AI The sharp rap against the wood startled Rory from her study. Silas’ bar downstairs, usually a dull thrum underfoot on a Tuesday night, had fallen quiet. Three distinct, measured knocks. She padded to the door, a worn t-shirt and faded jeans her uniform for the evening. Her hand hovered over the deadbolt, a habit ingrained by living above a public house in East London, before the usual city grit made her check again.
She pulled it open.
And froze.
Lucien Moreau filled the threshold, not in his usual charcoal suit, but a simple yet flawlessly cut dark grey cashmere sweater that hugged his athletic frame. His slicked-back platinum hair looked artfully dishevelled, as if he’d run his hand through it a thousand times. His heterochromatic eyes – one molten amber, the other a depthless black – scanned her, a flicker crossing his face, gone before she could name it.
"Rory," he said, his voice a low rumble, the French lilt a familiar , dangerous melody.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drummer suddenly unearthed. "Lucien. What... what are you doing here?" The question felt thin, reedy, entirely inadequate. It had been months. More than months. Long enough for the sting of their parting to dull to a persistent ache, yet here he was, disrupting the fragile peace she’d painstakingly constructed .
He took a small step forward, the scent of sandalwood and something undeniably arcane clinging to him, a stark contrast to the stale beer and frying oil that usually permeated the hallway. He didn’t push, just waited, his posture radiating a coiled tension that mirrored her own. The ivory-handled cane, usually a stark accessory, was absent. A surprising omission.
"I need a moment of your time," he stated, his gaze never leaving hers. "It's urgent."
Urgent. That was always Lucien’s cue, wasn't it? A crisis conjured, a favor demanded, a secret traded. Had he tracked her down just to hand her another piece of trouble? The thought sent a fresh wave of irritation warring with the undeniable pull she still felt. Those eyes, one warm like a desert sunset, the other dark as a moonless night, had always held her captive for longer than was wise.
"My time is usually booked for deliveries, Luc," she managed, her voice a little steadier now, a shield of pragmatic indifference forming. "Not for drop-ins."
A ghost of a sardonic smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. "I know about the deliveries. And Silas’ rather... lively establishment downstairs. This isn't a social call. It concerns a matter of some delicacy."
Delicacy. He always spoke in euphemisms. She leaned back against the doorframe, crossing her arms. "Delicacy for you, or for me? Last I heard, you were orchestrating affairs from behind a dozen different gilded doors, not knocking on this one." She deliberately flicked her gaze past him, down the narrow, grimy stairwell. His presence here felt wrong, an intruder from another world into her carefully preserved mundane existence.
His left eyebrow, dark against the pale stubble dusting his jaw, arched infinitesimally. "And what life do you have carved out here, Aurora? Above a pub, smelling of fryer grease?" The question was mild but carried a barb, a familiar echo of the dismissiveness she’d sometimes detected beneath his polished veneer, even when he was ‘helping’ her.
That hit a nerve. "It's mine, Lucien. And it's quiet. Which is more than I can say for your world." She pushed off the doorframe, stepping back, a silent invitation to enter, but laced with the unspoken question of *why *. The three deadbolts remained engaged, a silent fort she wasn’t quite ready to surrender.
He pushed the door open further, his polished boots barely making a sound on the scuffed linoleum. He slipped inside, his presence immediately seeming to alter the air pressure in the small space. He stood there, not moving, his gaze sweeping over the stacks of books piled precariously on the small coffee table, the discarded delivery manifest on the counter, the faint smell of coffee from the French press on the stove. She’d tidied, mostly, but life, her messy, complicated life, was all over the flat.
"Quiet," he repeated, as if tasting the word . He turned back to her, his heterochromatic gaze locking onto her again, pinning her in a way few people could. "The quiet is about to be disturbed, Aurora. That's why I'm here." He paused, letting the implication hang in the air. "Something has surfaced. Something that has drawn attention. Your name, unfortunately, has been mentioned."
Rory blinked. "My name? What has my name got to do with anything? I deliver food. I talk to people. Usually about their orders." She felt a familiar unease prickle her skin, the same feeling that had underscored her life before Eva found her. The feeling of being caught in a current she couldn't control.
"Not just your name," Lucien corrected, his voice dropping to a more serious tone . "Your history. The fragments of it you thought buried. Specifically, connections to a certain incident in Paris three years ago. An incident that has suddenly become very relevant again, and to very dangerous people."
Paris. The name settled like a stone in her gut. Paris was a word she’d tried to excise from her vocabulary, from her memory. It was the last city she’d shared with Lucien, the last tangled, tumultuous week before she broke everything and ran. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, her voice tight . "Paris is... past."
"For you, perhaps," Lucien conceded, his expression unreadable . "But the ripples from that stone have reached the shore. And the tide is coming in, Rory. People are asking questions. Not polite questions. Questions with sharp edges." He stepped closer, his eyes holding hers. "Questions that, if answered by the wrong party, could put you, and others, in considerable danger."
She felt a chill creep up her spine, despite the warmth of the cramped flat. The smell of sandalwood intensified as he moved. "And you know this because?"
