AI The third brass deadbolt slid back with a heavy click. Rory pulled the door open, the smell of toasted cumin and fenugreek from the curry house downstairs rushing into the stairwell to meet the London rain.
Lucien Moreau filled the doorway.
Water darkened the shoulders of his charcoal overcoat, though not a single strand of his slicked-back platinum hair was out of place. He leaned a fraction of his weight onto his ivory-handled cane. His gaze—one eye the warm gold of aged whiskey, the other an abyssal black—dropped from her face to the grease-stained Golden Empress takeaway polo she hadn’t bothered to change out of.
Rory kept her grip tight on the brass doorknob. Six months of silence , and he materialized on Brick Lane without so much as a text message.
"Eva isn't here." Rory pushed the door toward the frame. "Try the British Museum. Basement archives."
Lucien’s gloved hand shot out, palm flattening against the scuffed wood. The door stopped an inch from the latch. He didn't push, just held the weight of it with infuriating ease.
"I didn't climb three flights of rotting stairs for Eva, *ma petite *." His French accent curled around the syllables, low and rough like crushed velvet . "And if I don't step out of this draft in the next ten seconds, my leg is going to lock up, and you will have to drag me over the threshold yourself."
"I'd leave you for the rats."
"The Brick Lane rats have terrible table manners." He shifted, a genuine wince tightening the corner of his mouth as he adjusted his grip on the ivory handle. "Let me in, Aurora. Five minutes."
The use of her full name, combined with the subtle tremor in his right knee, broke her resolve . Rory stepped back, letting go of the wood.
Lucien stepped into the cramped flat, bringing the chill of the East London night with him. He surveyed the chaos of Eva's living space—towering stacks of leather-bound grimoires on the floorboards, Latin scrolls pinned under empty mugs, and parchment notes fluttering near the radiator. Ptolemy, a massive striped tabby, cracked one yellow eye open from his perch atop a pile of Aramaic translations, hissed once at the half-demon, and went back to sleep.
"Charming," Lucien murmured, unbuttoning his damp overcoat. "Your friend still decorates like a sixteenth-century alchemist."
"Don't touch the paper stacks. There's a system." Rory crossed her arms, tucking her hands beneath her elbows to hide the sudden tremor in her fingers. "Your five minutes started in the hallway, Luc. What do you want?"
He draped his coat over the back of a wooden chair, the only clear surface within reach, revealing the immaculate three-piece charcoal suit beneath. Everything about him was sharp angles and expensive tailoring, an absurd contrast to the peeling floral wallpaper and the takeaway menus littering the counter. He turned to face her, both hands resting atop the ivory pommel of his cane.
"You changed your number."
"Phones break. Drop them in a puddle off Shoreditch High Street, they stop working. Funny how that happens."
"And yet, Silas tells me you haven't been back to your own flat above his bar in four days." Lucien took a slow step forward, navigating a labyrinth of open encyclopedias. "You're hiding out here. Sleeping on a sofa that smells of cat hair and turmeric."
"I'm cat-sitting."
"Ptolemy is fully capable of opening his own tins, and we both know it." Lucien stopped two paces away. Close enough that the scent of him—rainwater, cedarwood, and the faint, metallic tang of ozone that clung to those with Avaros blood—cut right through the curry fumes. "Why did you run after the docks?"
Rory laughed, a sharp, jagged sound that scraped her throat. She uncrossed her arms, her left wrist catching the amber glow of the mismatched streetlamps outside. The small crescent scar on her skin gleamed pale against her pulse point.
"Run? Is that how you're rewriting it?" She stepped into his space, tilting her chin up to meet that unsettling, mismatched gaze. "I didn't run, Lucien. I walked away from a building you set on fire while I was still inside the perimeter."
A muscle feathered in his jaw. "The ward was failing. The hounds were through the gate."
"I had two minutes left on the cipher! Two minutes to pull the ledger before the whole network went dark."
"You had thirty seconds before three hellhounds tore your throat out!" His voice dropped an octave, the polished fixer cracking to reveal the demon beneath. The black eye seemed to swallow the dim light of the room, expanding until the sclera vanished. "You think I care about a ledger? Let the underworld burn. You were standing in the middle of a summoning circle with a crowbar and a flashlight, Aurora."
"Because that was the plan!" Rory shoved a stack of maps off the edge of the narrow kitchen table, needing something to do with her hands before she reached for his lapels. "My plan. The one we spent three weeks building in your office. We agreed on the risks."
"I lied."
The admission hung between them, heavy and suffocating.
Rory stilled, her fingertips pressed white against the scarred wood of the table. "What?"
Lucien hooked the tip of his cane around the leg of the wooden chair and dragged it closer, lowering himself onto the seat with a stiff grace. He stretched his bad leg out in front of him, rubbing a gloved thumb over the ivory handle where the thin blade was concealed .
