AI Aurora adjusted the wok full of steaming dumplings slung over her shoulder as she fumbled with the third deadbolt. The Golden Empress’s kitchen had left her arms damp and smoky, the spices clinging to her skin like invisible perfume. *One more hour in that flat and I’ll be dreaming of cardamom and fried rice *, she thought, exhaling sharply as the lock clicked free. Brick Lane’s usual hum of taxi horns and South Asian chatter hummed through the floorboards beneath her feet, a welcome contrast to the fragrant chaos of her job. She turned the knob without looking through the peephole—until the creak of hinges was joined by a sound that froze her: a low, insistent knock, two deliberate raps.
She stilled, the dumpling basket tilting precariously. For three weeks, since she’d moved into this pigeon-coop flat above Eva’s business, the deadbolts had acted as more than locks. They were talismans. She’d learned to distrust strangers after Evan. Learned to assume the worst, to stare down every unfamiliar face with the stare of someone who’d already lost everything once. Turning slowly , her shoulder-length black hair swinging, she pressed her cheek to the peephole glass.
Lucien Moreau stood there, his platinum-blond hair catching the amber glow of the streetlamp. His charcoal suit was as perfectly cut as ever, but the cravat looked tugged loose, and one sleeve was stained with something that gleamed darker than ink. He held his ivory-handled cane between his fingers like a man turning a coin in his pocket, a nervous habit she remembered from when they’d first met. The man who’d stood in front of her now was older, his eyes—*that uncanny pair, one burning gold, the other as black as a crypt in winter *hollowed by shadows. He raised the cane slightly , brushing dust from the handle. A gesture of care for an old weapon. A sign that trouble was on his heels.
The scar on her wrist itched beneath her palm, her one habit she couldn’t break, not even with a thousand lock-picking drills or cross-referenced loan agreements on Methodists in the City. She’d forgotten—he hadn’t.
“I know you’re there, _ma chérie_,” he said, voice low but lilting with that same thready warmth that once made her pulse stutter. “Unless you’ve filled the halls with duplicates? I’d say that’s a clever trick, but I’m not impressed.”
“Go away, Luc,” she muttered, stepping back . Her cat Ptolemy—supposedly aloof but secretly a thorough sound-based snoop—had pressed himself against the door, whiskers twitching like he recognized the owner of the scent leaching through the crack: bergamot and something fouler, like burnt iron.
“You always preferred the door’s point of view,” he said. “A shame. It’s rather dull.” The knock came again, slower this time, as if he were speaking to a frightened child. “I need to talk to you. About Avaros.”
Her breath caught. Three months ago, that name had been a whisper in Eva’s scrolls, a realm Lucien had warned her about the night she left Evan. The night her ex had broken her collarbone and she’d broken her privacy. Lucien had said nothing as he stitched up her wounds with magic thread, his hands steady and his eyes too sad. Now, the flat’s scent—ginger, garlic, and turmeric—slid up her throat like dust.
“I know you live here,” he continued, and around her the flat seemed to 呼inter, the walls narrowing. “Eva left a *très sympa * card on my bar. You’ve been hiding underground again. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”
The final lock gave way with a soft *snick *. Aurora opened the door just enough to glare at him. “You thought wrong.”
Lucien’s lips twitched, then pressed into a thin line. “Rory. Will you let me in? There’s no time for riddles.” He tilted his chin down, a half-bow in reverse. “Or are you going to make me collect unpaid rent from Ptolemy?”
The cat meowed indignantly as Aurora opened the door fully, brushing past him with a pointedly noisy jingle of the dumpling steamers. Lucien stepped in without invitation, his cane tapping a slow, precise rhythm against the scuffed parquet floors. He took in the nest of notebooks on the coffee table, the cast-iron cauldron simmering with something green and gingery on the stovetop, the row of teacups arrayed like stopped sentinels . “Eva’s still afraid of clutter, I see,” he remarked, trailing his fingertips over a stack of weathered parchment.
