AI The door opened on the length of a chain and two inches of stale curry steam.
Aurora Carter stood barefoot on the inside mat with a half-loaded crossbow pointed through the gap.
Lucien Moreau looked down at the bolt aimed at his sternum, then up at her face. Rain clung to the shoulders of his charcoal coat and silvered the sharp planes of his cheekbones. His platinum hair had lost its polished sweep; one strand cut across his brow, pale as a scar. His cane rested against his thigh, ivory handle tucked beneath his gloved hand.
His amber eye caught the hallway light. The black one swallowed it.
“Bonsoir, Rory.”
The name hit harder than it had any right to.
Aurora kept the crossbow raised.
“You’ve got eight seconds to explain why you’re at Eva’s door.”
His mouth moved, not quite a smile. He had always used restraint like a weapon. Even soaked through, even standing outside a flat above a Brick Lane curry house with a delivery cyclist shoving past behind him, he looked as though the city had dressed itself around him and found itself lacking.
“Only eight? You used to give me ten.”
“You used to be less annoying.”
“Untrue.”
She slammed the door shut.
The chain snapped tight.
A beat passed in the corridor.
“Rory.”
She leaned her forehead against the flaking white paint, crossbow still in both hands. The smell of coriander, old paper, and rain pushed through the crack beneath the door. Behind her, Ptolemy the tabby stood on a stack of photocopied grimoires and watched with the bored malice of a magistrate.
Aurora slid the chain free, undid the second deadbolt, then the third. The first she left turned.
She opened the door again.
Lucien hadn’t moved. A thin line of blood threaded from beneath his cuff to the edge of his glove and dripped onto Eva’s doormat.
Her grip tightened.
“Come in before Mrs Patel sees you bleeding on the landing.”
“That sounded almost tender.”
“It sounded like I don’t want to explain demon blood to the neighbours.”
“Half-demon,” he murmured.
“Half a reason to leave you outside.”
She stepped back.
Lucien entered with care, as though Eva’s cramped flat contained tripwires instead of books, scrolls, and mugs with tea rings at their feet. He took in the avalanche of notes on the coffee table, the wards chalked beneath the window, the wilting basil plant Eva kept resurrecting through guilt, and Ptolemy, who hissed once and stalked under the sofa.
Aurora shut the door and slid all three deadbolts home.
The sound boxed them in.
Lucien turned at the last lock. His gaze fell to her left wrist, to the crescent-shaped scar visible beneath the pushed-up sleeve of her jumper. She tugged the cuff down with her thumb.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t speak.”
“You looked.”
“I remembered.”
“That’s worse.”
His jaw flexed. Rainwater gathered at his collar and slipped beneath the fine wool. He looked out of place among Eva’s mess: a blade laid across a pile of laundry, a black-tie invitation used as a bookmark in a book about plague saints.
Aurora put the crossbow on the narrow table by the door but kept her hand close to it.
“Why are you here?”
Lucien lifted his injured arm. The glove had torn across the palm. Under it, the skin had split in a neat, cruel line, dark blood beading thick and glossy. Something beneath the wound pulsed faintly violet.
Aurora’s stomach dropped.
“Who did that?”
“You first asked why. Now who.” He removed the glove with his teeth, winced, and spat it into his good hand. “I prefer this order.”
“I prefer answers.”
“Then we were doomed from the start.”
Her laugh came out sharp, once, without humour.
“There it is. You show up bleeding, and within thirty seconds I’m somehow unreasonable.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It never was, according to you.”
The room seemed to shrink around his silence .
Outside, a bus groaned at the curb. A drunk voice rose from the street, got tangled in a burst of laughter, and fell away. The curry house extractor rattled through the floorboards with a greasy hum.
Lucien rested his cane against the wall. He didn’t let go of it until the tip touched the skirting board.
“May I sit?”
“No.”
He nodded once.
Aurora crossed to the kitchen counter, shoved aside three books on binding rites, and pulled open the drawer where Eva kept medical supplies between incense sticks and batteries. Gauze. Saline. Silver tweezers. No iron. Eva had rules about iron.
Lucien watched her hands.
“Eva isn’t here.”
“I noticed the absence of shouting.”
“She’s in Hackney with a witch who claims she’s got Saint Cyprian’s fingernail in a biscuit tin.”
“Ah. A Thursday.”
