AI The chain rattled before she finished yanking it free, the bolt snapping like a small insult. Aurora shoved the door open and nearly fell into him.
Lucien stood framed by the stairwell light, immaculate even when he had no right to be. Tailored charcoal suit, hair slicked back to a pale blade, one amber eye and one black like two coins from different currencies. His cane prodded the mat, ivory handle turned just so, and under the cuff of his sleeve a dark smudge stained the fabric.
"Punctual," he said, as if that explained anything.
"You've got a nerve," she answered, locking the chain with a thumb that trembled despite her telling herself it would not. Ptolemy, amber eyes like Lucien's lighter one, leapt from a pile of books and threaded himself between her ankles, tail puffed.
Lucien lowered his voice. "Aurora."
The name landed differently in his mouth than it had in the past. Less familiarity, more measured tasting. His French rolled over the vowels, careful, elegant. He did not smile.
"How—" She stopped, because the question unspooled into accusation if she finished. How did he know where to find her? How did he walk up three flights to Eva's flat and stand cold and composed as if he had not vanished? He had walked away without an explanation six months ago. Vanished. No forwarding address. No courtesy.
"You look hunted," he said instead, as if offering a diagnosis would excuse his disappearance.
"Funny thing, being hunted." She shoved the door with her hip, letting it thunk into the frame. "You taught me how to lock doors properly."
"Ptolemy recognizes me." His fingers brushed the cat's fur; the tabby made a small noise and settled against his leg, as if deciding loyalties were negotiable . Lucien's touch was practiced, gentle enough to be disarming. "And I have a key."
Her laugh was more bark than sound. "You have a key. Of course you do."
Lucien took a half-step, respecting the chain. "I tried sending a message."
"You did." She could have said more about the empty inboxes, the vanished texts. Instead she watched his eyes. The black pupil widened slightly , an almost imperceptible change, as if something in his gaze kept tracking something beyond her shoulder. "You didn't leave a note."
"I left evidence." He drew his cane across the threshold, a delicate scraping that drew her attention. The ivory handle opened on a hinge and revealed a thin blade. It flashed in the stairlight like a promise. He did not brandish it. He closed it again.
Her mouth went dry. "You're always dramatic, Lucien."
"Only when the circumstances warrant it." He folded his hands at his waist, one hand resting on the cane. "May I come in?"
She wanted to slam the door. Lock every deadbolt, call Eva, call Silas, call anyone who could make Lucien go away. Instead, the knock of a remembered warmth —his cologne, something like cedar and cold smoke—pressed behind her eyes. She stepped back. "One foot inside and I'm calling Eva."
He smiled, the kind that had toppled a dozen rules in better evenings. "Your friend would make a fuss. I prefer to avoid unnecessary theatrics."
She closed the door enough for the chain to click, the flat suddenly smaller, full of sunlight caught in dust. Books teetered in every corner, scrolls like sloppy flags of study. Ptolemy rubbed Lucien's calf and then, with the behaviour of someone who did not approve but tolerated the inevitable, jumped onto a stack and surveyed the room.
Lucien's gaze ran over the cramped space. "You made good use of Eva's generosity."
"You're not here to compliment my decorating." She folded her arms. "So why are you here? Business? Trouble? A whim?"
"Bit of all three." He turned a fraction so that she saw the cuff again. The fabric there was darker, the stain now obvious, a fingerprint of something that did not belong in a suit store. "You look tired."
"From being abandoned," she said. The words were neat, precise. "From moving between flats. From waiting for a person who decided he had more important things than the woman he'd been sleeping with."
Lucien's eyes flicked , no denial, no confession. "Sleeping with, not sleeping with, were careless words," he said. "I did not intend to leave as I did. I intended to be back in a week."
"They always say that."
"In my defence, time in my business does not obey simple calendars." He tipped his head. "I should apologise."
"Should." She let the single word hang. It felt like a bargaining chip .
He left the apology there, but his posture shifted. Alarm tightened something behind his amber eye. "Someone followed me here," he said carefully . "Not the sort that knocks once and is civil."
The books on the nearest shelf, a precarious lean of Tolkien and a battered occult textbook Eva swore by, trembled . Aurora's stomach dropped as if she had walked off a curb. "Followed you? From where?"
"From places that exist between squares of reality, if one cares for metaphors." He closed his fingers on the cane, knuckles white. "They asked questions about you. About where you might be."
For a moment no one spoke. Ptolemy screeched, a sharp protest, and batted at Lucien's trouser leg. He wore no arrogance about danger now; he wore caution.
"Why would they care about me?" Her voice sounded small even to herself. "I'm not important in those circles."
"People are instruments," Lucien said, almost conversational. "A song need not be famous to be necessary. You are useful to them because of your attachments."
Her jaw clenched . "So you come back to warn me after leaving me alone to a dozen attachments."
"I came back because they were coming." He stepped further into the flat, the cane tapping a slow, precise rhythm. The ivory handle caught at the light, a small beacon . "I wanted to remove you before they could. I miscalculated the timetable."
"You miscalculated everything, apparently." The anger flared warm and honest, a useful fuel. "You vanished without a word, Lucien. I took a job. I slept on the sofa upstairs. I learned how to take the late shift at Golden Empress. I thought the best of it, because I have always preferred the best of people."
"You preferred the best of me," he corrected, quietly . "That was my fault."
