Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HB2AAYYXVTRYZNK9VSHCK

Aurora opened the door to find Lucien Moreau leaning against the frame, one hand pressed beneath his charcoal jacket. For a moment, neither of them moved. The bar downstairs sent up a muffled burst of laughter. His platinum hair, usually combed into submission, had fallen across his forehead. There was blood between the fingers of his left hand. “No,” she said, and began to shut the door. “I deserve that.” He caught the frame with his good hand. Not the door. He left her room to close it. That stopped her more effectively than force would have. “There’s someone behind me,” he said. “I didn’t know until I came in from the street. I’m sorry.” Rory looked past him. The landing was empty. Below, the bar door opened, letting out music and the sharp smell of beer, then shut again. “You brought him here?” “Yes.” She hated that he answered plainly. It left her with no argument she could win in the next three seconds. She caught his sleeve and pulled him inside. “Bathroom,” she said. He went, favouring his left leg. His ivory-handled cane struck the floor once before he lifted it. Rory closed the door quietly and turned both locks. Her flat was small enough that she could hear him set the cane down beside the bath. Six weeks without a word, and he had come back bleeding on her floorboards. A footstep sounded on the stairs. Rory crossed to the kitchen counter. There was a paper bag from the Golden Empress there, still holding the empty containers from her shift and a sealed pot of chilli oil Yu-Fei had insisted she take home. She slipped the pot into her pocket, took her keys, and opened the front door. A man stood halfway up the last flight. Dark coat, bare hands. He was looking at her threshold, not her face. “Evening,” Rory said. He came up one more step. “Did a gentleman come this way?” “Plenty do. There’s a bar downstairs.” “Blond. With a cane.” She could feel Lucien’s blood drying on the fingers that had grabbed his sleeve. She kept that hand behind the door. “A cane?” she said. “How old?” The man glanced toward the top of the stairs. Rory saw him count the doors. Hers was the only one on this landing. “He’s injured,” the man said. “I’m trying to help.” “Then you should have stayed with him.” His attention settled on her at last. His eyes were an unremarkable brown, which somehow made the stillness of his face worse. “I didn’t say I’d seen him.” “No,” he said. “You didn’t.” From below came the heavy tread of someone leaving the bar. The man looked down. Rory took the pot from her pocket and worked her thumbnail beneath its lid. “Hang on,” she said. “Were you the one who knocked over the delivery bike?” His brow tightened. “What?” She flung the oil past him, not at him. It hit the stair rail and burst, spattering the wood, the wall, his dark coat. Chilli and garlic rushed into the narrow stairwell. “Oh, brilliant.” Rory stared at the mess. “Silas will have my head.” The man jerked back, wiping at his lapel. The person below started up the stairs. A woman appeared carrying a bin bag, took one look at the red streaks on the rail, and swore. “Sorry,” Rory told her. “Slipped.” The woman edged past the mess, muttering. By the time she reached the landing, the man had backed down two steps to let her through. Rory kept looking at the spilled oil, furious at it, like any woman who had just made a mess outside her own door. When she looked up, he was watching her again. “You’re Aurora Carter,” he said. Her skin went cold. The woman with the bin bag paused at the top of the stairs. “Everything all right?” “Fine,” Rory said. She pulled out her phone. “Though I’m taking a picture before I clean this up. Someone nearly went over.” The man’s gaze dropped to the phone. Then he descended, stepping wide of the oil. He didn’t hurry. Rory listened until the bar door opened beneath him, let out its wash of voices, and closed. The woman made it down after him, carrying the bin bag at arm’s length. Rory shut her door and locked it. Only then did her hand begin to shake. Lucien came out of the bathroom. He had taken off his jacket. Blood had soaked through the side of his white shirt, just above his hip. “He knows my name,” she said. “I heard.” “Were you planning to mention that?” “I was going to tell you everything. He reached the stairs first.” She looked at him. “That’s a very convenient order of events.” “Yes.” He stood beside her little table, not coming closer. She noticed the blood on his fingers again, the way his right hand held the edge of the shirt away from the wound. Rory took her phone from her pocket and sent Silas a message: Man in dark coat asking after me upstairs. Can you keep an eye out? Then she dialled emergency services and reported an injured man in her flat. Lucien watched her make the call. He didn’t object. When she hung up, she said, “Sit down.” “I can stand.” “Congratulations.” He sat. The first-aid kit was under the sink. She brought it to the table with a clean tea towel and a bowl of water. Up close, the cut in his side looked narrow, but deep enough to make her stomach