AI The third deadbolt slid back with a heavy metallic clunk, followed by the second, and then the first. Rory pulled the door open, the scent of cumin and toasted coriander from the Brick Lane curry house downstairs rushing in from the landing to mingle with the dusty aroma of old paper inside Eva’s flat.
She had expected Eva, having forgotten her keys again, or perhaps a courier with another crate of esoteric texts. She had not expected Lucien Moreau.
He stood in the dim, peeling stairwell, looking entirely out of place in a tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than a year's rent on this building. His platinum blond hair was slicked back, neat despite the London drizzle, and both hands rested atop the ivory handle of his cane. When his heterochromatic eyes—one warm amber, the other an abyssal , pupilless black—settled on her, the air in Rory’s lungs turned to lead.
"Hello, Aurora," he said, the soft Marseille cadence of his voice wrapping around the syllables of her full name like silk around a blade.
Rory’s hand tightened on the brass doorknob. For three months, she had rehearsed what she would say if she ever bumped into him in Soho or caught sight of him in the back room of Silas’ bar. Now, her quick mind went entirely blank. She settled for attempting to slam the door in his face.
The rubber tip of his cane shot out, wedging neatly against the doorframe an inch before the wood could meet the jamb. He didn't push, didn't use his half-demon strength to force his way in, just held the boundary with infuriating ease.
"I am not at my own flat," Rory said, keeping her voice cool and level, though her pulse was hammering against the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. "Which means you went looking for me. Why?"
"Because Eva is in Prague until Tuesday, you agreed to feed her cat, and you have been ignoring the messages I left with Silas." Lucien tilted his head, a faint crease appearing between his brows. "And because it is raining, *chérie *, and the stairwell smells of damp cabbage. May I come in?"
"There's curry downstairs, not cabbage."
"The second floor is definitely boiling cabbage. Please, Aurora."
Something in the way he said *please *—stripped of his usual broker's arrogance—made her hesitate. Against her better judgment, Rory stepped back, pulling the door open just wide enough for him to pass.
Lucien stepped into the cramped flat, bringing with him the scent of rain, bergamot, and the faint, ozone tang of Avaros magic that always clung to his skin. The space immediately felt smaller. Every horizontal surface in Eva's one-bedroom was already buried under precarious towers of leather-bound books, unrolled parchment scrolls, and yellowing research notes. Lucien navigated the maze with practiced grace, his cane tapping lightly against the floorboards where the rug didn't reach.
Ptolemy, Eva’s massive tabby cat, materialized from behind a stack of Latin lexicons and wove himself around Lucien’s charcoal-clad ankles, purring like a chainsaw.
"Traitor," Rory muttered, shutting the door . She didn't bother with the deadbolts; if Lucien wanted her dead, three locks wouldn't stop the thin blade concealed inside his cane, and if she wanted him gone, she needed the exit clear. She crossed her arms, tucking her hands beneath her elbows, and leaned back against the door. Her straight black hair brushed her shoulders as she raised her chin, fixing him with a bright blue stare. "Two minutes, Luc. State your business."
Lucien crouched slightly to scratch Ptolemy behind the ears before straightening. He looked around the cluttered room, anywhere but at her, a rare display of nerves from a man who routinely brokered peace treaties between vampires and warlocks. Finally, his dual-colored gaze returned to her face.
"You look well," he said quietly .
"I deliver takeaways for Yu-Fei six days a week and spend my nights dodging whatever supernatural disaster Eva has unearthed. I look tired." She kept her tone brisk, clinical, the way her barrister father had taught her to dismantle a witness in Cardiff. If she treated this like a cross-examination, she wouldn't remember what it felt like to have Lucien's hands in her hair, or the way he had walked out of her flat above Silas’ bar three months ago without a word. "What do you want?"
"To give you this." He reached into his inner jacket pocket and withdrew a slim velvet pouch, setting it carefully on the edge of Eva’s coffee table, right beside a half-translated scroll on Mesopotamian warding. "A protection charm . Forged in the Fifth Circle. It will mask your scent from the hounds of Avaros."
Rory stared at the pouch, then up at him. "Why would hounds from Avaros be looking for me?"
"Because they are looking for me," Lucien said, his jaw tightening . "My father’s court has been restless. When I cut ties with you in November, it was because one of his scouts spotted us leaving the Golden Empress together."
The revelation hit the room like a physical blow, knocking the wind out of the tight, defensive anger Rory had been nursing all winter. She unfolded her arms, pushing off the door to take a step toward him.
"That's why?" Her voice dropped an octave, rough with disbelief. "You let me think—God, Luc, after that night, you vanished. And when I tracked you down at your office, you looked right through me and treated me like a client who couldn't afford your fee."
