Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE8Q30DH261MWFJ5SEJ37R9

The three deadbolts on Eva's door took Rory longer to work through than she wanted, especially with wet hair dripping down her collar and a phone buzzing uselessly in her pocket. She yanked the last bolt free and pulled the door open, ready to snap at whoever had been leaning on the buzzer for the last two minutes. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing, cane resting against one shoulder, rain beading on the shoulders of a charcoal suit that had no business looking that clean in this weather. "You're soaked," she said, because it was easier than anything else that came to mind. "London does that to a man who insists on walking instead of taking a cab like a reasonable person." "Nobody insisted you walk." "No," he agreed. "Nobody insisted I come at all." Ptolemy wound himself around Rory's ankles, unbothered by the stranger at the door, and she nearly tripped stepping back to let Lucien through. He didn't wait for an invitation past that — just moved into the flat like he'd never left it, eyes flicking over the towers of books, the scrolls unrolled across the coffee table, the general chaos Eva called a filing system. "Charming as ever," he said. "Though I recall this place having fewer candles and considerably less risk of spontaneous combustion." "Eva's not here. If you're looking for information, you'll have to come back." "I'm not looking for information." He set the cane against the sofa's arm, and the small click of ivory against wood filled the silence better than either of them could. "Then what are you looking for, Lucien?" His amber eye caught the lamp light. The black one gave nothing back at all. "Does it matter what I say I'm looking for, or only what you'll believe?" "That's not an answer." "No," he said. "It's a question. I've gotten good at those. Fewer people get hurt when I ask instead of tell." Rory crossed her arms, aware of how her jumper clung damp to her shoulders, aware of the crescent scar on her wrist that itched whenever her pulse picked up, which it currently was, infuriatingly. "You could've called." "You'd have let it ring out." "Probably." "There we are, then. Some honesty, finally arriving fashionably late." She moved past him toward the kitchenette, mostly to put distance between them, and put the kettle on more out of habit than hospitality. "Last time I saw you," she said, back to him, "you handed my location to a man who wanted to carve information out of me with something sharper than words. So forgive me if I'm not thrilled to find you dripping on Eva's carpet." "I gave him a location three streets from where you actually were." "That's not the same as not giving him anything." "No. It's not. It's the difference between betrayal and survival, and I'll let you decide which one applies, since you're so fond of deciding things about me without asking first." She turned. He hadn't moved, hadn't reached for the theatrics he usually wrapped himself in — no smirk, no idle twirl of that cane. Just standing there, rain still clinging to the ends of his platinum hair, looking like a man who'd rehearsed leaving more than arriving. "You could've told me. After. Instead of vanishing for three months." "I could have." His voice dropped, lost some of its polish. "I told myself you didn't want to hear from the man who put a target on your back, however small, however necessary. I told myself a great many convenient things, Aurora." Hearing her full name in his mouth did something unfair to her chest. "And now? What changed?" "Nothing changed. That's rather the point." He finally looked away from her, down at the cane, at his own hands. "I've spent three months telling myself I did the right thing, and three months not believing it for a single night." The kettle clicked off behind her, forgotten. Ptolemy leapt onto a stack of books and knocked a scroll to the floor, and neither of them moved to pick it up. "You don't get to just show up," she said, "soaked through, quoting French philosophy at my ceiling, and expect that to undo three months." "I'm not expecting anything undone. I came because I was tired of the lie I'd been telling myself, and I didn't have anywhere else that lie made sense to say out loud." "That's not romantic, Lucien. That's just sad." "I never claimed otherwise." The corner of his mouth almost lifted, that old familiar half-smile she'd hated herself for missing. "You look terrible," she said, softer now, some of the fight bleeding out of it. "High praise, coming from you." "I didn't say it as praise." "I'll take what I can get." She reached past him for a towel hanging on the back of a chair, and the movement put them closer together than either had planned, close enough that she could see the rain drying at his collarbone, close enough to remember exactly why three months of silence had felt like drowning slowly instead of all at once. "Here," she said, pressing the towel into his hands instead of her own choices. "Dry off. Then you can explain to Eva why there's a demon-blooded fixer dripping on her ancient texts." "And you? What do I explain to you?" She didn't have an answer ready, and for once, she let the silence sit instead of filling it with something sharp. "Start with why you actually came," she said instead. "The real reason. Not the rehearsed one." Lucien looked at her for a long moment, towel forgotten in his hands, water still running from his hair down the side of his face like he hadn't noticed it in the first place. "Because I missed you," he said, "and I've run out of clients interesting enough to distract me from that fact."