Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8TXYQ70SS4BW7A88PMX7K9

The first deadbolt gave with a thick clunk. Then the second. Then the third. Rory pulled the door open with one hand still wrapped around the cricket bat she'd grabbed from behind Eva's coat rack, and the speech she'd prepared — something about it being half eleven on a Tuesday and if this was another one of Eva's university friends looking for a couch — died somewhere between her lungs and her teeth. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing, rain-soaked and listing slightly to the left. His cane rested against the wall beside him as though he'd set it there to free both hands for the railing. The charcoal suit jacket hung open, the shirt beneath it dark with water. Platinum blond hair, usually slicked back with the kind of precision that bordered on compulsive, fell in wet strands across his forehead. One amber eye and one black eye fixed on her face, and neither one blinked. "No," Rory said. "Bonsoir to you as well." "Absolutely not." She moved to close the door. His hand came up — not to stop it, just palm raised, fingers slightly spread. A gesture that said wait, not a demand. The difference mattered. It always had with him. That was part of the problem. She held the door where it was, six inches from the frame. The curry house below pumped warm turmeric-scented air up through the floorboards, mixing with the wet-pavement smell rolling off him. "How did you even know I was here? Eva's in Prague." "I know where Eva is. I know where most people are. Professional hazard." He lowered his hand. A muscle in his jaw tightened, the only crack in that infuriating composure. "I came because you weren't at the flat above the bar." "So you checked the second address on file. Thorough." "Rory." The way he said her name — that half-swallowed R, the vowel drawn out just enough by the Marseille still sitting in his accent — made something twist below her ribs. She tightened her grip on the bat. "You look like hell." "Flattered." "I'm not letting you in." He glanced past her into the flat, at the fortress of books stacked on every surface, the research notes pinned to the walls with colored thumbtacks, the tabby cat watching him from the arm of the sofa with unblinking judgment. Then his gaze came back to her. "I would not ask if it were not necessary." "You wouldn't ask at all. That's the thing about you, Lucien. You just show up." Something shifted behind his expression. Not hurt exactly. Recognition. She'd landed somewhere true and they both knew it. He reached for the cane, fingers closing around the ivory handle, and for one breath she thought he was going to turn around and descend the narrow staircase and disappear back into whatever shadow had produced him. Instead his knee buckled. It was fast — a slight sideways sway, the cane catching his weight a half-second late, one hand shooting to the door frame. Rory stepped forward before she could think about it, her free hand catching his elbow. Beneath the wet wool of his jacket, his arm was rigid. Burning hot. "Christ, you're fevered." "A minor complication." "You can barely stand." "I am standing. Distinction matters." But his weight pressed into her grip, and when she pulled him across the threshold he didn't resist. He moved through the door with the careful economy of someone measuring each step against a finite reserve of energy, and the smell of him came with it — rain and cedar and something faintly metallic that she'd learned months ago was the demon half of his blood running warmer than it should. She kicked the door shut. Threw one deadbolt, then the second, then the third out of habit. When she turned back he'd made it to the edge of Eva's desk and was leaning against it, one hand flat on a stack of Sumerian translation notes, the cane hooked over the desk's edge. Ptolemy had not moved from the sofa arm but his ears were pinned back, amber eyes locked on the new arrival. "The cat hates me," Lucien observed. "The cat has good instincts." Rory set the bat down against the wall and crossed her arms. "What happened to you?" "A negotiation went poorly." "A negotiation." "In Bermondsey. Three hours ago." He unbuttoned his jacket with steady fingers — always steady, even now, because God forbid Lucien Moreau let his hands shake — and pulled the left side open. The shirt beneath was not just wet. It was wet and dark and clinging to a gash that ran from his lower ribs to his hip, the edges of the wound puckered and black. Everything in the room seemed to narrow. Rory's vision tunneled to that line of ruined cloth and what lay beneath it. "Iron blade," he said, as if narrating someone else's injury. "Whoever supplied it knew what they were doing. It's interfering with the healing." "You need a hospital." "I need a hospital the way a fish needs a dissertation. What I need is somewhere to sit that isn't a