"I had to make it convincing," he said, taking a step closer to her, narrowing the gap between them amidst the towers of books. "If the scout believed you were merely a temporary distraction, a human girl I had grown bored of, he wouldn't bother using you as leverage against me."
"So you made the decision for both of us," Rory snapped, heat rising in her cheeks. "You decided to play the callous bastard to save me, without ever thinking to actually *tell * me?"
"You are human, Aurora!" For the first time, Lucien’s composure cracked, his voice rising as his free hand gripped the ivory handle of his cane until his knuckles turned white . "Clever, brilliant, and entirely too fearless for your own good, yes, but human. If you had known I was being watched, what would you have done? You would have started researching Avaros. You would have tried to outthink a demon lord with Eva’s dusty scrolls and your own stubborn pride. Lying to you was the only way to keep you out of the line of fire."
Rory opened her mouth to argue, to tell him he was wrong, and then shut it again. Because he wasn't wrong. That was the maddening part. Her mind always worked like a puzzle box; if he had told her about the scout in November, she would have spent the last ninety days tearing through London’s underworld looking for a loophole to exploit.
Still, the logic of it didn't erase the ache of those weeks after he left. After what she had survived with Evan back in Cardiff—the manipulation, the feeling of being small and disposable—letting Lucien past her defenses had required every ounce of bravery she possessed. Having him discard her the next morning had nearly broken something vital inside her.
"You knew about Evan," she whispered, the fight draining out of her, leaving only the raw hurt beneath. "You knew what it took for me to trust you. And you used that."
Lucien flinched as if she had struck him. Slowly, he leaned his cane against a precarious stack of encyclopedias, leaving himself entirely unarmed—a gesture that, for him, was the equivalent of stripping bare. He took the final step between them, stopping just inches away.
"I know," he murmured, his voice ragged . "And I have hated myself for every hour of the last three months because of it."
Slowly, giving her ample time to pull away, he reached out and took her left hand. He turned her wrist up, pressing his thumb gently over the small crescent-shaped scar on her skin. The warmth of his touch sent a traitorous shiver straight up her arm, settling low in her stomach .
"I am an information broker, *chérie *," Lucien said, his amber eye fierce, his black eye impossibly deep as he looked down at her. "I deal in secrets, leverage, and calculated losses. Until I met you, I never had anything I could not afford to lose. When I realized what you were to me, it terrified me. I handled it poorly. I handled it like a demon, not a man."
Rory looked down at their joined hands, at the stark contrast of his pale fingers against her skin, and then back up to his face. She could hear the rain lashing against Eva’s single windowpane, the distant rumble of traffic on Brick Lane, the steady purr of Ptolemy winding around their ankles again.
"If your father's court is still restless," Rory said, her voice unsteady as his thumb traced the curve of her scar, "why are you here now?"
"Because I killed the scout two nights ago," Lucien said simply, as if mentioning he had picked up his dry cleaning . He lifted his other hand, his fingers brushing a strand of straight black hair back from her cheek, lingering against her jaw. "And because I realized that if another comes, I would rather fight the whole of Avaros with you beside me than spend another winter pretending I do not belong to you."
Rory’s breath hitched. Her heart was pounding wildly against her ribs, her cool head entirely compromised by the heat of his palm against her cheek and the devastating honesty in his voice. She knew she should make him work harder for it. She knew a smart girl would take the velvet pouch, tell him to leave, and think it over from a safe distance.
Instead, Rory reached up and wrapped her fingers around the lapels of his absurdly expensive charcoal suit, tugging him down to her height.
"If you ever make a unilateral decision about my safety again, Moreau," she murmured against his lips, "you won't have to worry about Avaros. I'll kill you myself."
"Noted," Lucien breathed, and then his mouth was on hers.
There was nothing careful or polite about the kiss. Three months of swallowed pride, sharp longing, and sleepless nights poured into the space between them. Lucien’s arm banded around her waist, pulling her flush against the hard line of his chest, lifting her slightly onto her toes. Rory tangled her hands in his slicked-back platinum hair, ruining its neatness, and kissed him back with a fierceness that made a low, resonant sound vibrate in the back of his throat.
They stumbled back a step, bumping against Eva's desk and sending a cascade of translation notes fluttering to the floorboards like autumn leaves. Neither of them cared. Lucien angled his head, deepening the kiss, tasting of rain and dark espresso, his hands gripping her hips as if anchoring himself to the earth through her .
When they finally broke apart, both of them breathing hard, Lucien rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed.
"Stay," Rory said, her fingers still twisted in his hair, the word slipping out before her brain could vet it. "Eva's not back until Tuesday. And the locks on this door are better than the ones at my place."
Lucien opened his eyes, the amber and black shining in the dim light of the cramped flat, a slow, genuine smile curving his mouth. "Whatever you require, Aurora."