AI The last of the three deadbolts slid back with a heavy clunk, and Rory yanked the door open. She’d been expecting the curry guy from downstairs with the extra poppadoms, or maybe Eva’s neighbor from 3B wanting to borrow sugar. She was not expecting him.
Lucien Moreau stood in the dim hallway of the Brick Lane flat, one hand curled around the ivory head of his cane, the other braced against the doorframe as if he’d been leaning there long enough to lose his nerve and then found it again. His platinum blond hair was slicked back, immaculate as ever, but there was a shadow along his jaw that hadn’t been there six months ago, and his tailored charcoal suit sat a little looser on his frame. His heterochromatic eyes—one amber, one black—locked on her face, and the air left her lungs in a rush. He was half a head taller than her, and she hated that she had to tilt her chin up to meet his gaze.
“Hello, Aurora,” he said.
She hated that he still called her that. Hated that his voice, low and faintly French around the edges, still did something treacherous to her pulse . “It’s Rory,” she said, proud of how steady she sounded. “And Eva’s not here. She’s in Edinburgh until Sunday.”
“I know.” He didn’t move, didn’t try to push past her. “I stopped by Silas’ bar first. He said you were cat-sitting.”
Of course he had. Silas had always liked Lucien, damn him. Rory’s fingers tightened on the edge of the door. Behind her, Ptolemy, Eva’s tabby, let out a low mrrp of curiosity from the arm of the sofa, his tail twitching.
“Then you know I’m not at my own flat,” she said, the words clipped . “So why are you here, Lucien?”
“Evan’s out.”
Two words. Her blood went cold . The smell of cumin and frying onions drifted up from the curry house below, suddenly nauseating. Her left wrist tingled, the small crescent scar there pulling white against her skin. She hadn’t thought about Evan—about the flat in Cardiff, the shouting, the way he’d grabbed her hard enough to leave bruises—in months, not since she’d rebuilt herself here in London. Not since Lucien.
“He’s in London,” Lucien continued, his voice carefully neutral. “He’s been asking questions in the sort of places that make people disappear if they don’t answer fast enough.”
“And you thought you’d swing by to gloat?” She tried to shut the door. He stopped it with the toe of his polished shoe, not hard, just enough to hold it there.
“I thought you’d want to know that the man who put that fear in you is three Tube stops away,” he said. “May I come in?”
She should have said no. She should have slammed the door, thrown all three deadbolts, and called Silas, or the police, or anyone who wasn’t the half-demon fixer currently filling her doorway with his stupid expensive cologne and his even more expensive guilt. Instead, she stepped back. “Five minutes.”
He entered like a man walking into a lion’s den he’d already been mauled in once. The flat was cramped at the best of times; with Lucien in it, it shrank to the size of a matchbox. His shoulders nearly brushed the stacks of books that climbed the walls. Every surface was covered with Eva’s research—books, scrolls, and notes on comparative mythology, weighed down by chipped mugs and candle stubs. A half-unfurled scroll lay across the table, and Ptolemy took one look at their guest, hissed, and bolted under the sideboard.
“Even the cat remembers you,” Rory said, crossing her arms. She was acutely aware of her own appearance: shoulder-length black hair scraped back in a messy knot, an old Cardiff University hoodie streaked with grease from her delivery shift at Golden Empress, bare feet. Next to his tailored charcoal suit, she felt about as elegant as a chip pan.
Lucien’s mouth twitched. “Cats have excellent taste. Or terrible loyalty. I was never sure which.” He leaned on his cane, the ivory handle catching the low light. She knew what the cane concealed. She’d seen the thin blade flick out often enough to know he hadn’t come here unarmed. He had been born in Marseille to a human mother and a demon father from the realm of Avaros, and sometimes, when the light caught him wrong, she swore the black eye was a window into somewhere else entirely. She had never been afraid of it. That had been half the problem.
“You look well, Rory,” he said.
“Don’t.” The word came out sharper than she intended. “Don’t stand there in your suit and make small talk like you didn’t vanish out of my life six months ago.”
His gaze dropped to the floor, then lifted again. “I didn’t vanish. I left.”
“Same thing, last I checked.”
“I left a note.”
She let out a short, ugly laugh. “Yeah. ‘Stay safe. Stay away from the underworld. —L.’ Real romantic. I framed it.”
