AI The knocking was sharp, precise, and utterly out of place. Rory looked up from the sprawl of Eva’s research notes, the familiar panic of her old life—Evan’s fist on the door—flaring for a second before she quashed it. This was Brick Lane. Eva’s flat. Safe. The knocking came again, three measured raps. Not a fist. Knuckles.
Ptolemy the tabby lifted his head from a sun-warmed pile of scrolls, yawned, and went back to sleep.
Rory padded to the door, the worn floorboards cool under her bare feet. She peered through the peephole, her breath catching in her throat. The fisheye lens distorted him, but there was no mistaking the platinum blond hair slicked back from a sharp widow’s peak, the severe line of a charcoal suit shoulder. Lucien Moreau stood on the narrow landing, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane, his expression unreadable .
Complicated terms. That was one way to put it. They hadn’t spoken in four months, not since the night in his Mayfair office when she’d told him she was done, that the supernatural underworld and its beautiful, dangerous fixers were a chapter she needed to close. He’d merely inclined his head, those heterochromatic eyes—one amber like aged whiskey, one black as a starless void—watching her with an infuriating calm. “As you wish, Miss Carter.” No argument. No plea. Just that cool dismissal that had haunted her more than any shout ever could.
Her hand hovered over the three deadbolts. She could pretend she wasn’t here. But he’d know. He always knew.
With a sigh that felt like surrendering a shield, she slid the bolts back, the metallic clicks loud in the quiet flat. She opened the door just enough to frame herself in the gap, using it as a barrier.
“Lucien.” Her voice was cooler than she felt.
“Aurora.” His voice was a low baritone, smooth as silk over gravel. He used her full name, the way he had when they’d first met. It felt like a deliberate touch. His gaze swept over her, taking in her old Cardiff University sweater, her jeans, her bare feet, the straight black hair she knew was messy from running her hands through it. His eyes lingered for a fraction of a second on the small crescent scar on her left wrist, a detail he’d noticed once, long ago. “May I come in?”
“Why?”
“It’s raining.” A slight, elegant gesture with his cane towards the window at the end of the hall, where grey London drizzle streaked the glass. It was a pathetic excuse, and they both knew it. A man like Lucien Moreau didn’t get caught in the rain.
“Since when do you get wet?” she asked, but she was already stepping back, pulling the door wider. The scent of him—sandalwood, ozone, and something faintly metallic—wafted in, cutting through the flat’s smells of old paper, dust, and the lingering ghost of last night’s curry.
He entered with a controlled grace, despite the cane. He didn’t lean on it heavily, but it was part of his rhythm, a third leg that clicked softly on the floorboards. He took in the chaotic room, his expression giving nothing away. “Charming.”
“It’s Eva’s. I’m cat-sitting.” As if on cue, Ptolemy sauntered over and wound himself around Lucien’s tailored trousers, leaving a trail of tabby fur. Lucien looked down, a flicker of something almost like amusement touching his mouth.
“I see business is slow for the Golden Empress if you have time for feline stewardship.”
“I have a life outside of deliveries, Lucien.”
“Do you?” The question was soft, but it landed like a stone. He turned those unsettling eyes back to her. “You vanished. From everything. Not just my world. Eva says you work, you go home, you see no one.”
“Eva talks too much.” Rory crossed her arms, a defensive gesture she immediately hated. “Why are you here? It can’t be a social call. We weren’t social.”
“We were something.” He said it simply, a statement of fact. He moved further into the room, his cane nudging a stray book aside. He stopped by the cluttered desk, his gloved fingers—he always wore gloves, she remembered—brushing the edge of a parchment. “I need your help.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “Of course you do. That’s the only time anyone seeks me out. For what I can do, for what I can figure out. Not for me.”
He turned swiftly, the movement sharper than his usual languid pace. “Do not,” he said, the smoothness gone from his voice, replaced by a hard edge, “lump me in with that pathetic human who broke you. Or with anyone else.” The anger in his tone was startling , a crack in his impeccable facade . It was the first time he’d ever directly referenced Evan.
She stared at him, her own anger rising to meet his. “You don’t get to be angry about that. You don’t get to pretend you care. When I left, you just… let me go.”
