Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0GCXPBZ2DN8TKA9PBAT0S9

The third deadbolt stuck, as always. Rory shouldered the door and yanked, cursing under her breath, and the chain slid free just as Ptolemy wound between her ankles with an affronted yowl. Then the door swung open and she forgot the cat entirely. Lucien stood in the stairwell with one gloved hand resting on the ivory head of his cane, the other tucked into the pocket of a charcoal coat that had clearly been made for him and no one else. Rain beaded on his shoulders. The amber eye caught the hallway bulb; the black one swallowed it. "You're not Eva," he said. "And you're not invited." "An oversight. I'd hoped to correct it in person." She kept her hand on the doorframe, body wedged in the gap. Ptolemy, traitor that he was, slipped past her shin and pressed his forehead against Lucien's polished shoe. "Eva's in Prague." "I know." "Then why—" "Because you're not." The rain sighed against the window on the landing. Somewhere beneath them, the curry house flung open a back door and a gust of cumin climbed the stairs. Rory crossed her arms. "Two months, Luc." "I'm aware of the count." "Are you." He inclined his head — that small, maddening gesture that wasn't quite an apology and wasn't quite not. "May I come in, Aurora, or would you prefer to flay me where the neighbours can watch?" She stepped aside. She shouldn't have. She did it anyway and hated the way her pulse did a sloppy, stupid little double-step when his coat brushed her arm. He set the cane against the wall with care, the way a man might set down something loaded. His gaze moved over the flat — the teetering stacks on the coffee table, the half-eaten toast on the arm of the sofa, her jumper slung over Eva's reading chair — and landed, finally, on her. "You've cut your hair." "Two months ago." "Ah." "Don't pretend you noticed." "I noticed the first evening." He shrugged out of his coat, folded it along the seam, laid it over the chair back. "I chose not to mention it, because you were in the middle of telling me you never wanted to see me again." "I didn't say never." "You said, and I quote, 'get out and don't come back until you've decided whether you're a man or a ledger.'" Rory walked past him into the kitchenette because she couldn't look at him any longer without saying something she'd regret. She filled the kettle. Her wrist trembled — just once, just enough that the water sloshed — and the crescent scar on the pale underside caught the overhead light. "And?" she said, with her back to him. "Have you decided?" A pause. The floorboards creaked as he followed, not quite all the way. He stopped a pace behind her. She could smell the rain on him, and under it something darker, smoke and bergamot and whatever it was that ran in half-demon blood. "I've decided," he said, "that the ledger was easier." "Christ, Luc—" "Let me finish." "No. You don't get to—" "Aurora." Low. Even. Not pleading; he never pleaded. "Please." She set the kettle down. Didn't turn. "I've known what I am since I was nine years old," he said. "I've known what I do since I was nineteen. I have not, at any point in those intervening years, known what to do with a woman who looked at me the way you looked at me across a table in Silas' bar and asked if I was going to be trouble." "You said no." "I lied." "I know you lied. That's not the bloody point, Lucien." "Then what is?" She turned. He was closer than she'd estimated — half a step, maybe — close enough that she had to tip her chin to meet him. His mismatched eyes did that thing they did in poor lighting, the black one going wider than a black one had any right to go. "The point," she said, "is that you sent Silas to tell me. You sent Silas. Like I was a debt you needed collected." He flinched. She'd never seen him flinch before. It was almost worth the two months. "That was cowardice," he said. "Yes." "I'm not accustomed to it. I found I didn't care for the taste." "Good." "Rory." "Don't." "Rory, I walked here from Shoreditch in the rain because I could not stand one more evening of pretending I hadn't done it." She laughed — short, wet, mostly a breath. "You've got a car." "I have three." "So why walk?" "Penance," he said, and the corner of his mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile. "And I wanted the time to work out what to say if you opened the door." "And?" "I'm still working on it." She should have laughed again. Should have shoved him back into the hall and bolted all three deadbolts and put the kettle on and rung Eva in Prague and cried into the phone until dawn. That was the sensible column of the ledger, and she'd spent two months drawing it up line by line. Instead her hand rose of its own accord, found the lapel of his waistcoat, and fisted there — not pulling, not yet, just holding, as though she needed proof he was solid and warm and here. "You hurt me," she said. "I know." "Badly." "I know." "I'm not forgiving you tonight." "I wouldn't believe you if you did." "And I'm not—" Her throat closed on the rest. She swallowed. Tried again. "I'm not sleeping with you tonight either." His gaze lowered to her mouth, then climbed back, patient and unhurried, to her eyes. "I didn't come for that." "Liar." "Partial liar," he amended. "I came to apologise. The rest would have been — a welcome aftershock." She let out a breath that rattled more than she'd meant it to. Her knuckles were white against the wool of his waistcoat. She made herself uncurl them, one finger at a time. "Sit down," she said. "The kettle's on. You're going to talk, Luc, and I mean properly. No ledgers. No clever French sentences with three meanings. Just — talk." "And if I do?" "Then we'll see." He inclined his head again, that same small tilt, but this time something in it had given way. He crossed to the sofa, shifted a stack of grimoires onto the floor with the careful reverence of a man who knew exactly what each one was worth, and sat. Ptolemy leapt into his lap at once. "Traitor," Rory muttered at the cat, and turned back to the kettle before Lucien could see her smile.