AI The sharp rap echoes through the narrow hallway, a sound too precise for a drunk stumble or a hurried delivery. Rory sighs, wiping flour from her hands onto a worn apron. Probably Silas, needing help with a keg. Or a late-night customer with a complex order. She unlocks the deadbolt, the tumblers groaning in protest.
She opens the door.
And the world tilts.
Lucien.
He’s leaning against her doorframe, impossibly elegant even in the dim, flickering light of the stairwell above Silas' bar. His platinum blond hair gleams, slicked back as if sculpted by a god just for him. But it’s his eyes—one the startling amber of a trapped firefly, the other a void of pure black—that arrest her. They sweep over her, cataloging the flour dusting her cheeks, the faded band t-shirt, the stark contrast to the tailored charcoal suit that always draped his frame perfectly . He holds his ivory-handled cane loosely , its ornate curve a familiar , unsettling anchor.
"Rory," he says. The word is low, a rumble that seems to vibrate in her bones . It’s been a long time. Too long. Her name, spoken by him, feels like a key turning in a lock she thought rusted shut. She doesn’t breathe. Her hand, still holding the doorknob, tightens. The crescent scar on her left wrist, usually hidden beneath her sleeve, tingles with phantom pressure.
"Lucien. What—"
He pushes off the frame with a fluid motion that belies the lean strength beneath the expensive fabric. He doesn't wait for an invitation, stepping across the threshold into the cramped space of her flat, bringing with him the faint, intoxicating scent of expensive soap and something else, something deeper, darker, the subtle undercurrent of ozone and ancient stone that always clung to him. It’s the scent of the London she tried to forget, the one that lived in alleyways and shadowed corners, the one that had claimed her for a brief, intense, terrifying time.
"You didn’t answer my calls," he states, his voice smooth, unhurried, laced with a faint French accent that makes her stomach clench. His gaze takes in the meager furnishings, the scattered remnants of her life above Silas' bar: a worn armchair, a stack of books precariously balanced on a teetering side table, a half-eaten plate of something that smells vaguely of old noodles. It’s a stark picture next to his immaculate presentation, and he doesn’t miss it. His lips curl, almost imperceptibly.
"I don't have your number. And you don't have mine," Rory counters, finding her voice, though it cracks slightly . She closes the door, the click of the deadbolt a small, decisive sound. She eyes the three deadbolts on Eva’s flat in the codex, realizing her own security measures are far less elaborate, built more from habit than necessity lately. Here, it's just her and Silas downstairs. Silas, her landlord. Not exactly protection, but he knew how to handle trouble .
"Evidently," Lucien murmurs, his gaze finally settling on her face. His heterochromatic eyes, one amber, one black, bore into hers. There’s an unspoken history there, a universe of shared moments and fractured promises. He knows she’s been hiding. He knows she’s been trying to disappear.
"What do you want?" she asks, crossing her arms, a futile gesture of defense. The flour on her apron feels like a badge of her new, carefully constructed ordinariness. It’s a far cry from the Rory who ran with him through the city's underbelly, a far cry from the woman who’d looked into those impossible eyes and felt a dangerous certainty.
"A matter of some urgency," he replies, his tone shifting, the veneer of casual observation replaced by a sharp, professional focus. He straightens his cuffs, a tiny, deliberate movement. "A mutual acquaintance has gone missing. Someone you knew, perhaps."
Rory stiffens. "Missing? Who?" Panic, sharp and cold, pricked at her. The world she’d escaped was always a breath away from collapsing.
"A young woman. Her name was Anya. Worked at the Jade Dragon, near your old route from the Empress."
The Jade Dragon. Rory knew it. A dive, perpetually under new ownership, always on the edge of trouble. Anya. The name stirred a vague recognition, a fleeting scent of cheap perfume and desperation from her delivery days. "I don't know anyone by that name."
"Are you certain?" His gaze intensifies, probing. The air in the small flat seems to thicken, charged with his presence. It’s the same potent energy that had drawn her in, the same danger she’d run from. "She was asking about a certain ledger. A ledger that might have your name on it as a courier. Or, at the very least, a recipient."
Rory’s breath hitched. A ledger. The unspoken things between them always revolved around secrets, around transactions. "I don't do that anymore, Lucien." The words were a plea, a statement of newly built fact. She’d left that life behind when she left Evan, when she fled Cardiff. She was just Rory now. Just a delivery person.
He takes a step closer, and she instinctively braces herself, looking up at his slightly superior height. He smells of secrets and danger, and something else, something that makes her traitorous body remember. "The world has a way of finding anyone, Rory. Especially those who know things. Especially those who owe favors. Or are owed them." He gestures vaguely with the tip of his cane. "This Anya. She was asking questions. Dangerous questions. And before she vanished, she mentioned your name to a rather unsavory client. A client who happens to be very interested in retrieving this ledger. And in silencing anyone associated with it."
He’s telling her she’s in danger. He’s always been the one to deliver bad news, or good news wrapped in dark warnings. But this feels different. He’s here, in her tiny, flour-dusted sanctuary . He’s bringing the storm to her door.
