AI The heavy brass of the third deadbolt slid back with a final, definitive clunk. Rory gripped the doorknob, wiping a damp palm on the denim of her jeans. The aroma of toasted cumin and garlic from the curry house downstairs had settled thick in the hallway of Eva’s flat, masking whatever scent the damp London night held outside.
Ptolemy, Eva’s battered tabby cat, wove a figure-eight around Rory’s ankles, his purr a low, vibrating hum against her shins. Rory took a centering breath. She had just finished a grueling four-hour shift dodging black cabs on her delivery bike for Yu-Fei Cheung’s Golden Empress. All she wanted was a cup of tea, silence , and the safety of her childhood friend’s flat.
She pulled the door open.
The breath caught sharply in her throat, a cold spike of shock freezing her in place.
Lucien Moreau stood on the narrow landing.
He looked exactly as he had the night he walked away. He wore a tailored charcoal suit that fit his shoulders with infuriating precision. His platinum blond hair was slicked back flawlessly into its usual sharp style, catching the flicker of the faulty hallway bulb. Both hands rested lightly on the carved ivory pommel of his cane.
Rory’s gaze flicked up to his face, landing immediately on his eyes. The mismatched stare still possessed the power to strip her defenses bare. The right eye was a molten, glowing amber. The left was pure, abyssal black.
"Hello, Rory," Lucien said. His voice was a low rumble, the faint, melodic edge of his native Marseille smoothing out the rough consonants of the English greeting.
Rory’s instinct, honed by years of trusting her gut to survive her abusive ex, Evan, and sharpened further by navigating London’s hidden, supernatural teeth, screamed at her to slam the door. She shoved her weight into the wood, but the heavy ferrule of Lucien’s cane slotted neatly into the doorjamb. Metal scraped harshly against the frame.
"Remove it," Rory said, her voice dropping into the cold, steady register she used when she needed to maintain absolute control. It was the tone of a barrister’s daughter, channeling her father Brendan’s courtroom authority.
"Give me three minutes," Lucien said. He did not push against the door. He did not try to force his way in. He simply stood perfectly still, letting the cane do the work. "Three minutes, Laila. Then I will leave."
Hearing the alias, the subtle twist on her middle name he had adopted purely to get under her skin when they first met, ignited a flare of heat in her chest. Hurt tangled fiercely with an undeniable, infuriating pull.
"Do not call me that," she snapped. She stopped pushing against the door, knowing she could never outmuscle a half-demon anyway. She stepped back, leaving the entrance open. "You have two minutes. Say your piece and get out. You are lucky Eva is out of town."
Lucien crossed the threshold, stepping out of the gloomy hallway and into the cramped one-bedroom flat above Brick Lane. The door clicked shut behind him, and the sound seemed to suck all the oxygen from the room.
Rory crossed her arms, her right fingers instantly finding the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. She traced the raised tissue with her thumb, a grounding habit she had carried since childhood, falling back on it now as her pulse drummed a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
Lucien noticed. The pitch-black eye tracked the movement of her fingers. He took in the chaotic state of Eva’s flat, the precarious stacks of leather-bound books cluttering the floorboards, the unfurled vellum scrolls burying the coffee table, and the cryptic research notes pinned haphazardly to the peeling wallpaper. In the middle of the esoteric clutter, Lucien looked utterly foreign. He was a creature of high-end, shadowy clubs and expensive corners, an elite fixer who brokered secrets and solved violent problems for the supernatural underworld. He spoke four languages. He dealt with monsters. He did not belong in a dusty Brick Lane flat smelling of old paper and lamb vindaloo.
"You are difficult to track," Lucien murmured, leaning a fraction of his weight onto the ivory cane. She knew exactly how lethal the thin blade hidden inside that wood was. She had seen him redraw the map of a fight with it.
"I am not hiding," Rory replied, keeping her chin raised, her bright blue eyes fixed on his. "I delivered noodles across Soho all evening. You could have found me at the Golden Empress. You could have left a message at the flat I rent above Silas’s bar. You chose to bypass all my regular routines and track me to Eva’s."
"I chose to seek you out where you felt the most insulated," he countered gently .
"I felt perfectly insulated until thirty seconds ago."
A flash of genuine pain crossed Lucien’s face, a microscopic fracture in his typically immaculate composure. He tightened his grip on the ivory pommel. Ptolemy padded across the floorboards, paused at the toe of Lucien’s expensive Oxford shoe, gave the leather a long sniff, and miraculously sat down, wrapping his tail casually around his paws. Traitor.
Rory uncrossed her arms, stepping away from him to put the cluttered coffee table between them. "What do you want, Lucien? Three months ago, on Chelsea Bridge, you made it exceptionally clear that a human delivery girl had no place standing next to you. Your exact words were that I was a liability. So why are you standing in Eva's hallway?"
"Because I was a coward."
The raw, unguarded honesty in the confession threw her. Rory blinked, her quick, out-of-the-box mind stalling for a vital fraction of a second. "What did you say?"
