Run: 2026-03-15-01KKS31QH8Z3TRQW5JSS8XS0DK

The deadbolts clicked in sequence—three sharp sounds against the quiet of the flat. Rory pulled the door open and stopped. Lucien stood in the hallway, one hand resting on the handle of his ivory cane, the other holding a paper bag from somewhere that smelled of fresh bread. His charcoal suit was immaculate despite the July heat pressing in through the open stairwell window behind him. The amber eye caught the light first. The black one swallowed it. "You're not Eva." "No." He didn't move from the threshold. "She's not expecting me either." "Brilliant. So you're just turning up at people's doors uninvited now." "I did it with your door for six months. You never complained." Rory's grip tightened on the door frame. Ptolemy wound between her ankles, sniffed in the direction of the hallway, then stalked off toward the kitchen with his tail rigid. "That was different." "Was it?" She didn't answer. The curry house downstairs had closed an hour ago, and the smell of spices had faded to something faint and sweet beneath the summer humidity. The landing felt smaller with him standing in it. "How did you get past the security door?" Lucien tilted his head. A strand of platinum hair slipped free of its careful arrangement. "The same way I do most things. Does it matter?" "It matters when my friend's flat has a broken lock because some Frenchman decided to—" "I didn't break anything. The mechanism was already faulty. I mentioned it to Eva in March." "And she didn't fix it." "You know Eva." Rory knew Eva. Eva had three deadbolts on her front door and a handwritten ward tucked into the frame and still left her windows cracked during heatwaves because she forgot. Eva collected problems the way she collected research notes—stacked them in piles and lost track of which ones needed addressing. "Come in. Before Mrs. Haseem sees you standing there and starts asking questions about another strange man visiting." Lucien stepped past her into the flat. His shoulder brushed hers—fabric against the thin cotton of Rory's t-shirt—and she moved back to give him space. The sitting room was barely large enough for the sofa and the overflowing bookshelf Eva had installed instead of a television. Scrolls spilled from a basket beside the armchair. Three mugs sat on the coffee table, two of them growing something that might have been mould. Lucien surveyed the chaos without comment. He set the paper bag on the only clear corner of the table, next to a stack of Celtic mythology texts. "Where is Eva?" "Conference. Birmingham. Three days." "Ah." He turned, and the full weight of his attention settled on Rory. "So you're housesitting." "Cat-sitting. Ptolemy doesn't like being alone." "The cat likes you more than he likes most people." "The cat likes anyone who feeds him." Lucien's mouth curved—not quite a smile, but the shape of one. The scar on his jaw caught the lamplight. Three months had done nothing to erase the details she'd tried to forget. The way he stood too still. The way his eyes tracked movement like something other than human. The way he smelled, which was stupid to notice, which was exactly the sort of thing she'd told herself not to think about anymore. "You're thinner." "Nice to see you too, Lucien." "It's not a criticism." "It's not your business either." He leaned the cane against the arm of the sofa. The ivory handle gleamed. Rory wondered if he'd ever actually needed it or if it had always been what it was—a sheath for something sharp and thin that he could draw faster than most people could blink. "Eva told you I was here." "No." "Then how—" "You deliver for Yu-Fei on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Brick Lane is on your route. You've been here four times this week." He said it without inflection, the same tone he used when pricing information for clients. "I waited until I saw you enter." Rory stared at him. The fan in the window rattled, pushing warm air through the room. "That's not creepy at all." "I needed to speak with you." "You could have called." "You changed your number." "Because I didn't want to speak with you." Lucien absorbed this. His expression didn't shift, but something in the set of his shoulders changed—a fraction of tension released, or maybe gathered. "Fair enough." "Is that all you came to say?" "No." He glanced at the sofa, then back at her. "May I sit?" Rory crossed her arms. The scar on her left wrist itched beneath the cuff of her sleeve—a nervous habit she'd never been able to break. "It's Eva's sofa." "She won't mind." "You don't know that." "I know Eva lets me sleep on that sofa when I'm too tired to cross the city after our meetings. She's made tea for me in that kitchen. She asked after my mother last week." Lucien paused. "You didn't know we still spoke." Something twisted in Rory's chest. She uncovered