Aurora turned with the supplies tucked under one arm.
“Take off your coat.”
His amber eye warmed a fraction. “Rory.”
“For the wound, you arrogant nightmare.”
He obeyed.
The coat came off slow. Beneath it, his waistcoat sat askew, the crisp white sleeve on his left arm sliced open from cuff to elbow. More blood darkened the fabric. Not enough to kill him. Enough to make him come here instead of one of the private rooms he kept across London under false names.
Aurora swallowed that thought and pointed to the single kitchen chair not buried under manuscripts.
“Sit.”
“This one I may accept?”
“Sit, Lucien.”
The full name altered his face. Barely. A tightening at the corner of his mouth. A careful lowering of his lashes. He sat.
Aurora dragged the lamp closer. Its yellow light slid over his hand and revealed the problem: a thorn of black glass lodged deep between the tendons.
She went still.
Lucien’s gaze stayed on her.
“You know what it is.”
“I know it shouldn’t be in London.”
“No.”
“Avaros glass?”
“Yes.”
She looked up.
“What came through?”
His silence answered before his mouth did.
Aurora stepped back from him. The edge of the counter pressed into her spine.
“No. You don’t get to do this in pieces. Not tonight.”
“I came because you know Eva’s books.”
“You came because you were hurt.”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“Not at my door.”
He looked at her then, fully, without the polished distance he used in clubs and back rooms and underworld auctions where monsters smiled over champagne. The black eye held no reflection. The amber one carried fatigue so raw she felt indecent seeing it.
“No,” he said. “Not at your door.”
The words landed between them and refused to move.
Aurora wet a cloth with saline and stepped back into his space. His hand lay palm-up on the table. Long fingers. Fine bones. A thin scar near his thumb from the night in Limehouse when she had thrown him a knife and he had caught it by the blade rather than let it hit the floor and alert the thing hunting them.
She had thought about those hands more often than anger allowed.
“Hold still.”
“I had intended to dance .”
She pressed the cloth to his wound.
His breath caught through his teeth.
“Still making jokes when you’re in pain.”
“Still pressing harder when you’re angry.”
“I could press much harder.”
“I remember.”
Heat rose under her skin. His gaze dropped to her mouth and left at once, like a hand withdrawn from flame.
She cleaned the blood away. The glass thorn glimmered, slick and wicked, sunk deep enough that removing it would hurt like hell. Lucien’s demon blood fought the foreign matter; violet sparks snapped at the edges of the wound and died against his skin.
Aurora reached for the tweezers.
Lucien caught her wrist.
Not hard. Never hard. His fingers circled the place above her scar, warm despite the rain. The contact pulled air from the room.
“Don’t use silver.”
“It’s sterilised.”
“It will splinter the glass.”
“Then what?”
His thumb shifted once against her pulse .
“Your hand. Pull it free.”
Aurora stared at him.
“I’m human.”
“Exactly.”
“You want me to dig Avaros glass out of your palm with my fingers?”
“I would prefer a sonnet and wine. Circumstances failed us.”
She tried to pull away. He released her at once.
That made it worse.
“You should have gone to Madame Irena.”
“She’d sell the shard before I left the room.”
“Silas?”
“Out of London.”
“Yu-Fei?”
“She would cut my hand off to save time.”
“She’d charge you for the cleaver.”
That almost brought the smile back. Almost.
Aurora wiped her hands on a clean towel, then poured antiseptic over her fingers. The sharp chemical stink cut through curry and damp wool. She pulled the lamp closer until their shadows crowded the wall behind them.
“Tell me what happens if I touch it.”
“It may burn.”
“May?”
“It will burn.”
“See? Answers. You can do them.”
“Rory.”
His voice had lost the silk .
She looked at him, and for one breath the months between them thinned: the hotel corridor in Mayfair, the stolen ledger under her jacket, Lucien’s hand on the lift doors as he told her to leave before the buyers arrived; her refusing; his voice turning to ice; his lie delivered with surgical precision.
You were useful. Don’t confuse that with being wanted .
She had not slapped him. She had wished she had. Instead she had walked out with her head high, then shaken apart in a night bus while an old woman offered her a tissue and pretended not to notice.
Now he sat in Eva’s chair with blood on his cuff and his hand open to her.
“No soft voice,” she said. “Not after what you said.”
