AI The chain rattled fiercely against the doorframe as Rory yanked it open, an impatient sigh already forming on her lips. She’d been sketching out delivery routes on Eva’s overflowing coffee table— a task made infinitely harder by the leaning tower of pre-Roman pottery excavation reports that threatened to avalanche onto the rug. Maybe it was Eva herself, forgetting her own keys for the third time this week. Or perhaps a customer had finally tracked down the restaurant via the faint scent of spice that always clung to the building’s brickwork.
The sigh died, strangled in her throat.
Standing on the worn welcome mat, bathed in the dim spill of light from the hallway beyond Eva’s flat, was Lucien Moreau.
He was exactly as she remembered, and infuriatingly, not at all. His platinum blond hair was slicked back, accentuating the sharp angles of his face. Her eyes, accustomed to the muted, dusty chaos of Eva’s research haven, felt assaulted by the polished charcoal of his impeccably tailored suit. It looked utterly alien here, amidst the precarious stacks of books and scrolls, the scent of aged paper and forgotten ink.
He hadn’t moved. He just stood there, a statue carved from expensive fabric and quiet power, his gaze—a disconcerting swirl of amber and obsidian—fixed on her. For a moment, time fractured . Rory saw the man who had swept into her life like a tidal wave, leaving wreckage and wonder in his wake. The man who had spoken four languages and navigated London’s supernatural underworld with a velvet glove and an iron will. The man who had left her standing on a platform of unanswered questions, the ghost of his touch still lingering on her skin.
Her hand, still gripping the doorknob, felt suddenly cold. The small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, usually just a faint white line, seemed to burn under the sudden resurgence of old anxieties. He was a ghost. She’d sworn she was done with ghosts.
"Lucien?" Her voice was a breath, thin and reedy. It didn't sound like hers.
A slow, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips, crinkling the corner of his amber eye. "Aurora," he replied, his voice a low current, familiar and dangerous. He took a single, measured step forward, his ivory-handled cane tapping softly against the floorboards. The tap seemed to echo the frantic beat of her own heart.
She instinctively tightened her grip on the knob, as if it were an anchor. "What are you doing here?" The question was sharper this time, laced with a defensiveness she hadn’t intended. She hadn't seen him in… how long? Months? A year? The city had swallowed them both, and she had worked hard to build a fragile life, brick by brick, above Silas’s bar. Eva's flat was a temporary sanctuary , a place to gather her thoughts, not a stage for reappearances of this magnitude.
“I had business in the vicinity,” Lucien said, his platinum hair catching a sliver of light . His gaze swept over her, taking in the smudge of ink on her cheek, the worn practicality of her clothes – a far cry from the polished woman he’d known in other contexts. It was an appraisal, a silent language she’d once understood perfectly . Now, it felt like an intrusion. "Saw the light on. Thought I might find you here, perhaps contemplating the merits of ancient cartography."
Rory blinked. Eva’s research. He’d always had a knack for observing details, for guessing the direction of her thoughts, or Eva’s, with unnerving accuracy. “Eva’s place,” she clarified, her voice still tight. “I’m helping her sort through some things. She’s away at a conference.” *And you know this how?* her mind screamed, but she held the question back. There were too many questions, a lifetime’s worth, stretching between them like a chasm.
He nodded, his heterochromatic eyes—one the colour of old gold, the other a stark , bottomless black—tracing the lines of the doorway, the worn wood, the peeling paint suggestive of neglect she usually tried to ignore. "Indeed. I recall she has a certain… penchant for paper. And ancient wisdom." He paused, letting the silence stretch, thick with unspoken history. "More deadbolts than last time, I see. A cautious woman."
"A woman who values her privacy," Rory retorted, her hand tightening further on the knob . She could feel the heat radiating off him , a subtle, almost imperceptible warmth that belied the cool exterior. It was the same aura he’d always carried, a blend of danger and allure that had first drawn her in.
He gave another of those slow smiles, the kind that didn't quite reach his eyes, or perhaps, his eyes simply held too many secrets to allow for overt warmth . "And yet, you opened the door."
A flush crept up her neck. He was right. Every rational, self-preserving instinct screamed at her to slam it shut, deny she was even there, bury herself back in the organised chaos of Eva’s research and the predictable rhythm of her deliveries for the Golden Empress. But it was Lucien. And the years had done nothing to erase the visceral, gut-level reaction he still evoked. The knot in her stomach tightened, morphing from fear into something far more complex , something perilously close to anticipation .
"Eva might," Rory managed, forcing herself to meet his gaze. "She's… hospitable. Even to unexpected guests." The lie felt flimsy. Eva, for all her academic pursuits, was fiercely protective.