gutter, and—" He paused. Drew a careful breath. "And someone whose judgment I trust. You are the only person in this city who qualifies at the moment." The words landed in the cramped flat and sat there between them, heavy as the books lining every surface. Rory stared at him, arms still folded, jaw working. "You don't get to do this." "Do what?" "Disappear for six weeks. Six weeks, Lucien. No call, no message, nothing. After what happened in Whitechapel, after you — after we—" She stopped. Pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. "You vanished. And now you show up bleeding on my doorstep and say I'm the only person you trust. That's not fair." "No." His voice was quiet. "It isn't." "So why did you come?" The flat was too small for the silence that followed. Rain hit the window glass in erratic bursts. Somewhere below, a muffled laugh from the curry house. Ptolemy licked one paw and resumed his surveillance. Lucien looked at her — really looked, both mismatched eyes open and unguarded in a way she'd only seen once before, in the dark outside the Whitechapel warehouse with his hand on her jaw and his breath an inch from hers. "Because I did not trust myself to stay away any longer, and the wound gave me an excuse to stop trying." Rory's arms dropped to her sides. She crossed the room in four steps. Not to him — past him, to the kitchen nook behind the desk, where she pulled a clean tea towel from the drawer and ran it under warm water. She wrung it out, came back, and stood in front of him close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his skin through the damp suit. "Sit down on the sofa. Move the cat." "The cat will murder me." "Then die with dignity. Sit." He pushed off from the desk and limped to the sofa. Ptolemy fled with a hiss and vanished behind a stack of Akkadian reference grammars. Lucien lowered himself onto the cushions with the contained exhale of someone refusing to make any sound louder than breathing, his cane propped against the armrest, and looked up at her with an expression caught between gratitude and wariness. Rory sat on the coffee table across from him, knees nearly touching his. She held up the towel. "I'm going to clean it. And while I do, you're going to tell me everything. Bermondsey, the iron blade, who sent them, and why you really left after Whitechapel." She held his gaze. "Everything. Because I swear on my mother's lesson plans, if you feed me one more half-truth wrapped in French charm, I will throw you down those stairs myself." The ghost of a smile. Just the corner of his mouth, a barely-there shift. She hadn't seen it in six weeks and it hit her like a fist. "Where would you like me to begin?" "The truth. Start there." He leaned back against the sofa cushions and let his eyes close for a moment. When they opened, the armor was gone — the polish, the deflection, the four-language wit he wore like chainmail. What was left looked exhausted and afraid and entirely fixed on her face. "I left because I wanted to stay. And that—" He paused. Swallowed. "In my experience, wanting to stay with someone is the most dangerous thing I can do to them. My father's blood does not make for safe attachments, Rory." She pressed the warm towel against the edge of the wound. He flinched, a sharp intake of breath through his nose, but didn't pull away. "That wasn't your decision to make for me." "I know." "I grew up with a mother who let everyone else decide what was dangerous for her. Then I dated a man who decided what I could and couldn't handle. I left Cardiff so I'd never have to live like that again." She dabbed at the blackened skin around the gash, careful, methodical, her hands steadier than her pulse. "You don't get to protect me from yourself without asking if I want protection." "You're right." "I know I'm right. I'm furious with you." "You are also very gently cleaning my wound." "The two aren't mutually exclusive." His hand moved. It settled on her wrist — not gripping, just resting, his fingertips finding the small crescent-shaped scar she'd carried since childhood. He'd asked about it once, months ago, in the back booth of Yu-Fei's restaurant over cold noodles at one in the morning. She'd told him the truth. He'd traced the scar with his thumb and said nothing, and that silence had meant more than any words she could name. He traced it again now. "I am sorry," he said. No embroidery. No qualifier. Three words in English when he had three other languages to hide behind, and he chose the most naked version available. Rory looked at his hand on her wrist. At the wound still seeping beneath the towel. At those impossible eyes, one warm and one dark, watching her with the kind of terrified patience she'd never seen him give to anyone else. "Six weeks is a long time, Lucien." "I know." "You can't do it again." "I won't." She turned her wrist so her thumb pressed against his palm, holding on. "Then stay."