“What would you have had me do?” He took a step closer, the cane now held stiffly at his side. “Chain you to my desk? Beg you to stay in a world that terrifies you? You made a choice for your safety, for your sanity. A choice I respected, even if it…” He cut himself off, his jaw tightening.
“Even if it what?”
He looked away, towards the rainy window. “Even if it cost me,” he finished quietly.
The air between them thickened, charged with everything they hadn’t said that night . The long looks across crowded occult auctions, the brush of his hand against hers when passing a rare text, the night he’d fixed her a brandy after a close call with a ghoul, his fingers surprisingly gentle as he’d handed her the glass. The attraction had been a slow, steady burn, banked by circumstance and her own battered heart. She’d ended it before it could truly begin, fearing the fire.
“You said you needed help,” she said, forcing the topic back to safer, harder ground.
“I do. A client is missing. A young woman. Her mother is human, desperate. The usual authorities are useless. There are… signs it’s a supernatural taking.” He reached inside his suit jacket and withdrew a photograph, holding it out to her.
Rory didn’t take it. “And you came to me because I’m good at puzzles. That’s all.”
“No.” He let the photograph fall onto the desk. “I came to you because you are the only person I know who looks at the board and sees the moves no one else does. And because I wanted to see you.” The admission hung in the air , stark and undeniable.
Her carefully constructed coolness fissured. She uncrossed her arms, her hands falling to her sides. “Why now?”
“Because four months of silence is a form of torture I am no longer willing to endure.” He closed the remaining distance between them, not touching her, but she could feel the heat radiating from him, could smell the sandalwood and ozone more intensely . His heterochromatic eyes held hers, the amber one warm, the black one depthless. “I tried, Aurora. I tried to respect your boundaries. But my nature is not a patient one. I am half-demon. We covet. We possess. We are not noble creatures. I have fought that part of me every day since you walked out, telling it you were safer away from me. But seeing you now, in this messy, ordinary place, looking so alive…” He raised his hand, gloved fingers hovering just beside her cheek. He didn’t touch her. “It is a losing battle.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was the unsaid thing, the truth beneath all the polished words and tailored suits. The raw, wanting demon in him. The part he always kept caged.
“You think I’m safe here?” she whispered, the words escaping before she could stop them . “I’m not. I’m just… waiting. I’m good at waiting. I waited for Evan to change. I wait for my life to start. I’m so tired of waiting, Lucien.”
His control snapped. The gloved hand cupped her cheek, the leather soft and cool against her skin. His other hand, the one holding the cane, came up to brace against the bookshelf behind her, caging her in. “Then stop waiting,” he breathed, his voice rough .
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle or exploratory. It was a claiming, a release of four months of pent-up silence and want. His mouth was hot and demanding, and she met him with equal fervor, her hands coming up to clutch the lapels of his expensive suit, wrinkling the perfect fabric. The cane clattered to the floor, forgotten. The kiss was everything their conversations never were—hot, messy, honest. It tasted of brandy and desperation and that faint, thrilling hint of infernal metal.
When they broke apart, both were breathing raggedly. His forehead rested against hers, his eyes closed. The amber one, when he opened them, seemed to glow softly in the flat’s dim light.
“This is a terrible idea,” Rory murmured, her lips tingling .
“The worst,” he agreed, his thumb stroking her cheekbone . “I am a fixer for monsters. My father is a Duke of Avaros. My world is shadows and knives.”
“And I deliver Chinese food and live above a pub.” She managed a shaky smile. “We’re a disaster.”
“Yes.” He kissed her again, softer this time, a promise and an apology. “But she is still missing. And you are still the best mind I know. So. Will you help me? Not for the client. For us. To see if we can build something in the wreckage of our respective terrible ideas.”
Rory looked past his shoulder at the rainy window, at the chaotic , book-strewn flat that wasn’t hers, at the life she’d been passively occupying. Then she looked back at him, at the demon and the man, both laid bare before her. The cool-headed part of her screamed caution. The part that was tired of waiting saw a path, dangerous and real.
“Show me the photograph,” she said.