AI The third deadbolt gave a gritty metallic shriek, and Aurora pulled the door open — and stopped cold.
Lucien Moreau stood in the dim stairwell outside Eva's flat, one hand braced on the ivory head of his cane, the other curled loosely at his side. The smell of cumin and charred garlic from the curry house below drifted up the narrow stairs and wrapped around him like a humid greeting. His platinum hair was slicked back, but a few stray strands had escaped to frame the hard, elegant lines of his face. He wore a tailored charcoal suit that had seen better hours; the jacket was skewed off one shoulder, and a dark stain spread slowly along his left side. And those eyes — one amber, one black — were fixed on her face as if he had rehearsed a speech on the way over and forgotten every word the moment he saw her.
Her fingers tightened on the door's edge. Behind her, Ptolemy gave a soft, inquisitive chirrup and twined around her ankles, his tabby tail brushing her bare calf.
"Hello, Aurora," Lucien said.
Her name in his mouth was a blade turned slowly in an old wound. Of all the things she'd expected when the knock had come — a lost delivery, Eva returning early from Oxford, a neighbour complaining about the noise — Lucien Moreau bracing himself on his cane in a Brick Lane hallway had not made the list.
"How did you find me?" she asked, proud of how level her voice was.
"Yu-Fei said you were cat-sitting. Silas said you hadn't been above the bar in two days." His gaze flicked past her shoulder, into the cluttered warmth of the flat. "May I come in? Please."
She should have said no. She should have slammed the door, thrown all three deadbolts, and gone back to sorting Eva's endless research notes. Instead she stepped back, because the stain on his side was getting bigger, because he was leaning more heavily on the cane than she had ever seen, and because some stupid, treacherous part of her had missed him so much it hurt to look at him.
He crossed the threshold, moving carefully around a stack of hardbacks that threatened to topple. Aurora shut the door and slid the deadbolts home, one after the other, the clicks loud in the sudden quiet. Ptolemy darted forward and rubbed his cheek against Lucien's trouser leg.
"Bonsoir, mon vieux," Lucien murmured, and bent — just slightly , favouring his left side — to scratch the cat behind the ears. Ptolemy, traitor that he was, leaned into the touch and began to purr.
Aurora crossed her arms. The movement pulled the sleeve of her jumper back, baring the pale crescent scar on her left wrist. Lucien's gaze snagged on it, and for a heartbeat the flat seemed even smaller than it was .
The one-bedroom was exactly as cramped and chaotic as Eva kept it: every surface buried beneath books, scrolls, and yellowing research notes, the single table bowed under the weight of them. Aurora's delivery jacket, the Golden Empress dragon embroidered on the breast, hung over the back of a chair. The lamp on the side table cast everything in a warm, exhausted glow.
"Eight months," Aurora said.
Lucien straightened, his hand flexing on the ivory head of his cane. "Eight months, three weeks, and two days," he said quietly . "Not that I've been counting."
"Good to know your arithmetic is still intact." She let the silence stretch . "You told me I was a liability. You told me to stay out of your world. Those were your exact words, as I recall."
His mouth twisted. "I also said I was doing it to keep you alive."
"You said a lot of things." She shrugged, cool and contained . "Most of them were bullshit."
He laughed, then winced, his free hand pressing to his side. Aurora's eyes dropped to the stain. It wasn't just a scuff on the fabric; the blackness was wet, spreading across the charcoal wool in a slow bloom.
"You're bleeding on Eva's floor," she said, and her brain, damn it, had already kicked into problem-solving mode. She was across the room before she could talk herself out of it, dropping to her knees beside the sagging bookshelf to yank open the bottom drawer. Eva kept a first-aid kit somewhere under the scrolls; every witch-adjacent researcher she'd ever met kept one within reach. Her fingers closed around a battered tin box.
"I can fix it myself," Lucien started.
"Sit down before you fall down," Aurora said, straight-arming him toward the narrow sofa under the window. "And don't give me that look. I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it because Eva will kill me if you ruin her rug."
He obeyed, sinking onto the sofa with a controlled grace that couldn't quite hide the tightness around his eyes . Ptolemy jumped up beside him and settled on his thigh, purring like an engine.