"Why come to me?" Her voice is quiet, laced with a weariness that stretches back years. "Why not the police? Or… someone else?"
Lucien tilts his head, his platinum hair catching the dim light. His heterochromatic eyes are unnervingly calm. "The police would be… unproductive. And as for someone else," he pauses, and the silence stretches, pregnant with implication , "there is no one else who can navigate this particular intersection of the mundane and the… esoteric. No one else with your unique perspective. And," he adds, a flicker of something that might be regret, or perhaps something warmer, crossing his face, "no one else I would trust to look into this. Not truly ."
Trust. The word lands like a stone in a still pond. He didn't trust her. Not really . Not when it mattered. And she hadn't trusted him either, not when she finally understood the depth of his world, the price of his power.
"You don't trust me," Rory states flatly, meeting his gaze. Her bright blue eyes, usually so sharp, feel clouded with a familiar ache.
A small, humorless smile touches Lucien's lips. "Perhaps not completely . But I remember your ingenuity. Your ability to see what others miss. And," his gaze lingers on her face, on the faint flush of her cheeks, the determined set of her jaw, "I remember the one who once made me forget the meaning of the word."
Her chest tightens. The memory floods her: late nights in dimly lit rooms, hushed conversations that led to impossible places, the thrill of danger sharpened by the stark intensity of his presence. The way his hand felt, impossibly warm, against her skin. The vulnerability he’d never shown anyone else, only to her. And then, the abrupt end, the shattering realization that his world, his nature, was a chasm she couldn’t bridge, a risk that was ultimately too great. She had run. He had let her go. Or perhaps he had simply watched her flee, as he watched everything.
"That Rory is gone," she says, her voice rough . The scar on her wrist throbs, a phantom echo of vulnerability.
"Is she?" Lucien steps closer still, his cane tapping softly against the worn floorboards. He stops inches from her, the air crackling with unspoken history. He’s taller, and she has to tilt her head back to meet his unsettling gaze. She can see the flecks of gold in the amber eye, the depthless abyss of the black one. He smells overpowering now, a dizzying mix of danger and something dangerously like desire . "Or is she merely… hibernating? Waiting for the right stimulus?"
He raises a hand, and Rory flinches, expecting a touch, an accusation, a demand. Instead, his long fingers hover in the air between them, tracing the air as if he could sketch her essence. "You smell of yeast and desperation, Rory. Not the perfume of the woman I once knew." His voice is a low, rough caress.
"I work," she snaps, the flour on her apron suddenly feeling like a defense. "I needed a job. This is my life now."
"And your life," he continues, his gaze never leaving her face, "is currently in danger. Anya's disappearance is the first ripple. The ledger she mentioned… it’s a list of names, Rory. Names of people who have trafficked in forbidden things. Some still active, some long gone. But the one who wants it found doesn't care about antiquity. He wants to erase history, and anyone connected to it." He pauses, his eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that feels both predatory and possessive. "And you, my dear Rory, were a significant part of the network that kept that history intact. You moved packages. You carried messages."
The accusation, however veiled, lands. She remembers the coded deliveries, the hushed meetings, the exhilaration mixed with dread. She remembers Lucien’s quiet guidance, his impossible knowledge, his possessive glances. She’d thought she was just helping him, navigating a side hustle. She hadn’t fully grasped the stakes, not until the night she saw the real price of this double life.
"I was young," she whispers, her voice barely audible . "And foolish."
"You were brilliant," he corrects softly . "And you fascinated me. You still do." He closes the remaining distance, and Rory’s breath catches. His fingers, cool and smooth, brush a stray strand of hair from her cheek. The touch is electric , familiar , devastating. It ignites a fire she thought had long been extinguished . Her scabbed knuckles, stained with flour, are a world away from the delicate silk of his suits.
"You ran, Rory," he says, his voice a low murmur against her skin, sending shivers down her spine . "And I let you. Perhaps that was my mistake." His thumb grazes her cheekbone, a feather-light touch that makes her knees weak. Her bright blue eyes, wide and vulnerable, search his face desperately. She sees the amber glint , the black void, and knows she’s falling again.
"Don't," she breathes, her voice trembling . "Don't do this. We can't—"
"Can't we?" he challenges, his gaze holding hers captive. He leans closer, his scent overwhelming her, the familiar danger pulling her in like a tide. "Or is it that you don't want to? That you're afraid of what happens when the delivered package is yourself? When the courier finally admits she wants to be held?"
The words hang in the air between them, charged with a desperate longing, a shared ache. His eyes darken, the heterochromia swirling like twin nebulae, and Rory forgets the flour, forgets the cramped flat, forgets the life she built as carefully as a fortress. She only sees him, the man who was both her ruin and her greatest temptation. The man who is now back, breaking down the very walls she'd spent years constructing, unannounced, and with a danger that binds them together again. The crescent scar on her wrist burns, a reminder of a past she'd tried to outrun, a past that had just kicked down her door.