Lucien’s gaze didn't waver. "And you, Aurora? Are you hospitable?"
The question hung in the air , loaded with context she couldn't, or wouldn't, address. Hospitable? She’d slammed doors in people's faces, figuratively and literally. She’d learned to be anything but. But him ? He was a storm she had weathered, a force she had barely survived. The memory of his whispered promises, the heat of his touch, warred with the cold sting of his departure.
"I'm not Eva," she said, the edge returning to her voice . "And I don't know what you want. If this is about… about information, you know my situation." She didn't work for him anymore, not in the way she used to. She was a delivery person by day, a survivor by night. Her life was intentionally small, deliberately ordinary.
"Information is always a commodity," he conceded smoothly, his eyes flicking past her, into the dimly lit warren of the flat. He gestured subtly with his chin, an infinitesimal movement that nevertheless conveyed volumes. "But this feels… like an opportune moment for a more personal transaction."
Rory's breath hitched. His proximity, even across the threshold, felt as palpable as a physical touch. She remembered the way he leaned in, the scent of sandalwood and something sharp, something intrinsically *him *, that clung to his expensive suits. She remembered the electric current that arced between them when their hands brushed, the way his heterochromatic gaze could make her forget her own name, her own resolve .
"I don't think I want to conduct any transactions with you, Lucien," she stated, trying to inject a finality into her words, a definitive closing of that particular chapter. But her voice betrayed her, a fraction too soft, a breath too shaky.
He took another step forward, his presence pushing against the edges of her personal space. He was taller than her, and the slight angle of his head made her feel even smaller, and yet, inexplicably, more seen. "Are you certain?" he murmured. "Because I find myself with a sudden, powerful urge to understand what keeps a woman like you, a woman of such… considerable intellect and resilience, hiding away in a bookshop’s basement and a friend’s cluttered sanctuary , when the world outside—the *real * world—is waiting."
"I'm not hiding," she spat, the words a defence mechanism, a reflex . The scar on her wrist throbbed again, a phantom itch. "I'm living. Quietly. The way I want to."
"Quietly," he echoed , his gaze finally settling on her face, on the lingering ink smudge she had forgotten to wipe away. His thumb twitched, an almost invisible movement, as if he longed to reach out and brush it away, and the thought sent a jolt through her. "You were never one for quiet, Aurora. Not when the right kind of storm was brewing." He let the implication hang, heavy and charged , a reminder of what had once been, what still might be. He referenced the "real world" and her resilience, hinting he saw through her current facade .
He paused, his eyes raking over her again, this time with a different intent, a softer, more searching curiosity tinged with something she recognized with a lurch of her heart: regret. "And I find myself wondering," he continued, his voice dropping to a near whisper , "if the storm ever truly passed, or if it simply learned to lie dormant within you."
The intensity of his gaze made her skin prickle. He saw her. Too much. He saw the carefully constructed walls she’d built, the quiet life she’d painstakingly assembled after the chaos Evan had left her in, and now, his reappearance threatened to shatter it all. He saw the woman who could tackle academic texts for Eva and navigate the grimy alleys behind the Golden Empress with equal aplomb. He saw Aurora Carter, Malphora, Laila – the names had shifted, the identities blurred, but he seemed to remember the core of her. She looked at his heterochromatic eyes, swirling with unspoken promises and ancient pain, the amber glinting with warmth , the black depths hinting at a darkness she had once explored too closely.
He tilted his head, his ivory-handled cane tapping a soft, insistent rhythm against the ancient floor. Chloe, Eva's tabby cat, darted out from behind a teetering stack of leather-bound tomes, its tail flicking warily at the stranger. It gave a tentative meow, looking to Rory for reassurance.
"Perhaps," Rory said, her voice barely audible, a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of control, "you should come inside. If you're going to stand there blocking the hallway all night." It was a surrender, a concession, a reckless, dangerous invitation. The rational part of her screamed, *No! Get out!* But the other part, the part that had always been drawn to the edge of the storm, whispered, *He's here. You owe yourself an explanation.*
Lucien's answering smile was immediate, sudden, and devastatingly genuine. It reached his eyes this time, the gold flares dancing . He stepped across the threshold, and the cramped space of Eva’s flat seemed to shrink further, charged by his presence. The scent of sandalwood and whatever dark magic he carried with him filled the air, pushing out the familiar notes of old paper and curry. He paused, his gaze sweeping over Rory once more, a silent question in his eyes, a question she knew she couldn’t answer, not yet. She had let him in, and now, the past, with all its attendant dangers and desires, was on her doorstep.