Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0GDGP4BPDZ6Q1HJTR11WEN

The third deadbolt gave with its usual reluctant thunk, and Rory pulled the door open with the chain still latched, expecting the delivery boy from the curry house downstairs. She had been expecting lamb bhuna. She had not been expecting Lucien Moreau. He stood in the narrow, piss-lit corridor as though he'd been poured there: charcoal suit without a crease on it, ivory cane angled at his hip like punctuation, platinum hair slicked back so precisely it looked lacquered. Rain traced the line of his collar. The amber eye caught the hall light. The black one did not. "Hello, Aurora." She let the silence stretch until it became its own answer. Behind her, Ptolemy made an inquisitive noise from a tower of unshelved grimoires, as if even the cat could feel the air change. "You've got a nerve," she said at last. "I've been told." "By me. Last time. In some detail." "You were eloquent," Lucien said. "I remember every word." She considered slamming the door. It would feel wonderful for approximately four seconds, and then she'd spend the rest of the night thinking about his face on the other side of it. She'd done that before. She had a doctorate in it. Rory unhooked the chain. "Five minutes," she said. "Generous." "Four, now." He stepped inside, and the flat, already cramped, narrowed around him as though uncertain where to put a man who wore Savile Row into Brick Lane. He set his cane against the wall with the care of a pianist laying down his instrument. His gaze moved — books, scrolls, the half-eaten toast on the desk, the little crescent scar on her wrist that she'd caught him staring at once over a glass of wine in a place she was trying hard not to remember. "Eva's out," she said, because it was easier than asking what he wanted. "I know. I waited until she was." "Of course you did." She folded her arms. "That's worse, Lucien. That is demonstrably worse." "I thought you'd prefer we speak without an audience." "I'd prefer we don't speak at all." "And yet you opened the door." "I thought you were my dinner." A muscle in his jaw moved — something that might, in better light, have been a smile. He looked tired. That was the thing she wasn't supposed to notice. Lucien Moreau did not do tired. He did composed, he did cruel, he did courteous in four languages. Tired was not in the repertoire. Tonight his shoulders were a fraction lower than they should have been, and the shadow beneath the amber eye had deepened into something bruised. "I owe you an apology," he said. "Oh, is that what this is." She laughed, and didn't like the sound of it. "I thought it might be business. I prefer when it's business with you. At least the terms are clear." "Rory." "Don't." He went still. It was the kind of stillness a demon came by honestly — a settling of every small human tell into nothing. She hated that she could feel him deciding how to proceed. She hated that she could feel him at all. "I should not have left you at the Ashford house," he said. "Not the way I did. Not without telling you what I'd seen." "No." Her throat did something treacherous. "You shouldn't have." "I thought—" He stopped. Started again, carefully, like a man finding the footholds in a wall. "I thought if you knew what he was, you would do something reckless. And I thought, if I handled it quietly, you would never need to know it had happened at all." "You mean Evan." "I mean Evan." She turned away because she didn't want him to see her face. The kitchen was two steps from the living room, which was two steps from the bedroom; there was nowhere in the flat that was not, strictly speaking, next to him. She put her palms flat on the counter. The crescent scar caught the light, pale against her skin. "You went to see him," she said. "Yes." "And you didn't tell me." "No." "Is he alive?" A pause. "Yes." "Pity." "I considered it," Lucien said, very softly. "I want to be clear with you. I considered it at length." She shut her eyes. Somewhere in the building a kettle whistled; somewhere on the street a man shouted about a taxi. Ordinary sounds. She held on to them. "Why are you telling me now?" "Because you asked me, three months ago, never to lie to you again. And I have been lying to you by omission every time I've seen you since." He drew a breath. She heard him move, not closer, just — adjusting, as if the weight of it had shifted him. "I find I cannot continue. It is interfering with my sleep." "Your sleep," she repeated, and finally turned. "Poor Lucien. How terrible for you." "Yes," he said, with a frankness that disarmed her entirely. "It is." She looked at him. Really looked: the rain still glittering on his lapel, the faint tremor in the hand that was not holding the cane, the way his mismatched eyes were fixed on her as though the rest of the room had ceased to be relevant. There had been a night, six months ago, when he had kissed her in the back of a cab from Soho and then, before the cab had even stopped moving, apologised for it in three separate languages. She had been furious at him then, too. She had been furious and also — this was the inconvenient part — she had wanted him to do it again. She still did. That was the worst of it. She stood in her best friend's kitchen with her hair half-braided and a smear of toast crumbs on her jumper and she wanted, with a specificity that felt like injury, to close the distance between them and put her mouth on his. "Don't look at me like that," she said. "Like what?" "Like you're about to apologise for something you haven't done yet." His mouth curved — properly, this time. Rueful. "I was about to ask if I might sit down." "Oh." She almost laughed. "God. Yes. Sit. Before you fall over and ruin the rug." He lowered himself onto Eva's absurd velvet settee with a grace that shouldn't have been possible at his height. Ptolemy considered him, unhurried, then jumped up and arranged himself across his knees as if he did this every Thursday. Lucien looked down at the cat. The cat looked up at Lucien. Something in Rory's chest did a slow, treacherous fold. "Traitor," she told Ptolemy. "He has excellent judgement," Lucien murmured, stroking the cat once behind the ears. "He eats his own sick." "Nobody is perfect." She pulled out the chair opposite him and sat, because her knees had stopped agreeing with her. Four feet of floor between them. A coffee table piled with Eva's research. Her own pulse, loud in her ears. "Tell me the rest," she said. "All of it. From the Ashford house to now. And Lucien—" He looked up. "If you leave one thing out," she said, "I'll know." "I believe you will," he said. And he began.