AI The first deadbolt slid back with a hard metal crack. Then the second. Then the third.
Rory kept one hand on the chain and the other on Ptolemy, who had wound himself round her ankle and started yowling the second the knock came. The flat smelled of dust, old paper, and the garlic drifting up from the curry house below. Rain tapped the window over the sink. She pulled the door open two inches.
Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow strip of light from the landing, one hand on his cane, rain beaded on the shoulders of his charcoal coat as if the fabric had rejected the weather on principle. His pale hair lay slicked back, not a strand out of place. One eye caught the weak bulb in the hall and flashed amber. The other sat black and unreadable in its socket.
Rory stared at him through the gap.
“No.”
His mouth twitched.
“Bonsoir to you as well, Rory.”
She started to shut the door.
The tip of his cane slid into the gap with a sharp knock against the wood.
“Don’t.”
Ptolemy puffed up and hissed at the cane.
Rory looked from the ivory handle to Lucien’s face.
“You had nerve before. This is art.”
“Let me in.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’m bleeding on the landing.”
She took another look. Dark wet had soaked through the side of his coat, near the ribs. Not rain. Blood. Too much of it. Her grip tightened on the door.
“You could bleed in a taxi.”
“I considered it. They objected.”
“You’ve got half the city owing you favours.”
“And I chose your door.”
“That wasn’t the winning line you thought it was.”
A shadow passed through the black eye first, then the amber one. Not weakness. Annoyance held on a short leash.
“Rory.”
He said her name the way he always had, clipped and low, as if he bit off anything softer before it could reach daylight.
She hated that her chest still knew the sound of it.
“What happened?”
“Later.”
“No. Now.”
His fingers whitened around the cane.
“If I explain on the landing, I’ll fall over and ruin the mood.”
She should have left him there. She knew it with clean, bright certainty. Lucien in her doorway meant danger, lies, and a mess that would spread over everything it touched. The last time she had let him into her life, she had spent three weeks untangling one supernatural debt from another, and the thank-you she got was silence . Not a message. Not a note. He had vanished after pressing his mouth to hers in the back room of Silas’ bar like it meant something, then disappearing before dawn with one of his neat little apologies folded into absence.
Ptolemy swiped at the cane.
Lucien glanced down.
“Your beast still hated me.”
“He has instincts.”
Rory shut the door enough to unhook the chain, then opened it wider with a grimace.
“One night. You do not touch anything unless I hand it to you. If this turns into one of your theatrics, I push you back down the stairs.”
He dipped his head, not quite a bow.
“Cruel. But fair.”
He stepped inside with less grace than usual. That alarmed her more than the blood. Lucien moved like the world existed for him to cross it without friction. Tonight his right side stayed rigid, and when he brought the cane forward, a breath escaped him between his teeth.
Rory shut the door fast and drove all three deadbolts home.
“Kitchen chair.”
He gave the flat one sweeping glance. Books stacked on the floor. Eva’s notes pinned over the wall by the tiny table. Half-burnt candles in saucers. A line of drying herbs over the sink. Ptolemy stalking after them with murderous purpose.
“It became worse.”
“It was always worse. Sit down.”
Lucien set his cane against the table and peeled off his gloves one finger at a time. Blood glistened black-red on the leather. He lowered himself into the chair and let his head tip back for half a second. The pulse in his throat kicked hard.
Rory crossed to the narrow counter, yanked open drawers, and laid out what she found: vodka, clean tea towels, a chipped bowl, sewing scissors, Eva’s emergency first-aid tin, and a packet of salt.
Lucien watched her with that old stillness.
“You kept the flat key.”
She shot him a look.
“I forgot to throw it into the Thames.”
“I wondered.”
“No, you didn’t. Take off the coat.”
A smile brushed one corner of his mouth.
“There she is.”
“Don’t flirt while haemorrhaging.”
“I flirt best while haemorrhaging.”
“Take. Off. The coat.”
He unbuttoned it with visible care. Beneath it, his waistcoat had darkened down one side, shirt stuck to his skin. The room shrank around the sight of him wounded. Lucien had always seemed carved out of some harder material than the rest of them . Not safe. Never safe. But solid in his own dangerous way. Seeing blood on him felt like catching a cathedral with a crack in the foundation.