His face closed.
“Then pull.”
She did.
Her fingers entered the wound around the shard. Heat bit into her skin at once, not like fire but like frozen metal pressed through flesh . Lucien’s good hand clamped around the edge of the table. Wood cracked beneath his grip.
Aurora pinched the glass and drew it upward.
The shard resisted.
Lucien made no sound. His mouth thinned. Sweat gathered along his temple.
“Breathe.”
“Don’t give orders you dislike receiving.”
“Breathe, or I leave it in.”
He dragged air through his nose.
The shard slid a fraction. Blood welled over Aurora’s fingers, dark and hot. Beneath the blood, the glass pulsed as if something on the other side of the world had a heartbeat and resented interference.
“Who sent it?”
“Marcel Vey.”
“The auction broker?”
“Yes.”
“He’s human.”
“Not since last winter.”
Aurora braced his wrist with her other hand. His pulse hammered against her palm.
“What did you do to him?”
“Refused an invitation.”
“To what?”
“A coronation.”
She looked up.
Lucien’s eyes held hers.
“Keep pulling.”
“Lucien.”
“Please.”
The word tore out without elegance.
Aurora pulled.
The glass came free in a rush, black and barbed and longer than seemed possible . Lucien folded forward, forehead nearly touching her shoulder, breath striking the sleeve of her jumper. His hair brushed her chin. She smelled rain, blood, cedar soap, and something faintly mineral beneath his skin, like stone after lightning.
The shard smoked between her fingers.
She dropped it into an empty jam jar on Eva’s counter and slammed the lid shut. The jar rattled in place. Thin cracks spread across the glass, then stopped at the faded raspberry label.
Lucien laughed once, low and broken.
“Eva will charge me for that.”
“Eva will make you write an apology to the jam.”
Aurora wrapped gauze around his hand. Her fingers shook now that the work had ended. She hated them for it. She tucked the tremor into the bandage and bound it tight.
Lucien watched her hands again.
“You came to me because I’m human.”
“Yes.”
“Only reason?”
He didn’t answer.
The flat held its breath with her. Even Ptolemy had gone quiet under the sofa.
Aurora taped the bandage down with more force than needed.
“Fine.”
“Rory—”
“No. Fine. You needed a human hand. You knew Eva wasn’t here, didn’t you? You always know where people are. You knew I’d be the one to open the door.”
“I knew there was a chance.”
“You don’t work with chances.”
His wounded hand closed and opened. The gauze blotted red.
“I stood outside for twelve minutes.”
She stilled.
Rain ticked against the window. Somewhere below, a pan hit a stove and someone swore in Punjabi.
Lucien looked at the warped floorboards between his shoes.
“I told myself if you didn’t answer, I’d leave.”
“I answered.”
“Yes.”
“So you lied to yourself too. That’s new.”
“No.” His mouth twisted. “That has never been new.”
Aurora stepped away, because the space between his knees and her hips had become dangerous. She went to the sink and ran cold water over her stained fingers. The burn from the Avaros glass had left red marks across her fingertips, thin as thread.
Lucien rose behind her.
“You’re hurt.”
She shut off the tap.
“It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t.”
“You don’t get to decide what my hurt is.”
He stopped.
Good. Let that one hit.
Aurora gripped the edge of the sink. Eva had stuck a postcard above it, a painting of a saint holding his own severed head with the serene expression of a man who had never dealt with Lucien Moreau.
“I meant your hand,” he said.
“I didn’t.”
The silence changed shape.
Lucien’s reflection appeared in the dark window over the sink, tall and pale behind her, his bandaged hand held against his chest. Not touching. Close enough that she felt the heat of him through the gap.
“I thought if you hated me, you would leave,” he said.
Aurora laughed under her breath.
“There’s the famous strategy.”
“I had enemies watching you.”
“You always had enemies.”
“These knew your name.”
“My name is on every takeaway receipt in Shoreditch.”
“They knew Laila.”
Her fingers dug into the porcelain .
The false name. The one she had used during those weeks with him, when she had delivered noodles to a gambling den in Soho and walked out with a demon ledger under her jacket because Lucien had whispered a plan over the phone in French, then switched to Welsh because he knew it annoyed her that his accent improved when he flirted.
No one outside a tight circle knew that name .
She turned.