The silence after that comment was a living thing. She could remember nights where his whisper had slid across skin, promises folded into the space between breaths. She kept the memory the way you kept a cut, visible and tinged with white, a small crescent-shaped scar on her wrist, where a childhood mistake had left her with a map of pain. She had not asked him if his leaving hurt. She had assumed silence meant safety.
"But you left," she said. "You left when Evan started showing up more. You left when I needed someone to say no for me."
Lucien's face did not harden. It was an unsettling stillness. "I did not think you needed me to say no. I thought you needed me to create distance."
"Distance is not the same as protection," she said.
"No." He looked at her hands, at the scar on her wrist, as if he could read decisions in the pale crescent. "It was the wrong kind of distance."
They were close enough now that she could see the faint tremor in his jaw, a small human break in his otherwise composed façade. He had a way of saying things so they seemed inevitable and then being wrong about the shape of consequences .
A shout from the stairwell cut across the room, jolting like a slap. Someone banged on the front door twice, impatient, hard. The sound reverberated through the thin floors as if the whole building had tried to cough something up.
"Open up, Aurora!" The voice carried a local edge, anger threaded with authority. "Open up now!"
Aurora's heart banged to match the door. She took a step toward the corridor, every instinct telling her to run the other way, to climb the stairs and vanish into the anonymity she'd learned. Lucien's hand closed on her elbow, gentle but unyielding.
"Stay inside," he said.
"Who's that?" Her voice pitched high on the consonant. Fear had a squeak in it.
"Company I did not expect to be polite." Lucien's hand tightened a fraction. He moved his cane in a motion so small it could have been a flourish, the end of the handle sliding across his palm until his fingers found the hidden hinge. He did not draw the blade; he did not show threat. He calibrated the room with an assassin's eye, seeing the bookshelves, the window, the satellite of paper strewn like debris.
Another bang hit the door, heavier, and muffled curses followed. "Aurora Carter, you have thirty seconds."
Lucien's amber eye darkened. He stepped between her and the door, placing himself in a line she recognised from a dozen bad nights—protective, precise. "You do not owe them anything," he said to her, almost intimate. "Not if you are not choosing the obligation."
"I'm not choosing." Her laugh this time was broken. "I didn't choose anything for months."
He did not answer. He moved to the kitchen counter, where a kettle boiled, a little steam ghosting the air. He flicked the kettle off with the tip of his cane. The small sound was absurdly domestic, a small anchor.
"Who wants me?" she asked, as if asking might make the thing smaller .
A pause from the hall, a rustle of paper. "We know you're there, Ms Carter," the voice called, close enough now to be almost friendly. "Don't make us climb."
Lucien's hand touched the blade with a small practiced movement, not to draw it but to make sure the mechanism still worked . He spoke without looking at the door. "Three deadbolts slow you down. They do not stop those who know how to count."
"Then they're not just here to bother me," Aurora said, anger refilling the empty places fear had hollowed out. "They're here to take something."
"Or someone," he corrected.
The corridor light shifted. Footsteps on the stairs above, quick and impatient, like soldiers testing a rumour. Ptolemy launched himself at the door, nails skittering across wood. The bang echoed as something hit the door again, harder, a sound that split the space between them like thunder across a tightrope.
Lucien's voice smoothed, the professional layer sliding into place. "Eva's cat is very noisy. He will have to be quiet."
"He bites." Aurora's words were sharp, because how else do you fight someone with two hearts and a missing conscience but with simple truths?
"Good." He smiled then, the first real thing since he'd arrived, and it did something to the simple room, like opening a window that had been kept shut. "If they want something from you, they will find resistance a most inconvenient discovery."
The doorknob rattled, the chain straining. A low metallic scrape sounded, followed by a small, brittle cracking.
"Open up, Aurora!" the voice bellowed. "One last time."
Lucien's cane moved. The ivory handle clicked, a tiny, unseen threat. He did not ask for permission. He stepped forward and set himself against the door, shoulder braced, and when the deadbolt finally gave with the resolute sound of wrongness, he did not wait for the explosion of entry.
"Behind me," he said.
Aurora's breath caught. She moved without thinking, a reflex older than caution, and slipped behind his shoulder. Ptolemy hissed and disappeared under a pile of clothes. The corridor light threw long, nervous shadows that looked like fingers .
The door slammed inward with a force that blurred the picture on the nearest wall. A shape filled the threshold, and for a second she could see only the silhouette of a man: broad shoulders, a coat that had seen worse things than London. A second figure shoved past him, smaller, and something metallic glinted in its hand.
Lucien's cane came up with the speed of a well-practised blade, a clean arc that met the intruder's shoulder. The first man swore, stumbled, and a ragged sound tore from the second like surprise and anger braided.
"Police!" someone shouted from the landing, a panicked voice she did not recognise, because it was not police at all, but rehearsed menace.
Lucien's other eye, the black one, was a slit. He did not seem surprised. He seemed, in some way, to have been waiting exactly for this moment.
He looked at her then, close enough that she could see the barest fleck of crimson at his lip, the smear on his cuff. No apology. No easy explanations. Only an intensity that had the force of a promise and the weight of a threat.
"Stay behind me," he said.
The intruders pushed forward, and the flat's single light made ordinary things monstrous. Books became walls, paper became razor. Someone swore, a sound like breaking glass, and the blade in the smaller man's hand flashed.
She realised with a clarity like cold glass that the night was crossing a line it had been circling for months. Lucien's return had not been a reunion. It had been a door left open.
He didn't wait to explain. He moved, the cane an extension of himself, and struck, and the room inhaled.