tighten. The dressing in the kit would have to do until help arrived. “Who is he?” she asked. “His name is Vale. He works for people from my father’s realm.” “Avaros.” Lucien nodded. He watched her open the packet of gauze. “He was asking about me. Now he’s asking about you.” “Because you came here.” “Because he found a photograph of us taken outside Eva’s flat last month. I came to warn you about that. I didn’t see him follow me from the station.” She remembered the evening outside Eva’s place on Brick Lane: rain shining on the pavement, Ptolemy howling through the open window above the curry house, Lucien standing close enough that the damp wool of his coat brushed her arm. Before the kiss. Before the envelope. “You could have phoned.” “I did. It went to voicemail.” She had blocked his number. She didn’t offer that as an excuse. “You could have told Eva.” “I did. She said she would call you. Then I saw Vale outside the station, and I thought I had time to get here first.” Rory pressed the folded tea towel against his side. He drew a sharp breath, and she eased up. “Hold that,” she said. His hand came over hers for a second as he took the cloth. Warm skin, cold fingers. She stepped back and rummaged through the kit for tape. “Six weeks,” she said. “That’s how long you had to tell me why you sent that ticket.” Lucien’s gaze lifted to hers. The ticket had been to Cardiff. First class, in an envelope with her name written in his precise hand. No note. It had arrived the morning after he kissed her in Eva’s kitchen, while Eva slept and Ptolemy sat on the research notes as if he understood their importance. “I thought you’d be safer away from London,” he said. “You thought I’d get on a train because you paid for it.” “No.” He looked down at the tea towel. “I hoped you would. I knew I couldn’t make you.” “You didn’t even ask.” “I knew what your answer would be.” “And there it is.” He let out a slow breath. “I made a decision that belonged to you. I’m sorry.” Rory cut a length of tape. It curled around her thumb, catching briefly on the little crescent scar at her wrist. She freed it and set a dressing beside him. “I thought you regretted kissing me,” she said. “That’s what it looked like.” “I don’t regret it.” “You disappeared.” “I did.” He swallowed. “I was frightened, Aurora. Of what my father’s people might do if they saw us together. And of staying when I knew I couldn’t offer you an ordinary life.” Her laugh was small and without humour. “I deliver noodles to people who summon things in their basements. I gave up ordinary a while ago.” “I know.” “No, you know pieces. You never asked what I wanted.” He met her eyes then, amber and black, his face stripped of the composure he wore so well. “What did you want?” She had imagined telling him a dozen times. In those versions she was cutting, or calm, or already past caring. She hadn’t imagined him holding a bloodied towel at her kitchen table while an ambulance came through London traffic toward her flat. “I wanted you to come back the next morning,” she said. “I wanted breakfast. After that, we could have argued about danger.” His mouth parted. He looked away toward the window, where the bar’s sign threw a pale stripe across the glass. “I should have come back,” he said. “Yes.” “I’m here now.” “Because you needed help.” “I did.” He looked at her again. “And because you needed to know about Vale. Both can be true.” Her phone lit up. Silas had replied: He’s gone. I’m watching the door. Police too? Rory typed back, Yes. Man threatened me. Then she called the police and gave Vale’s description while Lucien held the dressing in place. Saying it aloud steadied her. Dark coat. Brown eyes. About six feet. He knew her name. When she finished, Lucien said, “You don’t have to let me stay.” “I know.” She looked at the fresh blood showing at the edge of the towel. “You do have to let someone look at that.” He gave a faint, pained smile. “Understood.” Rory knelt beside his chair to tape the dressing down. He moved his hand only when she asked him to. She could feel him watching her, and she kept her attention on the tape until the last strip held. “Does it hurt?” she asked. “Yes.” “Good. You’ll remember not to turn up without warning.” “I’ll remember.” She sat back on her heels. They were close enough now that she could see a fine scratch at his jaw, half-hidden beneath the shadow of his beard. She wanted to touch it. She wanted to ask him every question she had swallowed for six weeks. Neither impulse went away when he looked at her. “When this is over,” she said, “you can ask if I want to see you again.” “I will.” “And if I say yes, you don’t get to decide what’s safe for me without telling me.” “No,” he said. “I don’t.” His answer came quickly, but he stayed still and let her consider it. Downstairs, someone cheered at a song coming on. Far off, a siren rose above the traffic, then dipped away again. Rory reached for his hand. “For now, you can hold this.” She put a clean square of gauze in his palm and guided it against the dressing. His fingers closed around it. Then, gently, they closed around hers. She let them.