Lucien stood too close now, and she had nowhere to go but through him. The kitchen counter cut across the backs of her thighs. His face, stripped of its usual arrangement, looked older than thirty-two and younger than she remembered, which made no sense and annoyed her.
“You could have told me.”
“If I had told you, you would have stayed.”
“Don’t dress cowardice as respect.”
His head dipped, as if she had put a hand at the back of his neck and forced it there.
“You’re right.”
The simple admission knocked loose every argument stacked behind her teeth.
She stared.
He gave a small, humourless breath.
“I practised speeches on the way here. In the cab. In the stairwell. None of them survived your crossbow.”
“Good.”
“They deserved death.”
“Most of your speeches do.”
His eyes lifted.
There it was again, the current beneath the wreckage. The old pull. Not soft. Not safe. Something with teeth. She remembered him in an alley with one hand pressed to the small of her back, guiding her behind him while three men with mirrored faces advanced through the fog. She remembered how he had looked at her afterward, when her pulse had still battered her throat and she had grinned because fear had turned bright in her blood.
He had wanted to kiss her then.
She had wanted him to.
Neither had moved.
Then Mayfair. Then the lie.
Aurora folded her arms.
“Say it.”
Lucien’s brow creased.
“You know what I want.”
“I know what you avoid.”
His throat shifted.
“I wanted you.”
The words came blunt, scraped free of polish.
Aurora’s arms tightened around herself.
“Past tense?”
His gaze moved over her face, not with the lazy admiration he used when performing, but with a hunger held on a leash that had cut into his hand.
“No.”
Her breath left through her nose.
“Don’t.”
“I won’t touch you.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
The flat seemed full of all the things they did not do . His hand did not rise to her cheek. Her fingers did not curl into his waistcoat. His mouth did not find hers above Eva’s sink with curry steam in the floorboards and demon glass cracking in a jam jar.
Instead, he stood there and let the wanting show.
Aurora hated him for that most of all.
“You said I confused being useful with being wanted .”
“I did.”
“Was that the part meant to save me?”
“No.” His voice roughened. “That was the part meant to make you hate me enough not to come back.”
“It worked.”
“I know.”
“It didn’t.”
“I know that too.”
Her eyes burned. She blinked once, hard, and the tears stayed where they belonged.
Lucien looked at her left wrist again, at the scar beneath the cuff. This time she didn’t hide it.
“When Evan hurt you,” he said, each word placed with care, “you learned to mistrust apologies that arrived with excuses. I have no right to bring you one.”
Aurora’s mouth went dry.
“Don’t use him to sound noble.”
“I won’t.”
“You don’t know what I learned.”
“No.” His shoulders dropped. “I know only what you told me. And what I failed to honour.”
A horn blared outside. The ordinary city battered at the windows and failed to get in.
Aurora reached behind her, found the towel, and wrapped it around her burned fingers.
“Why now?”
Lucien glanced towards the jam jar. The shard had stopped smoking. Inside, black glass rested against raspberry paper like a dead insect.
“Because Vey’s message carried your name.”
Her body went cold.
“What message?”
Lucien reached into the inner pocket of his waistcoat with his good hand. Slowly. He drew out a card sealed in black wax and set it on the counter between them.
Aurora looked at the seal.
A crown split by a thorn.
Her name had been written across the front in a hand she didn’t recognise.
Aurora Carter.
Not Rory. Not Laila.
Aurora.
She picked it up. The wax felt warm.
Lucien watched her face.
“I didn’t come only because I needed your hand.”
She tore the seal with her thumb.
Inside, one line crossed the thick cream card.
Bring the girl who walked out of Mayfair, or bleed until the old door opens.
Aurora read it twice.
Lucien said nothing.
She set the card down beside the sink. Her hand left a damp print over her own name.
“The girl,” she said.
His mouth hardened.
“I objected to the phrasing.”
“I’m sure that terrified them.”
“It cost three men their teeth.”
A startled laugh escaped her. It had no permission. It came anyway.
Lucien looked at the sound as if it had struck him in the chest.
Aurora looked away first.
Ptolemy emerged from under the sofa, tail high, and jumped onto the coffee table. He stepped over a map of Southwark ley lines, sniffed Lucien’s discarded glove, and sneezed on it.
“Good judge of character,” Aurora muttered.
“I brought him sardines once.”
“He respects consistency, not bribery.”
