AI The third deadbolt slid free with a heavy metallic clunk. Rory pulled the warped timber door inward a fraction, bracing her bare foot against the baseboard. Warm air thick with roasted cumin and fenugreek drifted up from the curry house downstairs, colliding with the damp chill of the Brick Lane stairwell.
Lucien Moreau stood on the landing.
Rain darkened the shoulders of his tailored charcoal suit. Not a single strand of his slicked-back platinum blond hair sat out of place, though the stairwell bulb cast sharp, uneven shadows across his cheekbones. His mismatched eyes—one molten amber, the other pitch black—dropped from her face to her bare throat, then back up.
Rory tightened her grip on the brass rim lock.
"Eva is in Cardiff until Tuesday."
"I did not climb three flights of rotting stairs to see Eva."
"Then you wasted a trip."
She threw her weight against the wood to swing it shut. The tip of an ivory-handled cane wedged into the gap, stopping the door two inches from the jamb. No tremor shook his arm. He rested his leather-gloved palm over the carved pommel, letting the hidden blade beneath the polished shaft take the brunt of her shove.
"Pull that out of the frame before I snap it, Luc."
"Six inches of folded steel sit inside the casing, chérie. You would bruise your shoulder."
Ptolemy chose that second to dart between Rory’s ankles. The fat tabby wound a figure-eight around Lucien’s polished oxfords, purring with a low rattle that echoed off the peeling hallway wallpaper. Lucien glanced at the cat, one corner of his mouth twitching, before his gaze locked onto Rory again. Beneath the lapel of his coat, a dark, wet patch stained the slate silk of his waistcoat. Rain did not fall under a buttoned jacket.
Rory stilled. Her bright blue eyes narrowed on the stain, then flicked toward the grimy landing window behind him.
"Who is on your tail?"
"Two hounds from the Vauxhall pit and a blood-tracker who owes my father's house a tithe."
"And you brought them to Brick Lane?"
"I lost the hounds at Whitechapel station. The tracker will need forty minutes to untangle the false trail I laid through Spitalfields."
He lifted his free hand from his pocket and held up an octavo volume bound in oiled red leather. Singed marks blackened one corner, reeking of ozone and burnt cloves.
"Let me in, Aurora. Your name is inked on page twelve."
Rory stepped away from the threshold, sweeping her straight, shoulder-length black hair behind her ear. Lucien crossed the sill without further invitation, bringing the sharp scent of bergamot, wet wool, and copper into the cramped one-bedroom flat. Ptolemy trotted after him, tail hooked like a question mark.
Rory shut the door and shot all three deadbolts home, testing the top latch with a tug of her fingers. When she turned around, Lucien had claimed the singular square foot of clear floor space between a waist-high stack of Sumerian translations and a sagging armchair buried under research notes. The room shrank with him inside it. Five feet and eleven inches of underworld fixer did not belong among chipped mugs and crumpled delivery rosters from the Golden Empress.
He unbuttoned his coat with one hand. A hiss escaped his teeth when the lining snagged against his left side.
"Drop the book on the counter and take the jacket off."
"Concern does not suit your current expression."
"Blood ruins woollen weaves. Eva will skin me if you drip on her rug."
Lucien set the red volume beside an electric kettle, stripping off his kidskin gloves finger by finger. He laid the ivory-handled cane across two stacks of encyclopedias, keeping the hilt within reach, then shrugged out of his jacket. Dark scarlet soaked through the ribs of his crisp white shirt, clinging to the lean muscle beneath.
Rory crossed the narrow galley kitchen, opening three cupboards crammed with loose-leaf Assam and dried herbs before locating a tin of gauze and a spool of surgical gut. Her pulse hammered against her throat. Forty-two days. Six weeks since he had tangled his fingers in her hair in her flat above Silas’ bar, murmuring Marseille slang against her collarbone until the streetlamps went dark. By seven that morning, her sheets had gone cold, his private number had died, and his associates had treated her like a stranger on the pavement.
