AI The door creaked open just wide enough to admit a sliver of rain-blurred East London night, the brass chain clinking against its steel mount, when Aurora Carter’s gaze locked on the man standing on the brick step. She’d just retracted one of the three heavy deadbolts on Eva’s front door, assuming the knock was her friend stumbling home early from her Hackney gallery view, but the face that stared back was not her friend’s.
Platinum blond hair slicked back from a forehead damp with rain, tailored charcoal suit glistening with raindrops, ivory-handled cane tapping a steady, impatient rhythm against the pavement. One eye amber, one eye black—heterochromatic, the kind that made strangers stare and locals whisper about the man who ran the shadowed clubs and deals just off Brick Lane. Her breath caught in her throat.
Before she could fully shut the door, he slipped his ivory-handled cane into the crack, blocking it closed. The thin blade hidden inside the cane glinted faintly in the streetlight, but he didn’t move it like he meant to hurt her—just to keep her from shutting him out. She slammed the door shut so hard the plaster rattled, yanking the chain tight until it dug into her palm, and fumbling to push all three deadbolts home, pressing her back against the oak wood. A soft meow cut through the silence : Ptolemy, the tabby who’d claimed the stack of medieval scrolls on the windowsill as his bed, padded over to rub against her ankle.
“Rory, please.” His voice drifted through the crack between the door and the frame, low and strained, nothing like the smooth, sharp baritone she remembered from the night they’d sat on the fire escape above Silas’ bar, eating cold spring rolls and talking until dawn. “I don’t want to fight. I just need five minutes. That’s all. I’ll go after that, I swear.”
Her fingers tightened around the chain. She’d spent six months erasing him from her life—blocking his number, deleting the photos she’d saved of that fire escape night, telling herself that the man who’d vanished without a text wasn’t worth the ache that still twisted in her chest when she thought of him. But now he was here, outside her safe space, the one place she’d managed to build back some normalcy after fleeing Evan, her abusive ex. She was still wearing her Golden Empress apron, the red fabric stained with a smudge of mango chutney, her shoulder-length black hair pulled into a messy bun, bright blue eyes narrowed to slits. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist peeked out from the cuff of her ratty gray sweatshirt, a memento from the childhood accident that had left her with a white, curved line on her skin, and the skin around it prickled where she’d grabbed a scalding delivery bag ten minutes earlier.
She unlatched the chain, yanking the door open fully so he could see the glare on her face. “Five minutes,” she snapped, stepping aside just enough to let him in, but not so much that he could overwhelm the cramped flat. “And if you so much as look at one of Eva’s scrolls wrong, I’ll call the police. And don’t think your little demon tricks will stop me—she’s got wards all over this place. Installed them after a bunch of drunk students tried to break in last month, said they work on supernatural junk too.”
Lucien stepped over the threshold, his cane tapping softly on the scuffed wooden floorboards. The flat hit him instantly, the same way it hit her every time she walked in: stacks of leather-bound books teetering on every available surface, scrolls tied with twine spilling off the coffee table, a half-eaten plate of scones sitting next to a chipped teapot on the windowsill. Ptolemy sauntered over and rubbed against his leg, and Lucien’s face softened, just a little, the sharp edge of his heterochromatic gaze melting into something warm.
“Well, hello, little troublemaker,” he murmured, bending down to scratch the tabby’s chin. Ptolemy purred, curling around his shoe. Rory’s resolve crumbled a little. She’d forgotten how gentle he was with animals, how he’d spent an hour feeding stray cats outside the Shoreditch club the first time they’d met.
She turned away, heading for the rickety sofa by the window, and flopped down, pulling her knees to her chest. The scent of tikka masala drifted up from the curry shop below, the same familiar smell that had wrapped Eva’s flat in warmth for the three months she’d crashed here. “Speak,” she said, her voice quieter now, but still sharp. “And make it quick. I’ve got a delivery run at 10, and I need to rest my feet first.”
Lucien straightened up, brushing rain off his suit jacket, his cane tapping once on the floor. He didn’t move toward her, didn’t try to close the distance between them, which was a small mercy. “I came back for Eva first,” he said, his voice low . “I need information about a shipment of stolen Avaros artifacts that’s supposed to hit Brick Lane next week. She’s the best folklore researcher in London—everyone in the underworld says so. But when I tracked her here, she was at the gallery, so I waited. And then… I saw that the note on the door said you were crashing here.”
He paused, running a hand through his damp platinum hair, and Rory noticed that there were faint circles under his eyes, dark and tired, like he hadn’t slept in days. “I didn’t come here just for the information, Rory. I came here for you. I couldn’t not see you. I’ve been thinking about you every single day since I left.”
