Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0GBMS2HG17AMSZVAV2PP40

The third deadbolt stuck, the way it always stuck, and Rory had to jimmy it with her hip before the door finally gave. She expected Eva, arms full of takeaway from the curry house two floors below. She expected the postman with another delivery of ancient-looking tomes that would send Ptolemy skittering under the sofa. She did not expect Lucien Moreau. He stood in the narrow hallway with one gloved hand resting on the ivory head of his cane, the other tucked casually into the pocket of a charcoal coat that probably cost more than three months of her deliveries. The hall's single flickering bulb caught the platinum of his hair, the amber of his left eye. His right eye — the black one, the one that always made her feel like she was being read page by page — stayed level with hers. "Evening, Aurora." She had the door half-closed before she was conscious of moving. His cane slid neatly into the gap. "Five seconds," he said. "Three, if you're feeling merciful." "I'm not feeling anything." "A tragedy. Five seconds, then." She didn't open the door further, but she didn't slam it on the cane either. Ptolemy wound between her ankles, purring, a traitor of the highest order. Of course the cat liked him. Everything in London with a pulse and an ounce of sense liked Lucien Moreau, and half of them still owed him favors for the privilege. "You said you wouldn't come here." "I said I wouldn't come here without a reason." His voice was soft in that deliberate way of his, the French lilt sanded down to a whisper of vowels. "I have one. May I?" She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him that she had spent six weeks teaching herself how to not think about the last night they'd stood this close — the rain on his collar, her palm flat against his chest, the moment he had stepped back from her instead of forward. Six weeks was not enough time. Six years might not be. She opened the door. He came in the way he did everything: unhurried, precise, taking up less space than a man his height had any right to. He wiped his shoes on the mat. He noted the three deadbolts with a small nod, as if approving of Eva's paranoia. His gaze moved over the chaos of the flat — the teetering stacks of grimoires on the kitchen counter, the scrolls pinned across the window like makeshift curtains, the half-drunk mug of tea cooling on a pile of Eva's notes — and came to rest, finally, on her. "You've been crying." "I've been chopping onions." "There are no onions." "There were." He made that faint sound that in another man might have been a laugh. Rory pulled her cardigan tighter across her chest and put the length of the kitchen counter between them. Her left wrist ached — that small crescent scar going pale in the cold — and she pressed her thumb to it without thinking, the way she always did when she wanted something to hold onto. He saw. Of course he saw. "Tea?" she said, because she had to say something. "Please." She filled the kettle. She did not look at him. She could feel him looking at her, the patient weight of that mismatched gaze, and it made her shoulders draw up toward her ears. "Why are you here, Lucien?" "I told you. I have a reason." "Then give it." He was quiet long enough that she turned. He had set his cane against the wall. He had taken off one glove and was turning it slowly between his fingers, a small, restless motion she had never seen him make before. It unsettled her more than anything else he could have done. "Evan is in London," he said. The kettle clicked. The sound was very loud. "You're lying." "I wish I were." She gripped the counter. Her knuckles went white. "How long?" "Two days. Perhaps three. He's asking questions about a dark-haired Welsh girl working deliveries out of Chinatown, and he's asking them of the sort of people who give answers for a five-pound note." He paused. "I came as soon as I was sure." "You could have phoned." "I could have." He set the glove down on the counter with great care. "I didn't want to." And there it was — that quiet, maddening honesty he only ever gave her in pieces, always when she was least prepared to catch it. "Don't," she said. "Aurora." "Don't say my name like that." "Like what?" "Like you've got any right to it." He didn't answer. He only looked at her, and the amber eye was soft in a way that hurt more than the black eye's scrutiny ever had. She remembered, with awful clarity, the shape of his mouth when he had told her she deserved something less complicated than a half-demon fixer with enemies in three realms. She remembered the way she had laughed, because it was such a cowardly, beautiful thing to say, and because the alternative was to cry in front of him and she would have rather swallowed glass. "I'm not leaving London," she said. "I know." "And I'm not hiding." "I know that too." "Then what do you want from me, Lucien? You came all the way from — wherever it is you've been haunting this month — to tell me my ex is in town. Fine. Thank you. I'll lock the door. I'll carry pepper spray. I'll —" "I want you to let me help." She stopped. The kettle's last breath of steam curled between them. "That's a bad idea," she said, and it came out quieter than she meant. "I know that as well." He took a step toward her. Only one. The narrow kitchen did the rest — she could smell the cold of the street on his coat, and under it, faintly, cedar and something smokier, that particular scent that had lived in her pillow for a week after the first and only time he had stayed. He stopped just short of touching her. He always stopped just short. "Tell me to go," he said, very low, "and I'll go. Tell me to stay, and we'll argue about whose flat I stand guard in tonight. But don't —" and here, for the first time, his voice caught on something small and human, "— don't tell me you don't want me here at all. I can't quite bear that one, Aurora." She looked at his hand where it rested on the counter beside hers. A half-inch between their knuckles. Less. Ptolemy jumped up onto the counter and butted his head against Lucien's wrist. "Traitor," Rory whispered to the cat. She didn't move her hand away.