Rory moved closer and held out her hand.
“The waistcoat.”
His gaze dropped to her wrist as she reached. The small crescent scar showed pale against her skin. He looked at it a moment too long.
“You still don’t wear a watch.”
“You still dodge instructions.”
He stripped off the waistcoat. She took the scissors to his shirt without asking, sliding the blades through expensive cotton. Fabric parted. His laugh came rough and brief.
“That shirt cost more than your monthly rent.”
“Good. I enjoyed that.”
The wound ran under his lower ribs, a deep slice, edges angry and strange. The skin round it carried a faint ash-grey tinge .
Rory leaned in.
“That’s not a knife.”
“No.”
“Spellwork?”
“Something adjacent.”
“That means yes, but with ego.”
“It means a blade forged in Avaros.”
She met his eyes.
“Who cut you?”
“An associate.”
“Meaning an enemy.”
“In my profession, the distinction lacked charm .”
Rory soaked a cloth in vodka.
“This is going to hurt.”
“I know.”
She pressed it in.
Lucien’s hand snapped down and clamped around the table edge. The wood creaked. His face stayed composed for a beat, then the amber eye shut. A line cut itself beside his mouth.
“You could scream,” she muttered.
“I’m French, not dramatic.”
She barked out a laugh before she could stop it.
His eye opened again. He looked at her as if he had won something.
“That sound. I missed it.”
Her hand paused. The room seemed to turn toward that sentence. Rain on the window. The low hum of the fridge. Ptolemy thumping his tail against a stack of journals.
Rory set the bloody cloth aside and reached for another.
“You lost the right to miss things.”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly , too cleanly. No charm . No sidestep. She glanced at him. He watched the bowl, not her.
“You don’t get to agree and make it easy.”
“I wasn’t aware ease remained available to us.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk like every sentence came out of a locked drawer.”
He lifted his chin toward the wound.
“You cut open my shirt. You wanted candour. Here it is. I behaved badly.”
“You vanished.”
“Yes.”
“You used me.”
That landed. She saw it in the way his shoulders changed, a small recoil he could not style his way out of.
“I used your help,” he said. “I never used you.”
“The difference looked very academic at four in the morning.”
He looked up then, black eye flat as onyx, amber one lit from somewhere bruised.
“I left because if I stayed, I would have asked for something I had no right to ask.”
Rory folded a clean towel and pressed harder than necessary to the wound.
He hissed.
“Good. Bleed about it.”
“I deserved that.”
“You deserved worse.”
“I know.”
She wanted him to fight. She wanted one polished lie, one elegant excuse, one smug little tilt of the mouth so she could slam the wall back into place and keep him on the far side of it. Instead he sat there half-undressed in Eva’s miserable kitchen, blood on her towels, and accepted every blow she handed him as if he had carried them in his pocket for months.
Her anger lost shape. That made it worse.
“What did you think would happen?” she asked. “You turned up after all this time. You knock on my door wearing half a slaughterhouse, and I’d what? Smile? Put the kettle on?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. Only for a second. It still hit.
“I didn’t expect welcome.”
“Then why come here?”
He was quiet long enough for the silence to grow teeth.
“Because when I was deciding where not to die, this was the only place that felt intolerable to lose.”
Rory stared at him.
“That’s a filthy line.”
“It’s not a line.”
“Everything out of your mouth sounds rehearsed.”
“And yours cuts exactly where intended. We all have gifts.”
She reached for the first-aid tin, found the curved needle Eva kept for stitching enchanted tears in fabric, and held it up.
“This will need closing.”
“I gathered.”
“You need to lie down.”
His brows rose.
“In the bed, Moreau. Don’t make this uglier than it already is.”
“Your concern warmed me.”
“My concern is practical. If you pass out in the chair, I’ll have to drag you.”
“I would pay to see that.”
She set the needle down with a clack.
“Can you stand?”
He did, though his hand found the table first. The movement brought them close, close enough for the smell of rain and iron and the faint citrus scent that clung to him no matter the hour or disaster. Her body remembered him before her mind finished objecting. The memory came sharp: Lucien’s gloved hand sliding round the back of her neck, the press of him in shadow, the way his restraint had felt less like caution and more like strain.