The ache in her chest flared again. Six months ago, she’d thought she’d found something real—someone who didn’t see her as a victim of Evan’s abuse, someone who listened to her ramble about her pre-law classes at Cardiff, someone who made her feel like she was worth something. And then he’d just vanished. No texts, no calls, no explanation. She’d spent weeks wondering if she’d done something wrong, if she wasn’t interesting enough, if she’d scared him off by talking too much about her normal, boring life.
“Save it,” she said, her voice cracking . “You left. Without a single word. You didn’t even have the decency to send a text saying ‘I’m gone, don’t wait for me.’”
Lucien’s face fell, and he looked down at Ptolemy, who was still curled around his shoe. “I know. I know that’s what it looked like. But it wasn’t. I didn’t have a choice. My father—my demon father—he was dying. The elders of Avaros were trying to take over his realm, and he needed me there to stop them. I had to go. I had no time to pack, no time to say goodbye. I tried to call you three times, but the transdimensional lines from Avaros to Earth are spotty at best. The first two calls didn’t go through, and the third one went to voicemail, and I left a message, but I don’t know if you ever got it.”
Rory froze. She’d checked her voicemail every day for the first month after he left, but she’d never heard a message from him. She’d deleted all her old voicemails after the first week, when she’d stopped expecting him to call, including the one from Evan, the one where he’d mumbled an apology before hanging up. “You left a voicemail?”
He nodded, his amber eye glistening a little in the lamplight. “I said I was sorry, that I had to go, that I’d come back as soon as I could. I never heard back from you, so I assumed you’d blocked my number. I didn’t know you’d deleted all your messages.”
She stared at him, her mind racing . The hurt was still there, sharp and bright, but there was also a flicker of something else, something like relief . He hadn’t left because he didn’t care. He’d left because he had to. Because he loved her, in his own way, enough to keep her safe.
“I—” she started, then stopped, not knowing what to say. Ptolemy jumped onto her lap, curling up and purring loudly, and she could feel the tension in her shoulders melting away. She looked up at him, at his mismatched eyes, at the faint smile tugging at his lips, and she remembered the night they’d sat on the fire escape, the night he’d held her after she’d told him about Evan, the night he’d kissed her for the first time, his lips soft and warm against hers.
“You can’t just show up here and expect me to forgive you,” she said, her voice softer now, less sharp . “I’ve been hurting for six months, Lucien. I thought you’d just forgotten about me.”
He sat down next to her on the sofa, careful not to knock her or Ptolemy, and she could smell his cologne, sandalwood and rain, the same scent that had haunted her dreams for months. “I know. I don’t expect you to forgive me overnight. I just… I needed you to know the truth. I needed to say I’m sorry. And if you never want to see me again, I’ll go. I won’t bother you ever again. But I had to try. I couldn’t live with myself if I never told you why I left.”
She looked down at Ptolemy, who was snoozing on her lap, then back at Lucien. His cane was sitting on the floor next to his chair, and she could see the faint outline of the blade hidden inside it, the same detail that had made her nervous the first time they met. He wasn’t here to hurt her. He was here to apologize.
“Eva’s still working on the medieval Avaros trade routes, right?” he said, nodding at a stack of scrolls tied with twine on the coffee table. “I remember she was rambling about that the last time I was here. Said she’d found a ledger that proved the demons traded iron tools for human wool back in the 1400s.”
Rory laughed, a soft, surprised sound. She’d forgotten that he listened to Eva’s ramblings, that he’d sat through an hour of folklore talk just to spend time with her that night. “Yeah. She’s been working on that for months. Says it’ll rewrite the history books.”
He smiled, a real smile, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she felt her heart skip a beat. “I told her she was doing good work. That book would be a bestseller if she ever published it.”
The rain tapped against the window, and the smell of tikka masala drifted up from the curry shop below, and Ptolemy purred loudly in her lap, and for the first time in six months, Aurora Carter felt like she was home . She looked at Lucien, at the man who’d broken her heart and then healed it in the span of a single conversation, and she knew that she couldn’t walk away from him again. Not now, not after everything.
“Five minutes is up,” she said, but there was no bite in her voice. She tilted her head up to meet his gaze, five and a half inches shorter than him, a fact she’d always found slightly infuriating but secretly endearing.
“I know,” he said, and this time, when he kissed her, it was soft and slow, like he was afraid she’d pull away. Like he knew that this time, he wasn’t going to let her go.
“Sure,” she said, patting his arm once he pulled back. “But you owe me a full explanation. All of it. No more secrets.”
“All of it,” he said, his thumb brushing over the crescent scar on her wrist, sending a shiver down her spine . “I’ve got weeks of stories. About Avaros, about my father, about every minute I spent wishing I was here with you instead of stuck in those stuffy demon courts.”
The rain kept tapping against the window, and the curry shop below hummed with late-night customers, and Ptolemy curled tighter in her lap, and for a moment, everything was perfect .