Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ09JS9S01BCBB0KVYK8S93C

The third deadbolt stuck, as it always did, and Rory cursed under her breath as she jimmied it loose. Ptolemy wound between her ankles, meowing his displeasure at the delay in his dinner. She nudged the tabby aside with her knee and shouldered the door open, bag of takeaway from the Golden Empress cutting into her palm. "You'd think after four months I'd remember that one sticks to the left—" She looked up. Lucien Moreau stood in her hallway. He leaned against the wall opposite her door like he belonged there, like he'd been carved from the same grimy Brick Lane plaster. Charcoal suit immaculate despite the August humidity. Platinum hair slicked back severe and gleaming. His ivory-handled cane hung from his right wrist by its loop, and his hands were clasped in front of him with the patience of a man who'd waited longer than anyone should. One amber eye caught the dim hallway light. One black eye swallowed it whole. "Rory." Her name in his mouth was exactly as she remembered—low, vowels shaped by Marseille, consonants clipped precise. It landed somewhere beneath her sternum and twisted. She didn't move. Didn't step back into the flat or forward into the hall. The paper bag crinkled in her grip as her fingers tightened. Three weeks. Three weeks since she'd walked out of his office in Shoreditch without looking back. Three weeks since she'd told him she was done—done with his secrets, done with being useful, done with whatever this thing between them was that could never be named. "You shouldn't be here." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I'm aware." He straightened from the wall, and the movement brought him closer. Not too close—Lucien never made that mistake, never crowded her, never gave her something tangible to push against. It was the careful distance of a man who knew exactly how much space to leave for plausible deniability. "I wouldn't have come if it wasn't important." "It's always important with you." She should shut the door. She should turn around, lock all three deadbolts, and let Ptolemy yowl at the wood until Lucien took the hint and disappeared back into whatever shadow he'd crawled out of. That's what smart Rory would do. Careful Rory. The Rory who'd survived Evan and London and her own catastrophic judgment. "Last time it was important, I ended up with a split lip and a debt to a night hag." His jaw tightened. A small tell, barely perceptible, but she'd learned to read the micro-movements of his face the way scholars read dead languages—obsessively, desperately, against her own will. "I recall." His voice had gone quieter. "I also recall that I told you not to come. That you insisted." "So now it's my fault." "I didn't say that." "You implied it." Ptolemy shot between her legs and into the flat, abandoning her to face Lucien alone. Traitor. Rory exhaled through her nose. The takeaway bag was growing damp against her palm, condensation from the containers inside. Such an ordinary thing to be holding while the ground shifted beneath her. "Say what you came to say." Lucien's gaze dropped—to her mouth, she realized with a jolt, then lower, to the crescent scar visible above her wrist where her sleeve had ridden up. His expression didn't change, but something flickered in the amber eye. Something that looked uncomfortably like hunger. "The Exchange has a contract on you." The words landed like ice water. "What?" "Three days ago. I only learned of it this morning." He reached inside his jacket, and she tensed before remembering that Lucien didn't carry conventional weapons—only the blade hidden in his cane. He produced a creased photograph, which he held out to her between two fingers. "They've distributed this to collectors in four boroughs." She took it with numb fingers. Her own face stared back at her, grainy and off-center, captured somewhere she didn't recognize. Beneath the image, a number. A price. "They think you witnessed the killing at the warehouse in Deptford," Lucien said. "Did you?" "I don't know what you're talking about." "Rory." "I don't." She met his mismatched eyes. "I haven't been south of the river in weeks. I've been working deliveries, reading Eva's books, trying to—" She stopped herself before the word forget could slip out. "I don't know anything about a warehouse." Something shifted in his expression. The faintest softening around his mouth, gone almost before she registered it. "Then someone is using you as a scapegoat. Or bait." He paused. "For me." The corridor felt smaller suddenly. The curry house below had started its evening service, and the smell of garam masala drifted up through the floorboards, cloying and thick. "Why would I be bait for you?" "You know why." She did. She'd known since the night he'd pulled her out of that warehouse in Whitechapel, his hand warm around her wrist, his breath ragged in her ear. Known since the morning after, when she'd found him in her kitchen reading her tea leaves without permission, and she'd let him. Known every time he'd shown up at her delivery route with information she hadn't asked for and couldn't afford to refuse. Lucien Moreau had a reputation. Fixer. Broker. The man who knew things about things. But somewhere in the tangle of favors and debts and late-night conversations that went on too long, he'd become something else. Something that made her chest ache when she thought about it too hard. "I told you I was done." Her voice had lost its edge. She hated that. Hated how he could sand her down just by standing there. "I meant it." "I know you did." He stepped forward. Just one step, but it halved the distance between them and she could smell him now—sandalwood and something darker beneath, something that wasn't quite human. "I'm not here to change your mind about that." "Then what?" He held her gaze. The amber eye was bright, almost molten in the dim light. The black eye revealed nothing. "I'm here to make sure you survive long enough to hate me properly." A sound escaped her—half laugh, half something else. She pressed her lips together to trap it, but too late. Lucien's mouth curved. Not quite a smile. Something more dangerous. "You can't stay here," he continued. "They know this address. They've likely been watching since yesterday." "Brilliant. So I'm supposed to just—what? Go with you?" The words hung there, loaded with everything they weren't saying. His gaze dropped again, this time to the gap of skin above her collar, and she felt it like a touch. "That would be the safest option." "Safe." She nearly choked on the word. "With you. In whatever fortress you call home." "I have a flat in Bloomsbury. Warded. Unconnected to my professional identity." He said it matter-of-factly, as if he'd been planning this. As if he'd already decided for her. "You'd have your own room. Your own exit. I would not—" "I know what you wouldn't." Her pulse was loud in her ears. "That's not the problem." "Then what is?" She stared at him. At the perfect line of his jaw, the impossible colors of his eyes, the way his fingers curled around the handle of his cane like he needed something to hold onto. Three weeks of silence, and he'd shown up on her doorstep with a death contract and an offer of protection, and he was looking at her like he was the one in danger. The problem was that she wanted to say yes. The problem was that leaving his office three weeks ago had felt like cutting off a piece of herself, and she'd been bleeding ever since, slowly, in a way she couldn't explain to anyone. The problem was that Lucien Moreau was the last person she should trust and the only one she did. "One night," she said. "Until I figure out something else." He nodded. No triumph, no relief—just acceptance, as if he'd expected nothing more and would have taken less. "One night." Rory stepped back into the flat. She didn't close the door behind her.