Run: 2026-10-13-01M4V1PFRVVSN2F605FPD89H5K

Brass scraped against brass. Once, twice, three times. The final deadbolt clicked back, and the heavy wood swung inward, letting in the stairwell's damp draft and the rich, toasted-cumin aroma from the curry house downstairs. Lucien Moreau filled the doorframe. Rain darkened the shoulders of his tailored charcoal coat, and a single silver-blond strand had escaped its slick hold to curl against his brow. His mismatched eyes—one the colour of burnt sugar, the other a flat, lightless void—dropped from Rory’s face to the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, where her fingers gripped the edge of the door. "You changed the locks." "Eva changed the locks. Added two more, actually." Rory didn't step back. She kept her foot wedged behind the bottom hinge, blocking his path into the cramped hallway. "The last time you were in this borough, you left a bloodstain on the floorboards and a very expensive cufflink on my nightstand. Neither of us wants a repeat performance." Lucien’s gloved hand tightened on the ivory handle of his cane. The carving—a coiled serpent with rubies for eyes—dug into his leather palm. "I came for the cufflink." "I pawned it." A muscle feathered in his jaw. The Marseillais cadence in his voice thickened as his gaze drifted past her shoulder, taking in the towering stacks of yellowed scrolls and leather-bound lexicons balancing precariously on the radiator. "Then I will take its value in information. Let me in, Rory. The rain in this city is an insult, and I am bleeding on your welcome mat." Rory looked down. A dark, viscous drop—too thick for human blood, carrying the faint, ozone tang of Avaros—splashed onto the frayed coir rug beside his polished Oxford shoe. She stepped aside. Lucien moved past her with a stiff, measured gait that betrayed the injury he was hiding. He smelled of wet wool, clove cigarettes, and cold iron. As she threw the three deadbolts back into place, Ptolemy dropped from the top of the fridge, landing with a dull thud on a pile of Latin translations. The tabby arched his back, let out a low hiss at the half-demon, and vanished into the bedroom. "Smart cat," Rory muttered, crossing the tiny living room to the kitchenette. She shoved a stack of court transcripts off the counter to make room for the kettle. "Take the coat off. Sit on the wooden chair, not the sofa. Eva’s got fifteenth-century parish records spread across the cushions, and if you bleed demon ichor on the Bishop of Winchester's ledger, she’ll skin us both." Lucien unbuttoned his overcoat with one hand. His left arm hung at an awkward angle against his ribs. When the heavy wool parted, a jagged tear in his crisp white shirt revealed dark, angry flesh knitting itself together at a sluggish pace. Something had slowed his healing. Silver, or perhaps bone-ash. He lowered himself onto the spindle-backed chair, resting his cane across his knees. The black eye tracked her movements as she pulled a tin of antiseptic and a roll of gauze from the cupboard above the sink, right beside the Golden Empress takeaway menus. "Still delivering dumplings for Cheung?" "Pays the rent. Doesn't require me to make deals with things that have three rows of teeth." She turned, leaning her hip against the chipped laminate counter. Her bright blue eyes narrowed. "Four months, Luc. Not a postcard. Not a burned matchbook left on my windowsill. You walked out of my flat while I was still asleep, and the next day half the brokers in Soho were saying the Frenchman had gone back to Paris." "Marseille." "I don't care if you went to Brighton. You left." "You were safe when I left." "I was alone when you left." The kettle began to rumble, a low vibration that rattled the mismatched mugs on the drying rack. Lucien looked away, his amber eye catching the yellow glow of the streetlamp filtering through the rain-streaked window. Without the armour of his coat, his shoulders looked narrower, the sharp lines of his face drawn tight by exhaustion. "The Vane brothers knew about you," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "They knew I had spent three nights above Silas’s bar. If I had stayed a fourth, they would have come through your windows instead of mine." Rory crossed the small space between them, the floorboards creaking under her boots. She didn't reach for his wound. Instead, she grabbed the end of his ivory cane and lifted it an inch off his knees before letting it drop back against his thighs. "My father is an Irish barrister who can argue a judge into a coma, and I survived two years with Evan before I ever met a single creature from the underworld," she said, standing between his knees, forcing him to look up at her. "Don't dress cowardice up as chivalry, Lucien. It looks cheap on you. And you hate cheap things." His hand shot out—the good one, uninjured and fast—and wrapped around her left wrist. His thumb pressed directly over the small white crescent of her scar. Even through the thin lambskin of his glove, the heat of him radiated against her pulse point, hotter than any human fever. "You think it was easy?" He pulled her an inch closer. The scent of ozone and cloves swallowed the room's dusty air. "Walking out of that room with your hair still tangled across my pillow? Knowing that every bastard from Whitechapel to Mayfair was looking for a lever to break me, and you were lying three feet away without a single ward on your door?" "You could have asked me what I wanted." "I knew what you wanted." His thumb traced the curve of the scar, a slow, deliberate stroke that made her breath hitch in her throat. "You wanted to fight. You would have stood in that doorway with a kitchen knife and a law textbook, and they would have torn you to pieces before I could draw my blade." "I have a crowbar now," she said, though the heat in her voice had thinned, replaced by a tight ache beneath her ribs. A ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth, gone before it could settle. He didn't let go of her wrist. Instead, his fingers slid up her forearm, pushing back the sleeve of her worn cardigan until his glove gave way to bare skin at his wrist, pressing his burning pulse against hers. "Look at me, *chérie*." She looked. The black eye was a mirror, reflecting the small, cluttered room and the pale oval of her own face; the amber one burned like banked coals. "Why are you here, Luc?" she asked, her voice barely carrying over the whistle of the boiling kettle behind them. "Eva isn't home until midnight. This isn't my flat. And you didn't come to Brick Lane for a bandage." He tilted his head back, resting the nape of his neck against the stacked encyclopedias behind his chair. His fingers tightened on her arm, anchoring her in place. "Because the Vane brothers are dead," Lucien said, watching her lips. "And I am tired of sleeping in beds that do not smell like cheap jasmine soap and takeaway ginger."