He saw something move across her face. Of course he did. He noticed everything.
“Rory.”
“Don’t.”
“I should have written.”
“Yes.”
“I wrote six times.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“They sat in my desk. None of them survived my standards for honesty.”
She gave a hard little laugh.
“That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Almost certainly.”
“You broker secrets for monsters, but a letter frightened you.”
“A letter to you did.”
The air went thin. She hated that those words found space in her. Hated more that some buried, hungry part of her leaned toward them.
She moved first, not closer but sideways, steering him down the short hall into the bedroom Eva barely used because the front room had long ago surrendered to research. The bed sat under a sloping ceiling, covered in mismatched blankets and open books. Rory swept the books aside with one arm.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“Now lie back.”
Lucien obeyed. That alone unsettled her.
She straddled the practical space beside him, one knee on the mattress as she arranged the towel under his side. His shirt hung open. Heat rose from his skin. Up close she could see the strain beneath his composure, the sheen at his temples, the dark smudge under one eye.
“You looked for me once,” he said.
Her hands stopped on the bandage.
She had. Two nights after he vanished, she had gone to the club in Soho where one of his informants worked and asked questions she had no business asking. She had told no one.
“How do you know that?”
“The informant liked you.”
“Everyone likes me.”
He almost smiled.
“Yes.”
She threaded the needle.
“If you knew, why didn’t you come?”
“Because by then the people watching me had your description.”
The needle slipped in. His body tensed under her hands, but he kept still.
“You could’ve warned me.”
“I had men outside Silas’ for a week.”
Her head snapped up.
“You put watchers on me?”
“I kept hunters off you.”
“You arrogant—”
“I know exactly what it sounded like. Rage later. Stitch now.”
She pulled the thread through. His fingers tightened on the blanket.
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Human?”
“One. Two less so.”
“You don’t get to make decisions about my life.”
“No. I made one about your safety.”
“You keep acting as if those are different things.”
He met her eyes, breath shallow from the pain.
“With you, I’m aware they are not.”
The thread bit through skin again. Rory tied off the final stitch with hands steadier than she felt. She laid gauze over the wound and wrapped the bandage round his torso, leaning in close to pull it snug. Her knuckles brushed his back. His breath hitched. Not from pain this time.
She felt it. So did he.
Neither moved at once.
His face sat inches from hers when she straightened. The amber eye had gone darker, honey burned near black. His mouth parted as if to speak, then closed. For once Lucien looked stripped of language.
Rory tied the bandage knot and sat back on her heels.
“There. You live.”
“For tonight.”
“That wasn’t permission to get poetic.”
“I was thanking you.”
“You’re terrible at it.”
“I know.”
The mattress dipped as Ptolemy leapt up, marched across Lucien’s ankles, and planted himself with the grim authority of a magistrate. Lucien stared down at the cat.
“An unexpected amnesty.”
“He likes warm corpses.”
Rory gathered the bloodied cloths and stood. The movement broke whatever taut thing had pulled between them, though not cleanly. It still hummed in the room.
From the bed, Lucien watched her carry the bowl to the doorway.
“Rory.”
She looked back.
He had pushed himself up on one elbow. His hair had come loose at the temple. The polished edges had worn off him, and what remained looked younger, harsher, more honest.
“I was in your street twice before tonight.”
Her grip tightened on the bowl.
“And?”
“I left both times.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t sure whether seeing you would make restraint possible.”
She held his gaze.
“And tonight?”
A beat passed. Then another.
“Tonight I was less careful with my blood than with my mouth.”
Rory set the bowl down on the floor by the door before it slipped from her hands.
“You need water.”
“Yes.”
“And if you’ve brought trouble here—”
“I know.”
She folded her arms, looked at him sprawled in Eva’s bed with her bandage wrapped round his ribs and her cat on his feet, and felt anger, ache, and want jostle in the same narrow space until she could not tell where one ended and the next began.
“Don’t move,” she said.
His gaze held hers.
“I can manage that.”
She turned and walked back toward the kitchen, every step aware of him behind her, alive in the flat, under her roof, impossible to ignore.