Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8WN9QYH0V2HQ9YDSNN9HZS

The third deadbolt stuck, as it always did. Rory cursed under her breath, the small crescent scar on her left wrist pulling taut as she wrestled with the stubborn mechanism. The knocking from the other side of the door hadn’t repeated, but she’d heard it clearly over the low hum of Eva’s ancient record player and the soft rustle of Ptolemy the tabby batting at a loose page. “Eva, if you forgot your keys again, I’m charging you a fiver for my trouble,” she called out, finally jerking the bolt free. She swung the door open, a rehearsed smirk already on her face. It died instantly. Lucien Moreau filled the dim hallway, his silhouette sharp against the weak yellow light of the stairwell. He looked like a slice of another world, a photograph from a magazine on avant-garde tailoring that had slipped into the chaotic collage of Brick Lane. His charcoal suit was impeccable, not a crease out of place despite the drizzle she could smell on the air behind him. Platinum blond hair was slicked back from a high forehead, and in the shadowed frame of the doorway, his heterochromatic eyes were unreadable pools—one amber, one a bottomless black. He leaned lightly on his ivory-handled cane. Time seemed to stutter. The sounds of the street below—the distant shout of a market vendor, the hiss of a bus—faded into a dull roar in her ears. Her heart, traitorously, gave a single, hard knock against her ribs, a painful echo of the one he’d just made on the door. “Aurora,” he said. His voice was exactly as she remembered: a low, smooth baritone, the French accent softened by years in London but still present, a ghost of Marseille in the vowels. She hadn’t heard that name from him in over a year. To him, she’d never been Rory. It was a formality that had once felt intimate, then felt like a weapon. Now it just felt like a scar being pressed. “Lucien.” She kept her voice flat, cool. It was an effort. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the door. “You’re lost. The demonic auction houses are south of the river.” A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “My geography remains, thankfully, unimpaired. I am here to see you.” “I’m not buying information today. And I’m certainly not selling any.” “This is not a transaction.” He shifted his weight, the tip of his cane tapping once on the worn linoleum. “May I come in? The hallway smells profoundly of turmeric and regret.” She should say no. She should shut the door in his perfectly composed face. Every sane instinct, every lesson learned from the jagged aftermath of whatever they had been, screamed at her to do just that. But the memory of his mouth on hers, the feel of his hands in her hair, the devastating quiet of his apartment after he’d told her it couldn’t continue—it all rose up in a wave, leaving her unsteady. And curiosity, that damned, persistent flaw of hers, hooked its claws in. Wordlessly, she stepped back, pulling the door wider. He entered with a measured step, his gaze sweeping the cramped flat. It took in the towers of books threatening to topple from every surface, the scrolls spilling from the sofa, the cat now frozen mid-pounce to stare at the newcomer. Ptolemy’s tail twitched. “Eva’s domain, I presume,” Lucien said, his tone dry. “It lacks a certain… minimalism.” “She’s out. Research trip to the British Library. What do you want, Lucien?” Rory crossed her arms over her chest, a defensive gesture she hated but couldn’t stop. She felt acutely underdressed in her faded jeans and a old Cardiff University sweatshirt, her straight black hair pulled into a messy knot. He turned to face her fully, and in the fuller light of the flat’s single bulb, she could see the fine lines of tension around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. A weariness that his impeccable posture couldn’t entirely disguise. “There is a situation. A… delicate matter. It involves a name from your past.” A cold trickle, unrelated to the draft from the door, traced down her spine. “Evan.” The name left her lips as a whisper. Lucien’s jaw tightened. “Indirectly. His new… associates. They are digging. Asking questions in places where questions are rarely asked without purpose. They have learned you are in London. They have learned you have friends with certain esoteric interests.” His amber eye seemed to catch the light, glinting. “They do not yet know about me. About us. But they are getting warmer.” “Us.” She let out a short, brittle laugh. “There is no ‘us.’ There was a few months of… whatever that was. And then there wasn’t. You made sure of that.” He flinched, the first real crack in his composure she’d seen tonight. “Aurora, what happened between us—” “Was a mistake?” she supplied, her voice sharp. “A distraction? A bit of fun with a human before you got back to your real work in the underworld? I believe your exact words were, ‘This is a complication I cannot afford.’” She could feel the old hurt surfacing, raw and angry. She’d thought she’d buried it under long hours on the delivery bike and the quiet solitude of her flat above Silas’ bar. Seeing him proved how shallow that grave had been. “They were true,” he said, his own voice dropping, gaining an edge. “And you know it. My world is not one of part-time delivery jobs and research aids for hedge witches. It is a world of teeth and consequences. Involving you further would have been a selfishness bordering on cruelty.” “So you decided for me. How noble.” She turned away, pretending to straighten a pile of Eva’s notes on Celtic warding spells. Her left wrist ached. “You didn’t come here to warn me about Evan’s friends. You could have sent a message. A coded note. A whisper in Silas’ ear. You came yourself. Why?” The silence stretched. She heard the soft *clack* of his cane being set against Eva’s cluttered desk. Heard his footsteps, quiet on the threadbare rug. She didn’t turn. “Because I had to see you.” His words were so close, his breath stirred the loose hairs at the nape of her neck. She went very still. “Because for a year, I have told myself the decision was correct. Prudent. Necessary.” His voice was a raw murmur now, stripped of its usual polished control. “And the moment I heard your name in connection with this new threat, every one of those reasons turned to ash. I have… missed the sound of your mind. The way you see the world. It is infuriating and brilliant. I have missed you, Aurora.” Slowly, she turned. He was mere inches away. The scent of him—sandalwood, ozone, and something uniquely demonic—enveloped her. His heterochromatic eyes held hers, the amber one warm, the black one deep and hungry. The attraction was a physical force, a live wire that had never been disconnected, only switched off. Now it hummed between them, vibrant and dangerous. “You hurt me,” she said, the admission leaving her defenseless. “I know.” A muscle feathered in his jaw. “I am asking not for forgiveness, but for the chance to protect you from a danger I helped, however indirectly, to bring to your door. Let me fix this.” “And then what? You walk away again, a little less guilty?” His hand came up, slowly, giving her every chance to pull back. His fingers brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, his touch feather-light. A tremor went through her. “I do not know,” he confessed, the words seeming to cost him. “I only know I cannot walk away tonight.” The space between them vanished. It was she who closed it, rising on her toes, her hands fisting in the immaculate wool of his suit jacket. His mouth met hers with a desperation that mirrored her own. It was not a gentle kiss. It was a collision, a reclaiming, an argument continued without words. His cane forgotten, his arms wrapped around her, pulling her tight against him. One hand cradled the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair. The kiss tasted of rain, of old magic, and of every unsaid thing that had festered for a year. When they finally broke apart, breathless, foreheads resting together, the flat seemed different. The clutter, the smell of old paper and curry, the watching cat—it all receded. There was only the solid reality of him, the rapid beat of his heart against hers. “This is still a complication,” she whispered, her lips swollen. A genuine smile, small and weary, touched his mouth. “*Ma chère,*” he murmured. “You have always been the most compelling complication I have ever encountered.” Outside, the rain began to fall in earnest, tapping against the window. Inside, for the first time in a long time, the silence between them was not an empty space, but a thing filled with potential, fragile and terrifying and alive.