Run: 2026-04-25-01KQ2HEA36H61JAGAEJ6ZQ843B

The knock came at half past ten, three sharp raps against the reinforced door of Eva’s flat. Rory looked up from the stack of Eva’s research notes, Ptolemy the tabby stirring in her lap. The deadbolts were all thrown. She’d put them there herself after Eva had left for Edinburgh, a precaution that felt absurd now. No one came to Brick Lane at this hour unless they wanted something. She crossed the creaking floorboards and peered through the spyhole. The fisheye lens distorted the figure on the landing, but she’d recognise that silhouette anywhere. Tailored shoulders. Platinum hair slicked back. The curve of an ivory cane. Rory’s hand froze on the second bolt. Lucien Moreau. She hadn’t seen him in eight months. Not since the night she’d walked out of his flat in Mayfair with blood on her hands and his name stuck in her throat. He’d let her go. Didn’t follow. Didn’t call. And she’d told herself it was for the best—that a half-demon fixer and a woman running from an abusive ex couldn’t mix without leaving scorch marks. But here he was, standing on the doormat, patient as a gargoyle. She pulled the first bolt. Then the second. The third slid with a metallic grate. She opened the door a crack, chain still on, and met his mismatched eyes through the gap. “Rory.” His voice was low, a little rough at the edges. The way it always sounded when he’d been smoking or fighting or both. “Lucien.” She didn’t smile. “You’re a long way from Soho.” “I need to talk to you.” “Talk.” She let the word sit. “You’ve had eight months to talk.” His jaw tightened. He looked different—thinner in the face, shadows under his good eye. The black one, that pupil-less abyss, seemed to swallow the dim hallway light. His suit was charcoal, immaculate as ever, but his shirt collar was undone. No tie. That was a first. “Can I come in, or do we do this in the corridor?” Rory considered the question. The landing smelled of cumin and fried onions from the curry house below. A car backfired somewhere on Brick Lane. The cat had followed her to the door and was now weaving between her ankles, curious. She unchained the door and stepped back. He didn’t move right away. He stood there, cane planted, watching her with an intensity she remembered too well. Then he stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The flat suddenly felt smaller. Hotter. Ptolemy mewed and pressed his head against Lucien’s polished Oxford. Lucien ignored him. “Eva’s not here,” Rory said, crossing her arms. “She’s in Edinburgh till Sunday. You want her, you’ll have to wait.” “I don’t want Eva.” The words landed in the space between them, heavy and bare. Rory’s stomach flipped, but she kept her face neutral. “Then what do you want?” He set the cane against the edge of the cluttered coffee table. The ivory handle gleamed under the single lamp. He took off his jacket, draped it over the back of a chair, and the motion was too familiar. She’d seen him do that a hundred times in his own flat, always with that same precise efficiency. It felt like trespass. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “You knew where I was. Eva’s address isn’t classified.” “I knew where you were. I didn’t know if you wanted to be found.” Rory let out a short breath. “So you decided to just show up at my door at night? That’s not creepy at all.” “You’re not answering your phone.” She hadn’t had a working phone in three weeks. The last one had gone through the wall of her room above Silas’s bar during a nightmare. She’d been dreaming of Evan’s hands around her throat. Lucid. Helpless. She hadn’t told anyone. “Phone’s dead,” she said. “Everything about this is dead, Rory. The way you talk. The way you look at me. Like I’m a ghost.” She flinched. He noticed. “That night—” he started. “Don’t.” “You walked out. You didn’t say a word. You stood in my kitchen, covered in ichor, and you just… left. I didn’t know if you were hurt. I didn’t know if you hated me. I waited three days before I called Eva, and she told me you were fine.” His voice dropped. “Fine. That was the word she used.” “What was I supposed to do, Lucien? Stay and have tea?” He moved closer. One step. Then another. The flat’s cramped layout meant the coffee table was the only real barrier between them. He stopped at its edge, fingers resting on a pile of Eva’s notes. The top page was covered in cramped handwriting—translations of a medieval Welsh grimoire. “That job in Whitechapel,” he said. “I didn’t know the target was tied to your ex. If I’d known—” “You still would have taken it.” Her voice came out steadier than she expected. “You’re a fixer. You don’t ask questions.” “I ask questions when it involves you.” His gaze locked onto hers. “I always have.” The silence stretched. Ptolemy leaped onto the armchair and started grooming his paw, indifferent. Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in the direction of Spitalfields. Rory broke first. She turned away, walked to the kitchenette, and poured herself a glass of water she didn’t want. The tap coughed. The pipes in this place were ancient. “Why now?” she asked, back to him. “Why tonight?” “Because I heard something.” His footsteps were soft on the linoleum. He’d followed her. “About Evan.” Rory’s hand tightened on the glass. The name still had teeth. “He’s out,” Lucien said. “Parole. Three weeks ago.” She set the glass down slowly. The kitchen counter was covered in tea stains and loose sugar. She stared at a brown ring, counting her breaths. “I had people watching him,” Lucien continued. “They lost him two days ago. He’s not in London. But he’s heading this way. I don’t know where, exactly, but I know he’s looking for you.” Rory turned. Lucien stood two feet away, close enough that she could smell the leather of his coat and something darker, faintly sulphuric. The half-demon in him. The part he never talked about. “You came to warn me,” she said. “I came to protect you.” The word hung between them. Protect. Like the time he’d thrown himself in front of a revenant’s claws and taken a gash across his ribs that would’ve killed a human. Like the time he’d spent three hours convincing a Fae lord not to trade her soul for a scrap of information. Like every single thing he’d done in the six months they’d known each other before she’d ruined it. “I don’t need your protection,” she said. “Rory—” “I mean it. I’ve been running from men who think they need to save me my whole life. Evan. My father. You.” She gestured between them. “You’re all the same. You see a broken thing and you want to fix it.” His expression didn’t change, but something shifted in his amber eye. A crack. “I never saw you as broken,” he said. “I saw you as someone who deserved better than the hand she was dealt. And I wanted to help. Not fix. Help.” “You didn’t help. You made it worse.” Her voice cracked. “That night in your flat—when I killed that thing, you looked at me like I was something dangerous. Something to manage.” “I looked at you like I was terrified I’d lost you.” The admission hit her square in the chest. She opened her mouth, but no words came. He reached out. Slowly. His hand hovered near her wrist, not touching. The crescent scar from her childhood seemed to pulse under the kitchen light. “I’m not here to manage you,” he said. “I’m here because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because I walked into Eva’s building tonight not knowing if you’d slam the door in my face or let me in, and I came anyway. Because you’re the only person in this city who makes me feel like I’m not just half a monster.” Rory’s throat tightened. She looked down at his hand—the fine bones, the silver ring on his thumb, the faint calluses from fighting things that shouldn’t exist. She didn’t pull away. “You should have called first,” she whispered. “Would you have answered?” “No.” He smiled. It was a small, tired thing, but it transformed his face. She’d only seen it a handful of times. “Then I’m glad I didn’t call,” he said. Ptolemy meowed loudly from the armchair, demanding attention. Rory laughed—a surprised, wet sound—and Lucien’s smile widened. “Let me stay,” he said. “Just tonight. I’ll take the floor. I won’t touch you unless you ask. But I’m not leaving you alone with him out there.” She looked at him. At the dark circles under his eyes. At the way his fingers still hovered near her wrist, patient, offering a choice. She thought of Evan’s hands. Of the door she’d walked through eight months ago. Of the door she’d just opened. “The sofa’s lumpy,” she said. “I’ve slept on worse.” “The cat sleeps on your face.” “I’ll risk it.” She turned and grabbed a spare blanket from the cupboard—frayed, floral, something Eva had thrifted in Camden. She tossed it at him. He caught it without looking. “One night,” she said. “One night.” She didn’t believe him. But when she walked back to the bedroom and closed the door, she left it unlocked. And when she lay down under the covers, she listened to his footsteps on the other side, the creak of the sofa springs, the cat’s soft purr as he settled on Lucien’s chest. She didn’t sleep well. But for the first time in three weeks, she didn’t dream.