Lucien took a slow step forward. He did not use the cane to anchor himself this time, bringing it to his side. He navigated a stack of heavy grimoires without breaking eye contact. "I told you that you were a liability because it was far easier than admitting the truth. The truth, Rory, is that I am the liability. I am the danger. I have spent thirty-two years navigating despots from Avaros and terrestrial predators. My father’s blood runs through my veins, demanding a cold, calculated ruthlessness that I have perfected in order to survive. And then you walked into my miserable life."
He stopped three feet from her. He was close enough now that the familiar scent of his cologne, a blend of dry sandalwood and a sharp, ozone note like impending rain, cut right through the heavy spices drifting up through the floorboards.
"You were too bright," Lucien said softly, his voice dropping an octave . "Too sharp. You look at a chaotic board of variables and see moves I cannot anticipate. You did not flinch at the fangs of the underworld, but you flinched when I stood too close to you during an argument. I saw the shadow of the man who hurt you before you left Cardiff. I saw it in your eyes, Rory. I knew my world would only bring you more violence, more bruising."
"So you decided for me," Rory said. Her voice trembled , thick with resurfaced anger. "You took my agency away. Evan bruised my wrists and my ribs, Lucien, but he broke my spirit by telling me he knew what was best for me. He tried to cage me for my own good. You did the exact same thing."
Lucien flinched. The dangerous, untouchable half-demon, who had stood unblinking in the face of ancient underworld terrors, physically recoiled at being compared to her abusive ex. "Mon Dieu," he whispered, a ragged sound. "Rory, I never meant..."
"You didn't trust my judgment," she interrupted, refusing to let the tears burning the back of her eyes fall. She was cool-headed. She would not crack now. "I went to university for pre-law. My mother is a teacher, my father is a barrister. I was raised to analyze contracts and weigh risks. I knew exactly what I was signing up for when I chose to stay by your side. I knew what you were."
"I know," he said, taking another agonizingly slow step. Another inch of distance erased. "I know."
Rory found her back pressing against the edge of Eva’s cramped kitchen counter, the dull lip of the wood biting into her spine. Lucien stood right in front of her now. He reached out, his movements heavily telegraphed, as if gentling a skittish animal . He did not touch her skin. He leaned the heavy ivory cane aside, resting it against the counter, completely freeing his hands.
"I broke my own cardinal rules for you," Lucien confessed, his voice dropping to a rough, broken whisper . "I forced myself to stay away for three months. I threw myself into every volatile contract I could broker just to stay occupied. But every time a door opened, I looked for straight black hair. Every time a client spoke arrogantly out of turn, I listened for your Welsh cadence setting them straight. The underworld is deafening, Rory, but my mind has been utterly consumed by the silence you left behind."
Rory stared up at him, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths. The sheer magnetic proximity of him was wreaking absolute havoc on her rationality. She could see the faint, fiery golden flecks trapped in his amber eye, the absolute void of the black one. He was terrifying. He was beautiful. He was the man who had abandoned her in the freezing rain with nothing but a curt goodbye.
"You cannot just break back into my life and say these things to me," Rory whispered.
"I must," Lucien replied. He raised a hand, his long, elegant fingers hesitating a literal millimeter from her cheek. He held his hand suspended there, waiting. He was giving her the agency he had stolen. The choice was completely hers.
Rory held his gaze. It was entirely illogical to invite the blast radius of a half-demon fixer back into her world. It went against every survival instinct she had painstakingly rebuilt since fleeing to London. But as she looked at Lucien, she did not see the ruthless broker. She saw the man who had brought her soup when she was delirious with a fever, the man who had stayed awake until dawn translating dense Avaros texts to help her pass an impossible test, the man who was currently looking at her as if she were the only remaining tether keeping him anchored to the Earth realm.
Rory surrendered to the gravity. She closed the millimeter gap, turning her face slightly to press her cheek firmly against his broad, warm palm.
Lucien exhaled a shaky breath that sounded remarkably like a prayer. His thumb brushed lightly , reverently across her cheekbone.
"I am terrified of ruining you," he murmured, leaning down, his face hovering mere inches from hers.
"I am significantly harder to break than I look," Rory said. She reached up, wrapping both hands tightly around the lapels of his immaculate charcoal suit. She gripped the expensive, heavy fabric, pulling him down the final few inches.
The kiss was a violent collision of everything they had suppressed. It held the desperate, bruising force of three months of complete starvation. Lucien groaned, a deep, inhuman sound that vibrated straight through her lips, and his arms wrapped securely around her waist, lifting her clean off the floorboards. Rory tangled her fingers blindly into his slicked platinum hair, ruining the perfect styling, not caring about the mess, not caring about the danger. His mouth was hot, demanding, tasting of dark coffee and undeniable, desperate longing.
He set her down against the edge of the counter, his hands mapping the curve of her spine, pulling her flush against his chest so she could feel the chaotic hammering of his heart. For the first time since she had dragged her battered suitcases into London, Rory did not feel the need to meticulously analyze the escape routes in the room. Surrounded by Eva's chaotic research and the heavy scent of Brick Lane, anchored tightly by the impossible man holding her, she was exactly where she wanted to be.