“She’s not here to moan about it,” Aurora snapped. She set the basket down on the kitchen counter and crossed her arms, her posture rigid. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the faint shimmer of her wards—ancient Welsh symbols Eva had tucked into the windowpane—slowly bending toward Lucien’s half-demon presence. They curled like smoke when he reached for the leftmost teacup, his thumb grazing the rim of a photo pinned to the board beside it: another of her old selves, smiling in a Cardiff graduation photo she couldn’t bear to keep.
“The wards are holding,” he said, not looking away from the photo. “Good girl.”
Aurora’s throat tightened. “Don’t. Don’t start with that.” She turned on the burner under the cauldron, the fog of hot garlic water thickening. “If it’s about the primeval land spirits, you’ll have to take it up with whoever traumatized the jasmine seller in Spitalfields. I’m done chasing cryptids for you.”
Lucien’s gaze snapped to hers, and the smile that followed was thin, almost bitter. “Don’t flatter yourself, *chérie *. You fled from them. I came to clean up the mess.” He slid the cane across the counter like a blade on a altar, the ivory handle peeling to show the steel he’d once used to carve a path out of Evan’s clutches. “But that’s not why I’m here. I think someone’s looking for you.”
She laughed, a rough, uneven sound. “You’re here to protect me again? You think I’ve made it this far by *being * protected?” Her hand fell to the knife Eva had gifted her for housewarming, the one she kept close at night. “I’ve got three deadbolts this time, not just one.”
His eyes flickered —gold, never black—to the scar on her wrist, fingers twitching as if he meant to trace it and remembered himself. “I know what you’ve survived. I’m not the enemy.”
“Yet.”
Lucien inhaled sharply , his next breath a dry chuckle. “Alright. You’re right. I won’t argue. Let me prove it instead.” He took a step closer until the sharp cologne of antiseptic and old blood pinned her between the counter and his gaze. “Eva says you work at the Empress. I’ve got your paycheck in my coat. The one from before. You’d have gotten it a week ago, but I haven’t exactly been stable in my line of work.”
The offered envelope trembled slightly when she took it, her thumb brushing the worn velvet of his lapel. She glanced at the number scrawled inside—more than double her usual wage—and then at his face, where one eyebrow was twitching with uncharacteristic frustration.
“You returned the favor from Marseille?” she asked, her voice softer now .
“And then some.” He coughed, the sound sour. “A demon resource I… borrowed a little too aggressively from has grown a taste for revenge. They think you’re next. And unless you want to keep barricading yourself in bookshelves, I’d suggest we talk.”
She turned away, heat prickling at her eyes. “You should have warned me. You came into my life with Avaros and secrets, then left me with Evan to clean up your mess?”
“*J’en suis désolé*,” he murmured, and the French had a jagged edge to it . “That night—”
“My father would’ve said that’s the real problem.” She traced the scar absentmindedly. “You speak six languages and yet you always talk around the truth.”
He was silent for so long she almost looked up. When he spoke, his voice was quieter. “You asked for my silence after the hospital, remember? You said you needed to be human again. I left so you could forget.”
Aurora’s fingers stilled. She’d needed to believe that Lucien was just another moving part of her trauma. But the truth was , when the morphine washed the pain away and his hand had rested on her back, human and inhuman both, she hadn’t wanted to forget him. She wanted him to say it would be okay.
“Stay out of my head, Lucien.”
“I *was * staying out. Until I got a call from a Crossroads Demon about a bounty on your name.” He reached for her wrist, and she didn’t pull away, her pulse hammering a fast rhythm. “You’re not safe in London. They’ll find you by the end of the week.”
Ptolemy pawed at her legs, purring, as if to say *trust this *.
“I don’t need saving. Not from Evan’s ghosts and not from yours.”
Lucien’s hand hovered above the scar, then closed around her own. Warmth flared—Irish blood or Belgian black magic, she never could parse the two—and the skin at his neck was damp. “I’m here now,” he said simply.
The cauldron hissed, and for a heartbeat, she imagined his blood boiling in it. “For what? Three days? A week? Until the next time I’m inconvenient?”
He let go and tugged off his jacket with a dry grunt, revealing a gash along his side. The wound oozed something smoky, the air between them sharp with it. “Until this is over.” He nodded to the ticket on the counter where she stacked deliveries. “I’ll take a hint—where do you want the money?”