"I lied," he repeated, looking up at her through lashes damp with rain. "When we mapped the heist in Soho. When you leaned over my desk with your hair falling in your ink, explaining how you would bypass the blood wards while I held the perimeter. I agreed to your timeline because if I hadn't, you would have walked out of my office and done it alone."
"You blew the charges early on purpose." The realization hit her like a physical blow, knocking the wind from her ribs. "It wasn't the hounds. You collapsed the tunnel to force me out."
"And then you vanished into the fog with the courier before the dust settled," Lucien countered, a bitter edge creeping into his tone . "Not a word. Just a middle finger through the smoke and six months of dead air. Do you have any idea what I tore apart in this city looking for a scratch on you?"
"I didn't ask you to protect me, Luc!"
"I don't require your permission!" He surged back to his feet, the cane clattering against a stack of books and sending half a dozen volumes thudding to the rug.
Ptolemy bolted from the room, a blur of striped fur disappearing into the bedroom.
Lucien didn't look down. He closed the distance between them, trapping Rory against the edge of the kitchen table. He braced one hand on the wood beside her hip, leaning in until the heat radiating from his body raised goosebumps along her bare arms.
"I've spent my life brokering deals with monsters, Rory. Weighing lives in gold and favors. Everything has a price. Everything is expendable." His left hand came up, the leather of his glove impossibly soft as his knuckles brushed the straight black hair back from her cheek. "And then you walk into my parlor with a law school dropout's arrogance and a Golden Empress delivery bag, and suddenly I am bankrupting myself just to keep you breathing."
Rory's breath hitched. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs, traitorously fast. She hated how much she had missed his voice. Hated the way her body leaned into the touch of his gloved hand before her brain could issue the order to pull back.
"I left Cardiff because a man thought he owned my choices," she whispered, her bright blue eyes locked onto his amber one. "Evan used his fists. You used C4 and a hero complex . From where I'm standing, the view looks remarkably similar."
Lucien flinched as if she had struck him across the face. He pulled his hand back immediately, the leather curling into a tight fist against his chest. The demonic darkness receded from his black eye, leaving behind a raw, human vulnerability that made Rory's stomach twist.
"Never compare me to him," Lucien breathed, the words barely audible over the rain lashing the windowpane . "I would rather slit my own throat with my cane than cage you."
"Then why did you blow the tunnel?"
"Because the night before the job, you fell asleep on my Chesterfield," he said, his voice cracking on the confession . "You had my coat pulled up to your chin, and you talked in your sleep, and I stood there in the dark for two hours watching you breathe. And when we got to the docks, and I smelled the brimstone on the wind, I realized I couldn't survive London if you weren't in it."
Silence descended on the flat, thick and electric . Downstairs, the muffled bass of a Bollywood track vibrated through the floorboards.
Rory looked at the proud tilt of his jaw, the shadows hollowed out beneath his eyes, the way he was forcing himself to stand upright on a bad leg without his cane just to take whatever punishment she decided to hand out. For six months, she had convinced herself she was just an asset to him—a clever human pawn the great Frenchman had overruled when the board got messy.
She reached out, her fingers catching the silk of his charcoal tie.
Lucien froze, his chest rising and falling against the back of her knuckles.
"You're an idiot," Rory said, tugging the silk just enough to force his head down an inch. "The greatest information broker in East London, and you didn't even check the dead-drop behind the butcher's shop in Whitechapel."
Lucien blinked, a crease forming between his pale brows. "The Whitechapel drop has been defunct for three years."
"Which is why nobody was watching it." Rory pulled harder on the tie, bringing his mouth within a fraction of hers. "I got the ledger out before your charges went off, Luc. I've been waiting six months for you to come collect your half."
His breath caught, warm against her lips. The amber eye flared bright, the black one dilating until there was nothing left between them but the heat of the small room. His hands came up, stripping the leather gloves from his fingers and letting them drop to the floor beside the cane.
When his bare hands framed her face, his skin was fever-hot.
"Six months," he murmured against her mouth, his thumb tracing the sharp line of her cheekbone. "You let me rot for six months over a book?"
"You ruined my coat at the docks," Rory replied, her hands sliding up from his tie to tangle in the slick platinum hair at the nape of his neck, ruining its perfection. "It was vintage."
"I'll buy you a hundred coats."
"Shut up, Frenchman."
Rory closed the final inch, pressing her mouth to his. Lucien groaned, a sound torn from the bottom of his chest, and lifted her effortlessly onto the edge of the kitchen table, sending the remaining research notes fluttering to the floor like white leaves. His hands gripped her waist through the thin cotton of her work shirt, pulling her flush against the tailored wool of his suit as his mouth parted hers, tasting of rain and peppermint and six months of starved desperation.