Lucien leaned his hip against the table, then thought better of it when a tower of books swayed.
Aurora picked up the first aid kit and closed it with a snap.
“You can’t stay here.”
“I know.”
“Eva’s wards would peel if you bled through them.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not going anywhere with you just because some jumped-up broker sent stationery.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
“No.” He looked at her, and the room tightened again. “I was about to ask if you would let me stand guard downstairs until Eva returned.”
Her anger stumbled over that.
“Downstairs where?”
“In the alley. Near the bins.”
“In that suit?”
“I’ve survived worse indignities.”
“You’d last ten minutes before someone nicked your cane.”
A faint gleam returned to his amber eye.
“They’d lose fingers.”
“Then Mrs Patel would definitely complain.”
“Then perhaps the landing.”
“No.”
“The stairwell.”
“No.”
“The roof?”
“You’re bleeding through the bandage.”
He looked down. Red had spread across the white gauze.
Aurora swore and caught his wrist.
He went still under her touch.
She unwrapped the stained layer with fast, irritated movements. The wound had narrowed but not closed. A black thread remained beneath the skin, writhing toward his pulse .
Her stomach turned.
“You said it was out.”
“The shard was.”
“You utter bastard.”
“Yes.”
“This is why people stab you.”
“Frequently.”
She pressed two fingers either side of the wound. The thread recoiled from her human touch, then pushed deeper. Lucien’s face drained of colour.
Aurora moved closer, holding his hand between both of hers.
“What is it?”
“A hook.”
“From where?”
“Avaros.”
“I gathered that.”
“It anchors to a debt.”
She looked up.
His expression told her before he did.
Aurora’s grip tightened until he flinched.
“What debt, Lucien?”
His eyes stayed on hers.
“Mine.”
“Explain.”
“I broke a contract tonight.”
“For me?”
He didn’t answer.
Aurora shoved his hand away, then caught it again because blood welled fresh and stupid care outran pride.
“For me?”
Lucien’s voice dropped.
“They wanted me to deliver you before midnight.”
The room went silent , except for Ptolemy chewing something he had no business chewing.
Aurora’s pulse beat in her burned fingertips.
“And instead you came here.”
“Yes.”
“With their hook in your blood.”
“Yes.”
She stared at him, at the rain drying in his hair, at the torn glove on the floor, at the man who had once wounded her with a sentence clean enough to pass for mercy and had now walked into her flat carrying a punishment meant to drag him back.
“You should have led with that.”
“I feared the crossbow.”
“I still might use it.”
“Fair.”
Aurora looked at the black thread under his skin. It moved again, seeking the deeper roads of him.
She reached for Eva’s nearest notebook and flipped through pages of cramped handwriting, recipes, ward sketches, rants about museum theft, and a pressed coriander leaf.
Lucien leaned over her shoulder.
“Left stack. Red binding. Eva catalogued infernal liens last month.”
Aurora stopped.
“You read Eva’s research?”
“She leaves it everywhere.”
“She hides it under tax documents.”
“I enjoy tax documents.”
“Of course you do.”
She found the red-bound notebook beneath a takeaway menu and a cracked magnifying glass. Pages fluttered under her thumb. Infernal liens. Blood hooks. Debt anchors. Removal required full transfer, cancellation by creditor, or willing witness to name the debt false.
Aurora read the line again.
Willing witness.
Lucien read it too. His face shuttered.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m thinking.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then stop me.”
He stepped back.
That answered too much.
Aurora lifted the notebook between them.
“What happens to the witness?”
“The hook recognises their claim.”
“English.”
“It may mark you.”
“May?”
“It will mark you.”
She glanced at her burned fingers.
“I’m collecting marks tonight.”
“No.”
“You don’t give me orders in Eva’s kitchen.”
“Rory.”
“No soft voice, remember?”
He crossed the small distance in one stride and caught the edge of the notebook, not pulling, just holding it between them.
“I didn’t come to make you pay my debts.”
“You came because you chose not to hand me over.”
“Yes.”
“Then let me choose what I do with that.”
His face twisted, and the pain there looked nothing like the hook in his hand.
Aurora lowered the notebook.
“What was the contract?”
Lucien’s fingers whitened around the cover.
“To locate the woman known as Laila who escaped the Mayfair exchange and deliver her to Marcel Vey or his appointed heir.”