"Because I deal with the people asking them," he said simply. He held up a hand, as if to forestall her questions. "I don't have time for pleasantries, nor do I want to dredge up any old arguments. This requires your particular brand of insight. The kind that sees the angles I might miss, the kind that doesn't get blinded by gold or fear." He stepped closer still, only inches separating them now. His gaze dropped to her lips for a fleeting second before returning to her eyes. "Eva wouldn't want you blindsided. And neither do I."
Eva. Hearing Eva’s name, spoken by him, felt like another jolt . Eva, who had plucked her from the wreckage of Cardiff and brought her to London, had also known Lucien. She’d trusted him. And Rory had , too, once.
"Eva?" Rory’s voice was barely a whisper . "Where is Eva?"
Lucien’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. The amber eye seemed to hold a shadow of past pain. "Eva is... occupied. Which is precisely why I am here. She couldn't come herself. She sent me." He tilted his head. "Think, Aurora. That night in Paris. The archive you broke into. The artifact you photographed. Someone has found the original data. And they are none too happy that a piece of it is missing."
Rory’s mind reeled trying to process the information. The chill intensified, a cold dread seeping into her bones. Pictures from Paris, artifacts, dangerous people asking questions… it all felt like a nightmare from which she'd finally woken, only to have it return. "Why come to me, Luc? Why not handle it yourself? Isn't that what you do? Fix delicate situations?"
He moved, a subtle shift in posture that drew her gaze. It wasn't just the man, the fixer, but the half-demon, the creature of arcane knowledge. "Because this is precisely the kind of mess that draws attention of a kind neither you nor I can afford to advertise,” he said, his voice low and resonant . He reached out, his fingers brushing the sleeve of her t-shirt. Not touching her skin, but so close it felt like a caress . "And because, as much as it pains me to admit it, you are the best person to navigate this particular labyrinth without getting lost."
His fingers lingered for a microsecond, a phantom warmth against the fabric. Her breath caught. The shared history, the unspoken attraction, the hurt from their last bitter encounter – it all swirled around them in the cramped space. The memory of his hands, once holding her, now deliberately hovering near, sent a tremor through her. She pulled her arm back slightly , breaking the almost-contact.
"You say Eva sent you," Rory began, her voice regaining some of its usual crispness, though a tremor lay beneath it. "But you’ve never been one to take orders, less so mine. So, what's the real reason, Luc? What’s in it for you?"
He met her direct gaze, his dual-colored eyes unyielding. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the faint, distant sounds of the city outside and the faint sigh of the building settling. His expression was an open invitation to dissect him, but beneath it, she knew, lay layers of complexity she’d once thought she understood. "Perhaps," he finally said, a slow smile spreading across his face, a true smile this time, one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger, dangerously so, "I have a vested interest in ensuring certain unpleasant histories remain buried. And I find your company, when we are not at each other's throats, rather... stimulating."
Her stomach twisted. Stimulating. That was an understatement. The raw attraction that had simmered between them from the start, the one that had led them into a tangled, passionate, and ultimately destructive affair, still pulsed , dormant but potent, beneath the surface of her carefully constructed defenses. He saw it. He always saw it. And she saw the flicker of something in his gaze – a recognition, a regret, an undeniable pull that mirrored her own.
"Stimulating?" she repeated, a breathy challenge. "That's how you phrase an urgent warning about my name being dragged through the dirt and 'dangerous people' sniffing around?"
"A warning is best delivered with a certain... charm ," Lucien replied, his amber eye glinting . He took another step, closing the remaining distance between them, until his chest was mere inches from hers. The heady scent of sandalwood filled her senses. "And perhaps, Aurora, because what we had , however flawed, was never entirely without merit. And I find I miss certain... collaborations."
His gaze dropped again, this time lingering on the small, crescent-shaped scar peeking from the edge of her black t-shirt sleeve cuff, near her left wrist. A gesture so small, so intimate, she couldn’t help but follow his gaze down. Her hand instinctively moved to cover it, a childhood memory that had nothing to do with Paris or their shared past. But he was looking at her face again, his expression unreadable .
"The artifact," he murmured, his voice barely audible, "what did you do with it after you photographed it, Rory?"
The direct question, so blunt after the layers of subtext, jolted her. Her mind went blank for a fraction of a second, then flashed back to a dimly lit room, the whisper of paper, the clink of glass, the desperate need to disappear. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. Where *had * she put it? She’d thought she’d destroyed it. Destroyed everything.
"I," she started, hesitating for the first time in her narrative. The fear was real now. Not just abstract danger, but the immediate, palpable threat he described , and the agonizing uncertainty of her own actions. "I... I thought I got rid of it."
His stare was intense, a silent pressure that demanded more. The air crackled with unspoken words, with the history that lay between them like an invisible, charged barrier. He had the authority, the knowledge, to make her remember everything, and the charm , the dangerous magnetism, to make her want to relive *some * of it.
"Then the question is," Lucien stated, his voice a low hum that vibrated through her very bones, "what exactly did you get rid of, Aurora? And where did it go?"