sound like a compliment.”
“Then think of it as proof. You didn’t need me.”
“I didn’t want to need you. Different thing.”
Heat rose up her neck, uninvited. She turned toward the kitchenette, grabbed the kettle, filled it at the tap more violently than necessary. The roar of water bought her a few seconds.
Behind her, he spoke again.
“You turned your phone off.”
“You sold me out.”
His silence pressed on her shoulder blades harder than his hand on the door had.
“To whom?” he asked.
She flicked the kettle off before it boiled.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t pretend you don’t know his name.”
Lucien’s voice dropped.
“Evan.”
“You gave him my address.”
His shoulders drew back as if she’d shoved him.
“I did not.”
“He turned up at the bar. At my flat. Knew where I worked, who I lived above, what back alley I used for a smoke.”
“You think I gave him that.”
“You’re the only one who knew all of it.”
The words hung between them, thick as the steam that rose as she set the kettle back, unopened. Ptolemy yawned, baring sharp white teeth, as if bored with human drama.
Lucien’s fingers curled around the back of the nearest chair until the wood creaked.
“Rory. Look at me.”
She kept her back to him, eyes on the grime around the tap.
“I am many things,” he went on, each word slow, “but I do not hand women to men who hurt them. That is not a line I cross.”
“You cross every other line in London.”
“Not that one.”
His voice scraped raw at the end there, stripped of its usual silk . It pulled her gaze against her will. She turned.
He met her eyes, unguarded, both colours bare as if he’d peeled something back.
“I received the same information,” he said. “Where you slept. Where you worked. The bar. The back alley with the broken camera. Only my version ended with your body in the Thames.”
She stared at him.
“Who sent it.”
“The message routed through three relays in Avaros and one in Prague. The signature looked like my father’s, which meant it wasn’t.”
“You thought your demon dad suddenly started worrying about my bedtime.”
“I thought someone wanted me focused on you. And on Evan. So I walked away from the job. It was the only way to keep you out of it.”
“You could have told me.”
“If I called, you would have met me. In public, or somewhere worse. With him still looking.”
“So your master plan was radio silence .”
He opened his hands, empty and useless.
“I misjudged.”
“Yeah.”
The word came out flat. Her chest prickled, anger and some other thing twisting together.
“You’re good at that,” she said. “Deciding what everyone else gets to know. What’s safe for us. Must be nice, holding all the pieces.”
His gaze dipped to the mess of papers on the coffee table, Eva’s scribbled runes and Rory’s own cramped notes jammed between them.
“It’s not about pieces,” he said. “It’s about blast radius.”
“You don’t get to dress it up.”
“No.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “I don’t.”
Silence stretched. The curry house below rattled pans; a laugh floated up through the floorboards. The city carried on while her living room shrank around the two of them.
Lucien drew a finger along the back of Eva’s chair, tracing a groove in the wood.
“My father took an interest in you,” he said.
“Still not seeing how this is making things better.”
“It isn’t. It’s explaining why I’m here.”
Rory’s mouth tasted like old pennies .
“What does he want,” she asked, “my stellar waitressing skills?”
“A human who can step between circles without flinching. Who doesn’t run from blood on the floor.”
“You’re projecting,” she muttered.
“I’m observing.”
“You told him about me.”
His head snapped up.
“No. He found out because you followed me into Avaros and back again when you should have got in a cab and gone home.”
“You needed backup.”
“I needed you alive.”
The words landed between them like something dropped from a height.
Rory swallowed.
“You don’t get to use that,” she said. “Not now.”
“I’m not using it. I’m stating why I am in your flat instead of in a meeting in Soho right now.”
“Because your demon dad has bad taste.”
“Because someone has made you a piece on his board.” His gaze flicked down, then up, measuring her. “And I refuse to let that stand.”
“You refused to call me for three months.”
“I assumed distance would keep you uninteresting.”
She snorted.
“How’s that working out.”
“It appears I was wrong again.”
He looked tired, she realised. Not the surface polish—his suit still crisp, shoes lined at the door like obedient dogs—but around the eyes, where the black iris swallowed most of the white, leaving his human side to hold the damage.
Rory dragged a hand through her hair then dropped it, useless.
“So what,” she asked. “You turn up, dump this on me, then vanish again? Let me guess. For my own good.”
“No.”
He took another step, close enough that she could see the faint stubble along his jaw the razor had missed. Her pulse stuttered in traitorous interest.
“I’m not leaving,” he said, “until we work out who fed Evan those details and why they wanted you afraid of me.”
“Assuming I am.”
“You opened the door with all three bolts still half in place.”
She glanced at the locks, then back at him.
“That’s just London.”
“It’s not just London when you flinch at your own name.”
Her skin tightened.
“You’ve been watching me.”
“I’ve been making sure you reach your front door every night.”
“Stalking. The word is stalking.”
“If I were stalking, you wouldn’t have seen me.”
“Comforting.”
“You have very low standards for comfort.”
“I spent my early twenties with Evan. That tracks.”
He watched her face at the mention of Evan’s name. Whatever he saw there made his mouth press into a thinner line.
“Speaking of him,” Rory pushed on, “you still haven’t explained why he rocked up with all my trivia. If it wasn’t you…”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then who decided to play helpful courier.”
Lucien hesitated.
Ptolemy chose that moment to spring from the sofa to the table, scattering a stack of printouts. One slid to the floor near Lucien’s feet. He bent and picked it up.
The page held a sketch—one of Eva’s, rough and ink-heavy—of a circle carved into stone, sigils branching from its edges. Rory’s own notes scribbled in the margin: patterns, names, a question mark shaped like a hook.
Lucien’s thumb smudged the side of her handwriting.
“You’ve been studying gate marks,” he said.
“Eva’s project.”
“You’re annotating.”
“I live here. Ink happens.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“Don’t,” she warned. “Don’t go all protective consultant on me. You lost that role when you vanished.”
“That role never stopped,” he answered. “You just refused to read my reports.”
“You didn’t send any.”
“I sent six. To the number you gave me the first night at Silas’s bar. They bounced.”
Rory blinked.
“That number died with my old SIM. You never asked for the new one.”
His mouth opened. Shut again.
The kettle clicked as the metal cooled, loud in the cramped room.
Lucien exhaled through his nose, then straightened, the page still in his hand.
“Then it appears I have misunderstood almost everything.”
“You think.”
He set the paper down with a care that didn’t match the mess around it.
“Rory,” he began.
She lifted a hand.
“Don’t. I already know the speech. I can recite it. ‘I did what I thought was right. I kept my distance to keep you safe. I never meant to hurt you.’ Save it.”
His gaze did something complicated, then steadied.
“That’s not the speech I had in mind.”
“Shame. I’d practised my eyerolls.”
He stepped around the table, close enough now that she could feel the cool draft from the stairwell at his back and his body heat in front. His eyes tracked every twitch of hers, as if he mapped a new city.
“The speech I had in mind,” he said, “starts with this: I missed you.”
Her throat closed around a useless response.