“Appointed heir to what?”
“A throne no sane creature wants.”
“Leave the poetry.”
“Avaros.”
The word crawled over the chalk wards beneath the window.
Aurora took that in, then shoved it aside. Too large. Too far. The immediate problem bled in her hands.
“And the debt is false because?”
Lucien gave her a grim look.
“I accepted under a false premise.”
“What premise?”
“That you had already been taken.”
Her anger lost its footing.
He continued, each word stripped bare.
“They told me they had you in a cellar near Blackfriars. They sent your bracelet.”
Aurora touched her bare wrist. Her silver bracelet, the one with the tiny enamel fox, had gone missing two weeks ago. She had blamed the laundry.
“I signed to get the location.”
“To rescue me.”
“To find you.”
“Lucien.”
“To find you,” he repeated, harder, as if rescue demanded courage he would not claim. “When I realised they never had you, I broke the contract.”
The black thread pulsed under his skin.
Aurora closed Eva’s notebook and placed it on the counter.
“Then the debt is false.”
“Rory—”
She took his wounded hand. Blood slicked her palm. She placed her other hand over the hook, feeling it writhe beneath skin and gauze and heat.
Lucien’s breath stopped.
Aurora raised her chin and looked into his mismatched eyes.
“The debt is false,” she said. “He signed for a prisoner you did not hold. He signed to recover what you lied about taking. He owed you nothing once the lie broke.”
The hook thrashed.
Lucien grabbed the counter with his free hand, shoulders locking.
Aurora held on.
“The debt is false,” she repeated, louder . “And if Avaros wants a witness, it can take my statement and choke on it.”
The black thread surged beneath her palm.
Pain snapped across her wrist. Not the old scar. Around it. A line of heat circled her skin, bright and brutal. She bit the inside of her cheek and tasted copper.
Lucien’s hand closed over hers.
“Let go.”
“No.”
“Rory, let go.”
“No.”
The hook tore free of him.
It did not leave a shard. It did not leave smoke. It vanished with a sound like wet silk ripping, and the force of it threw the kitchen lamp dark.
For a second, only streetlight filled the flat.
Aurora stood against Lucien, her hands trapped between their chests, his bandaged palm pressed over her wrist. His heartbeat hit fast against her knuckles. Hers answered, worse.
The lamp flickered back on.
A black line circled her left wrist just above the crescent scar, thin as ink, then sank beneath the skin until only a faint shadow remained.
Lucien stared at it.
Aurora stared at him.
His face had gone pale with something sharper than fear.
“I told you it would mark you.”
“You also told me I was useful.”
He flinched.
She should have stepped away. She should have cleaned the blood, checked the wards, called Eva, barred the door, found every practical task in the room and buried herself beneath them.
Instead, she stayed where she was.
Lucien lifted his good hand, stopped before touching her face, and held it there, fingers curled in restraint.
Aurora looked at his hand, then at his mouth.
“Don’t start behaving now.”
His eyes searched hers.
“Tell me to stop.”
“You haven’t started.”
The space between them broke.
He kissed her like a man refusing to take more than offered and failing by inches. His mouth met hers with heat and restraint at war, soft for one breath, then unsteady when her fingers caught his waistcoat and dragged him closer. He tasted of rain and blood and the mint he always carried, and under it, the faint smoke of the realm that had made half of him.
Aurora kissed him back with every unsaid word sharpened behind her teeth.
He made a rough sound into her mouth and turned his body so his wounded hand stayed clear, so no weight trapped her against the counter. Even now. Even wrecked. Even hungry.
That care undid her more than the kiss.
She broke away first, breath uneven.
Lucien rested his forehead near hers, not touching until she leaned the last fraction.
“I’m still angry,” she said.
“I know.”
“I don’t forgive you because you bled attractively on Eva’s floor.”
“I would never presume my bleeding was attractive.”
“It’s very French of you to presume silently.”
His breath warmed her cheek, almost a laugh.
Ptolemy yowled from the coffee table.
Aurora turned her head.
The cat had one paw on the jam jar. The black shard inside had begun to tap against the glass again, slow and deliberate.
Lucien’s arm tightened around her waist for one brief second before he let go.
Aurora reached for the crossbow on the hall table.
“Now,” she said, wiping blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, “you can explain the coronation.”