AI Rory had just settled into the sagging armchair by the window when the knock came. Three sharp raps, deliberate, unhurried. Ptolemy lifted his head from the armrest and fixed her with an expression that clearly said he wasn't impressed either.
She set down her tea. "Eva, if that's you forgetting your keys again—"
The door swung open before she reached it. Lucien Moreau stood in the corridor, one hand raised as if to knock again, the other resting on the head of his cane. The stairwell behind him smelled of cumin and simmering ghee, but he carried something else entirely—sandalwood and smoke, faintly sweet, unmistakably other.
He looked exactly the same. Immaculate. Charcoal suit, white shirt open at the collar, platinum hair slicked back despite the drizzle she'd heard on the windows an hour ago. His mismatched eyes found hers, and for a fraction of a second, something cracked in that polished composure.
"Aurora."
Her name in his accent, low and rounded at the edges. She felt it in her chest and hated herself for it.
"No," she said, and started to close the door.
He caught it with his cane, not roughly, but firmly enough . "Please."
"You don't get to say please. Not after—"
"I'm not asking for me." His jaw tightened . "There's a situation. Yu-Fei's people are looking for you."
The words hit like cold water. She stilled. "Looking for me? I delivered there an hour ago. Everything was fine."
"It was. Things change." He glanced over his shoulder, down the narrow stairwell. "May I come in? I'd rather not discuss this in a hallway that smells like your neighbor's vindaloo."
Despite everything, a sharp laugh escaped her. "That's rich, coming from you. You want to come in? After six months of nothing—not a word, not a message, not even through your usual channels?"
"Six months, three weeks, and four days," he said quietly .
She stared at him. "You counted."
"I always did."
Ptolemy chose that moment to wind between her ankles, purring like a small engine. Traitor. She stepped back, and Lucien took it for the permission it wasn't.
He moved past her into the cramped flat, his gaze sweeping over the towers of books, the scrolls pinned to the walls, the kitchen table buried under research notes and empty takeaway containers. He paused at a photograph tacked above the desk—a younger Rory, laughing, her arm around Eva at some carnival or festival.
"You've been busy," he observed.
"I've been surviving. That's different." She shut the door, engaged the deadbolt—not all three, she wasn't that petty—and leaned against the frame. "Yu-Fei. Start there."
He turned to face her, and she saw it then, the tension coiled beneath his stillness. Lucien was always controlled, always several steps ahead, but something had him rattled. His left hand gripped the cane a little too tightly .
"One of her couriers went missing last night. Found this morning in the Thames, drained."
"Drained?"
"Magically. Completely. Whoever did it took everything—essence, energy, the lot. Yu-Fei thinks it's a message. Someone challenging her territory, her supply lines." He paused. "The courier was using your route last night. Your usual stops."
Rory felt the blood drain from her face. "You think someone's framing me."
"I think you're a target, yes. Whether you're being framed or simply used as a conduit for something larger remains to be seen." He moved closer, and she resisted the urge to step back. "Yu-Fei is not a patient woman, Aurora. She doesn't care about your innocence. She cares about her empire, and right now, her empire has a leak that leads directly to your doorstep."
"So what, you came to warn me? Or deliver me?" She heard the bitterness in her own voice and didn't care. "Which side are you on, Luc? Because last time I checked, you were very clear about where your loyalties lay."
Something flickered in his amber eye. The black one remained unreadable , as always.
"That night wasn't about loyalty." His voice dropped . "You know that."
"I know you chose the mission over us. Over—" She stopped herself. Over me. Over whatever we were becoming.
"I chose survival. Yours, specifically." He closed the remaining distance between them, and she could smell him now, that otherworldly undertone beneath the sandalwood. "The Hollowing was coming for you. Yu-Fei's people were the only ones who could shield you. I made a deal."
"A deal." The word tasted like ash. "You told me everything was fine. You told me to trust you. And then you disappeared into whatever deal you'd made without me, and I—"
She couldn't finish. Six months of silence , of wondering what she'd done wrong, of replaying every moment trying to find the flaw. And now he stood here, smelling the same, looking at her like she was a problem he couldn't solve.