it, examined it, pushed it away. "No. I didn't." "Rory—" "Don't." The word came out harder than she intended. She softened, but only slightly. "You don't get to stand in my friend's flat and use my name like that. Not after what happened." "What happened was a misunderstanding." "You kissed me and then disappeared for two weeks." "I was in Avaros." "You didn't tell me that. You didn't tell me anything. I found out from Silas three days after you got back, and by then you were already—" She stopped. Started again. "You were already working another job. Something dangerous. Something you didn't think to mention." "The work is always dangerous." "That's not the point." "Then tell me the point." Rory dropped her arms. They fell to her sides, useless. "The point is you made a choice. You decided what I could and couldn't know, and you didn't ask me what I wanted. You just—acted. Like I was another client. Another piece of information to manage." Lucien moved. Not toward her—toward the window, where he stood with his back to the room and looked out at the Brick Lane lights spilling up through the evening haze. His reflection was ghostly in the glass, superimposed over the rooftops. "I have never treated you like a client." "Could have fooled me." "You want to know why I didn't tell you about Avaros." It wasn't a question. "You want to know why I left without explanation and came back the same way." "I want to know why you kissed me in the first place." He turned. The amber eye burned. The black one held something older, something that didn't reflect light the same way. "Because I wanted to. Because I'd wanted to for months. Because you were standing in my kitchen at two in the morning, arguing with me about demon contracts, and I couldn't think of a single reason not to." Rory's throat tightened. "And then you left." "And then I left." "Without a word." "There are things in Avaros that follow you back if you speak of them beforehand. My father's people. I couldn't risk—" "You could have told me after." "Yes." Lucien's voice dropped. "I could have." The fan rattled. Ptolemy yowled from the kitchen, demanding his dinner. Neither of them moved. "That's it? Yes, you could have?" "What do you want me to say, Rory? That I was wrong? That I handled it badly? I know I handled it badly. I've known since the night I came back and you wouldn't open your door." "You didn't knock." "I stood outside for twenty minutes. I heard you inside." Her pulse jumped. She remembered that night—remembered sitting on the floor of her flat above Silas' bar with her back against the door, listening to the silence in the hallway and telling herself it wasn't him, telling herself she was being paranoid, telling herself she didn't care. "You should have knocked." "I should have done a lot of things." The admission hung between them. Lucien's hands hung at his sides, loose, empty. No cane. No pretence. Just him, standing in Eva's cluttered sitting room with the smell of old curry and new bread and London summer pressing in from all sides. Rory looked at the paper bag he'd left on the table. "What's in the bag?" "Almond croissants. From the place on Old Compton Street." "I don't eat almond croissants." "Eva does. It's a peace offering. For the broken security door." "You're ridiculous." "I've been called worse." She should ask him to leave. She should point to the door and tell him that whatever this was—whatever he thought he was doing—she wasn't interested in reopening it. Three months of silence wasn't something you could undo with pastries and half-apologies. Three months of lying awake, replaying a kiss that lasted maybe ten seconds, wasn't something he could fix by showing up and looking at her with those mismatched eyes. But she didn't ask him to leave. "Eva has coffee in the cupboard above the stove. The good stuff, not the instant." Lucien's expression shifted again—that almost-smile, this time reaching further. "You're staying." "I didn't say that." "You're offering me coffee." "I'm telling you where the coffee is. What you do with that information is your choice." He moved toward the kitchen. Paused at the doorway, close enough that she could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the ones she'd noticed before and never mentioned. "Rory." "What?" "I'm glad you're here. Even if you wish I wasn't." She didn't respond. He disappeared into the kitchen, and a moment later she heard the cupboard open, the clink of the coffee jar, the hiss of the kettle. Ptolemy meowed again—louder this time, more insistent. Rory pressed her back against the door. The deadbolts were still undone. She should lock them. She should lock them and walk into the kitchen and tell Lucien Moreau that whatever had existed between them was finished, over, done. She pushed off the door and followed the smell of coffee into the other room.