Aurora stared at the dark stain blooming through his shirt. He’d always been reckless. Had always watched her with that particular hunger—half intrigue , half something sharper and more devouring. She wondered if demons counted as matchmakers in heaven.
“Bandage your ribs first,” she said, reaching for a drawer of Eva’s borrowed first-aid. “You’ll need two of those sticky bandages. Both of them.”
He watched her work with the calm of someone who’d fought beasts and wanted people, only admitting the ache when she pressed the roll of tape too hard. “You always liked to pretend you didn’t care,” he said as the second bandage settled over his stomach .
Aurora didn’t reply, instead focusing on the glyph inked on the medical tape’s packaging: a Welsh symbol for protection. Lucien noticed, and the corner of his mouth kicked up. “Eva’s secondhand magic?”
“Her secondhand common sense,” Aurora grunted. “You look like you’ve tried to fight a golem with a cheese knife.”
He leaned against the counter, amber eye shrinking. “Fact of the job. Demons don’t negotiate.”
“That’s rich,” she said. “You? Not negotiating?”
A huff. “I negotiate with contracts. This requires more… direct methods.”
She stepped back, tapping the pad of her thumb against her scar. “And what if I say no? You think that Crossroads Demon will just kill someone else?”
“I’ll ask Silas to double your flat’s wards.” His voice was steady, but his left hand trembled in the steam. “I’d rather you spent your time out of hospital beds and in cafes.”
“No exorcism?”
“No.”
She frowned. Lucien never referred to that night, not even when she’d handed him a job lead or a fresh pot of Ashanti tea. Another scar to his story, one she couldn’t see: the night he’d taken a demon’s knife for her.
“You’re wound tight enough to cut glass, Rory.” The candle on her windowsill guttered when he reached out, only resting his fingers at the curve of her jaw. “The only reason I’m not being hunted is because I’ve used up my last favor from Mother. She told me to tell you… don’t be a fool.”
Aurora shivered at his touch. Gods and realms be damned, she missed the man with the blade and the bad puns.
“What if I’m not the fool you think I am?” she asked, tilting her chin up. His breath smelled like cloves and regret .
“Then we’ll be together for once.” He paused, golden gaze flicking to the dumpling basket, then back to her eyes. “Or at least, I can try. You know it’s never just about the dangers, *non *? It’s about the way you laugh when you’re in the middle of solving a problem. The way you hum when you think no one’s listening. Like this, for instance.”
She froze. Lied by a half-demon, a lesson he’d taught her long ago. Now his words were a dirge. “Go on, then. I’ll listen. But if this is another *favor *, I’m walking.”
He stepped back, nodding like she’d handed him a treaty. “Your friend Silas runs a bar under the same roof as this flat?”
“Same building, not literally.”
“Good. I need a contact. There’s a portal opening on the Thames this Saturday. Eidolon marauders. If I trace its sigils—”
“—you’ll have a path to the demon I’m supposedly their target,” Aurora finished, tying the dumpling basket with a harsh zip of string. “And you’ll take me with you. Because I’m a problem to be solved.”
His jaw tightened. “Because *they’re * a problem that’ll kill you if you ignore it. This isn’t an invitation.”
“So what is it?”
For the first time in the tight, steam-wreathed flat, Lucien looked exactly like someone who had run out of answers. “It’s remembering why I never gave up trying to make you stay when I left.”
Her throat closed. The cane rested against the wall now, looking almost diminutive, the blade never drawn.
Ptolemy yawned, stretched onto the table of books, and knocked loose a photo of her at twenty, grinning beside a lanky Salvatore Eugene—*Luc’s late mother’s name *—and insisting they were just friends.
Aurora’s voice was low, a purr of the same kind she used on uncooperative clients at the Empress. “Stay for tea. Tell me if you’re looking for a partner this time.”
His smile was real, and wide, and made for her. “I’ll stay. But only *si * I can use your desk to chart troop movements.”
Their fingers brushed on the counter’s edge. Neither let go until the cauldron let out a desperate *whistle *.
“Garlic won’t wait,” she said, and the lie tasted honest on her tongue .