"You would have said no." His composure cracked further, just barely. "You would have tried to fight. And you would have died, Aurora. The Hollowing doesn't negotiate. It consumes. I gave them what they wanted, and in exchange, they left you alone."
"What did they want?"
He went quiet.
"Luc. What did they want?"
"My services. Exclusive. Permanent." He said it like he was discussing the weather, but she saw the way his hand trembled , just slightly , on the cane. "I'm theirs now. Yu-Fei knows this. That's why she sent me."
"Because you're her pet demon on a leash?"
"Because I'm the one person she trusts to find the truth." His lips curved, humorless . "And the one person she thinks might be expendable if I fail."
Ptolemy meowed and butted his head against Lucien's leg. He reached down absently, scratching behind the cat's ears, and something in Rory's chest twisted at the sight. He always did that. Always. When they'd first met, in that cramped basement office in Whitechapel, she'd had a cat back then too. A grey tabby named Minerva. He'd sat with her while she recovered from a job gone wrong, fed her tea, told her terrible jokes in three languages until she'd laughed despite herself.
That felt like another life.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "If you're supposed to be working for Yu-Fei—"
"Because I told you. I always counted." He straightened, meeting her gaze directly. "The night I left, you asked me where we stood. I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was already negotiating my own destruction, and I thought—" He stopped. "I thought it would be easier if you hated me."
"Easier."
"Easier than watching you wait for someone who might never come back. Easier than making you a widow before you were ever a wife." The word hung between them, heavy and unexpected. "I was wrong. I see that now."
Rory's throat tightened. "You don't get to decide that for me. What was easier for you. You don't get to choose what I can handle."
"I know." He stepped back, creating space again, as if he needed it as much as she did. "I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'm asking you to let me help. There's something else—a name that came up in the initial reports. Someone new, operating in Southwark. Someone who's been collecting artifacts, relics from the old wards. If it's connected to the Hollowing—"
"It might not be."
"It's always connected." His voice steadied, slipping back into that cool broker's tone. "I've arranged safe passage to a contact in Greenwich. Neutral ground. If we can get there before Yu-Fei's people—"
"We?"
He looked at her, really looked, and for once she saw past the mask entirely. Tired. Angry at himself. Lonely in a way that mirrored her own.
"I didn't come here just to warn you," he admitted. "I came to ask if you'd work with me. One last job. Clear your name, find out who's really behind this, and then—" He hesitated. "Then you can decide what happens next."
"And if I say no?"
"Then I'll go alone. Yu-Fei will get her answers. And you can disappear again, start over somewhere new." He paused. "But you won't be safe. Not from her, not from whoever's hunting the old wards. Not from the Hollowing, if it's truly back."
She thought about running. She'd done it before—Cardiff to London, one broken situation into another. Running was easy. Staying was the hard part.
"What's in Greenwich?" she asked finally.
"A woman who knew my father. She deals in information the same way I do, but she's older. Deeper. If anyone knows what's been stirring in the old places, it's her."
"Your father." She'd heard stories. Demon lord of Avaros, chaos made flesh, dead before Lucien was old enough to remember him. "You've never talked about him."
"I never had anyone to talk to." He said it simply, without self-pity, and somehow that was worse.
Ptolemy purred louder, circling Lucien's ankles like a furry chaperone. Rory looked at the cat, then at the man, then at the door with its three deadbolts. One locked against the world. Two more locked against everything she'd been running from.
She crossed her arms. "If I do this—if I work with you—things change. You don't get to disappear again. You don't get to make decisions for me. And you explain everything. No more secrets, no more deals made in the dark."
"Aurora—"
"Non-negotiable."
He studied her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he extended his hand. Not for a handshake—for her. An offering.
"Then we have an accord?"
She took it. His fingers were cool against her palm, and when he held on a beat too long, she didn't pull away.
"We have an accord," she said. "Now tell me what we're dealing with."