Something flickered across his face—regret, or maybe just the same old exhaustion. He spoke four languages fluently; she had heard him switch between French, English, and something guttural that made the hair on her arms stand up, in the space of a single phone call. Right now, though, he just sounded tired. “I couldn’t stay. My father’s creditors in Avaros had begun to take an interest in you, Rory. You were a lever they could use. If I had stayed, if I had let myself—” He broke off, jaw tightening. “They would have broken you to get to me.”
She remembered the last night then, unwanted and vivid. They had been soaking wet, hiding in the doorway of a closed kebab shop off Goswell Road after a job for a vampiric loan shark had gone sideways. He had kissed her then, desperate and fierce, and she had kissed him back, and later, in her bed above Silas’ bar, he had worshipped her like a man starved. She had fallen asleep with her face tucked into the hollow of his throat, listening to his heart beat, and woken up to an empty room and a note that had felt like a slap .
“So you broke my heart instead?” The words were out before she could stop them, raw and humiliating. She saw the exact moment they landed. Lucien went very still.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “And I have thought of nothing else since.”
The silence stretched. Downstairs, someone laughed, the sound muffled by floorboards. Ptolemy’s tail flicked out from under the sideboard, a fuzzy metronome of disapproval.
Rory’s cool-headed, quick-thinking mind—the one that had gotten her out of Cardiff, out of Evan’s reach, and into a life where she delivered Chinese food and slept above a bar—scrambled for purchase. She wanted to hate him. God, she wanted to. But the hurt had scabbed over, and under the scar tissue the attraction still lived, stubborn and stupid. He was right there. Six months ago she had traced the line of his jaw with her thumb, had felt his pulse hammering under her palm, had tasted the salt on his throat. He had held her like she was something precious and then set her down like she was something that would shatter if he gripped too tight.
“Why now?” she asked. “Why come back?”
“Because Evan is asking questions, and the people he’s asking are the kind who trade in things they don’t understand.” Lucien took a half-step toward her, then stopped himself. “And because I need your mind. You see angles no one else does. You always did.”
She snorted. “Flattery won’t get you a cup of tea, Moreau.”
“I’m not asking for tea.” His voice dropped, roughened. “I’m asking for a chance to keep you alive. And maybe—” he hesitated, and for a half-demon information broker who could talk his way out of a vampire’s grudge, he suddenly looked almost uncertain “—maybe to say the things I should have said six months ago.”
Rory’s throat tightened. Things left unsaid. She had rehearsed this moment in the shower, in the delivery van, in the dark hours before dawn when the flat above Silas’ bar felt too quiet. She had imagined slamming the door. She had imagined kissing him. She had never imagined this: him standing in Eva’s cramped, book-choked flat, looking at her like she was the only solid thing in a world that kept trying to dissolve.
“You don’t get to just walk back in,” she said, but she didn’t move to open the door. “You don’t get to break me and then play the hero because my ex is in town.”
“I know.” He reached out, slowly , giving her time to pull away. His fingers brushed her left wrist, right over the crescent scar. Her pulse jumped under his touch. “I don’t deserve a second chance. But Evan won’t wait for me to earn one. Let me help you. Please.”
She looked down at his hand, at the long fingers, the ivory cane braced under his arm. She thought of Evan’s face, of the fear she’d thought she’d buried. She thought of the note, and the rain, and the way Lucien had said her name like a prayer when she’d come apart beneath him.
“Five minutes,” she repeated, but her voice had lost its edge . She stepped back, just enough to let him further into the flat, just enough to let the door swing shut behind him. The deadbolts were still thrown, heavy and final, but she made no move to lock them again.
He exhaled, a sound like a man surfacing from deep water. “I’ll take whatever you give me.”
Ptolemy, traitor that he was, emerged from under the sideboard and wound around Lucien’s legs, purring. Lucien’s mouth curved into a real smile for the first time since she’d opened the door, and Rory felt her resolve crack a little further.
“Don’t get comfortable ,” she warned, moving past him toward the kitchenette, her bare feet silent on the worn floorboards. “You can start by making yourself useful and telling me everything you know about Evan. And Lucien?”
He turned, amber-and-black eyes fixed on her. “Yes, Rory?”
“If you disappear again,” she said, “I won’t bother leaving a note.”
He inclined his head, a courtly gesture that looked absurd and perfect in Eva’s cramped flat above the curry house. “Understood.”
And as she filled the kettle, listening to the low murmur of his voice behind her, Rory realized the five minutes had already stretched into something much longer. The cat was purring . The books and scrolls seemed to lean in, listening. And the man who had shattered her heart was standing in her temporary kitchen, pretending he hadn’t already broken back in.