Aurora knelt in front of him, the tin box open on the floor. Up close, the details of him were almost too much: the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the scent of sandalwood and something faintly smoky, like the aftermath of a struck match. The amber eye caught the lamplight and held it; the black one swallowed it whole. She hated that she noticed. She hated that her pulse had picked up.
"Shirt off," she ordered.
His eyebrows rose. "At least buy me dinner first."
"Lucien."
He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh and shed the charcoal jacket with a hiss of pain. The white shirt beneath was stuck to his side with blood. Aurora made short work of the buttons, her jaw set, and peeled the fabric back.
The cut was a long, ugly gash across his ribs, the edges sluggish and angry. Silver poisoning, unless she missed her guess; she'd seen enough of the supernatural underworld to recognise a blade that didn't want to heal.
"Collector from Avaros," Lucien said, reading the recognition in her face. "My father's debt. He's in London, and he's decided to collect in blood instead of coin."
Aurora's hands went still. Of all the things he could have said. Avaros — the realm his demon father had crawled out of, the place he never talked about.
"He's going after everyone I care about," Lucien went on, his voice rougher now . "Everything I—" He stopped, swallowed. "It's you, Aurora. It's been you since the night you threatened to run me over with a delivery scooter if I didn't stop following you."
Despite everything, her mouth twitched. "You deserved it."
"I did." His good hand came up, hesitant, and brushed a strand of straight black hair behind her ear. The gesture was so familiar it stole the air from her lungs. "I never used you. I let them think you were leverage, yes. I let them believe I cared about you too much to risk you. But I never put you in a room with them. I never laid a hand on your ex."
At the mention of Evan, Aurora's fingers tightened on the gauze. She pressed a little harder than necessary to the wound. Lucien hissed.
"Careful," he said.
"Don't talk about Evan," she said. The last time she'd seen Lucien, she'd found out he'd known Evan was in London, had known the bastard was circling her, and had said nothing because he'd wanted Evan to lead him to a bigger prize. "You don't get to rewrite it."
"I'm not rewriting anything." His amber eye burned; his black eye seemed to deepen. "I'm telling you I was wrong. I'm telling you I should have trusted you with the truth. And I'm telling you now, because the collector has your name, and if I have to burn my whole world down to keep you breathing, I will."
The confession hung between them, raw and unsteady. Aurora cleaned the wound with brisk, efficient strokes, her bright blue eyes fixed on her work because she couldn't look at him. Rain had started against the window, thin and restless.
"You're an idiot," she said thickly.
"A well-dressed idiot," Lucien agreed. His hand found hers where it rested against his ribs, long fingers wrapping around her wrist, his thumb passing over the crescent scar there. The touch was warm, callused, unbearably gentle. "Tu m'as manqué," he said, so quietly she almost missed it. "I missed you, Rory. Every day. Even when I told myself I was protecting you."
She finally looked up. He was closer than she'd realised, his face inches from hers, his heterochromatic gaze searching her own. The attraction was still there, a live wire under the floorboards, humming and dangerous. So was the hurt — the eight months of silence , the fear, the nights she'd waited for a message that never came.
"I don't hate you," she heard herself say, and the words tasted like surrender . "That's the problem, Lucien. I wish I did."
His breath left him in a rush. For a moment she thought he might kiss her, and God help her, she didn't pull away. But the moment stretched and broke, and she sat back on her heels, taping the bandage into place with more force than strictly necessary.
"Done," she said. "You're not dying tonight. Unfortunately."
He smiled, a real one this time, and it hurt to see it. "Merciful as ever."
She closed the tin box and stood, her legs stiff. In the kitchenette, she filled the kettle with hands that weren't quite steady. Behind her, she heard the shift of his weight on the sofa, the soft rasp of his fingers over Ptolemy's fur, the three deadbolts holding the world outside at bay.
"You can stay," she called over her shoulder, keeping her voice cool. "On the sofa. But in the morning, you tell me everything — the collector, the debt, Avaros, all of it. And if you lie to me again, Lucien, I'll use the blade in your cane to finish what he started."
"I'd expect nothing less," he said. "I came back for you, Aurora. Not for the fight. For you."
She didn't answer. She just waited for the kettle to boil, listening to the rain on Brick Lane and the steady, purring presence of the man she had never managed to forget.