She dropped the tin onto the laminate counter with a clatter that sent Ptolemy bolting toward the bedroom.
"Sit on the stool."
"I prefer to stand."
"Pass out on this floor and you will bring four centuries of scrolls down on both our heads. Sit."
Lucien studied her face. The black eye drank the dim lamplight; the amber eye burned straight through her composure. Without breaking her gaze, he hooked a wooden stool with the toe of his shoe, dragged it clear of a crate of reference binders, and lowered himself onto the seat. His fingers worked the mother-of-pearl buttons down his shirtfront. Pale skin gleamed in the warm glow, marked by old silver scars and a fresh, jagged tear four inches below his ribs.
Rory ran hot water into a porcelain bowl and wrung out a clean linen towel. She stepped between his knees—the cramped galley offered nowhere else to stand. Heat radiated off him, fierce and inhuman, cutting through the thin cotton of her faded Cardiff University shirt.
She pressed the damp cloth to the wound. Muscle jumped beneath her knuckles, rigid as iron cable, though he made no sound.
"Silver blade?"
"Bone dagger. Etched with Avaros binding runes."
"The edges aren't smoking."
"Half-blood advantage. It burns like acid in the veins, nothing worse."
Rory rinsed the linen, turning the water pink, and tore open a sterile packet with her teeth. As she reached for a bottle of antiseptic, the cuff of her sleeve rode up, baring the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist.
Lucien’s hand shot out. His bare fingers wrapped around her wrist, his thumb brushing the curved white ridge of old scar tissue. His skin scorched hers. A jolt went up Rory’s arm, catching her breath behind her ribs.
She froze, the uncapped bottle hovering above his chest.
"Don't."
"You took off the warded bangle I gave you."
"I took it off to wash dishes. Let go of my arm, Lucien."
His thumb traced the crescent a second time—deliberate, unhurried, possessive—before his fingers uncurled. He did not move his hand far, resting his palm on his own thigh, his knuckles grazing her hip.
"You left the flat above Silas' bar."
"I'm feeding Eva's cat for the weekend. Though it fascinates me that you checked my address after spending six weeks acting like I dropped off the earth."
"I never forgot where you were."
"Right. You left me a dead phone line and Belgrave's runners telling half of Soho the Frenchman closed his books."
She soaked a pad in antiseptic and pressed it into the gash. Harder than required.
Lucien’s jaw locked. His nostrils flared, a low vibration rumbling in his chest, carrying the discordant pitch of his father’s realm. Both hands gripped the edges of the wooden stool until his knuckles turned chalk-white.
"You earned that."
"I earned worse than antiseptic, Carter."
"Spare me the martyr routine. Save the charm for your buyers."
"You were never a buyer."
Rory let out a sharp, dry laugh, picking up the curved needle and dark thread.
"What was I, then? A hobby? You spent four months nursing neat scotch downstairs just to watch me haul takeaway bags out to my moped. You pulled Evan's sealed solicitor records out of Cardiff without me asking. Then the night you climb into my bed, you vanish before dawn like a villain in a Victorian penny dreadful."
"Vane's syndicate put a price on anyone tied to my accounts at four o'clock that morning."
The needle paused between Rory’s thumb and forefinger. Below them, the muffled thump of bhangra bass vibrated through the floorboards, joined by the clang of iron pans in the restaurant kitchen.
"What?"
"One of my couriers sold a duplicate cipher key in Vauxhall while I was in your bed."
Lucien leaned in, closing the scant distance between them until his breath warmed her mouth. The amber iris shrank to a thin ring around a blown pupil, dark enough to match its twin.
"While I had my teeth on your shoulder, Rory, three hunters from Avaros crossed the river to mark every threshold I visited that month. Had I stayed until sunrise to make you tea and offer explanations, they would have peeled the roof off Silas' building with you inside."
Rory stared at him, her chest rising in shallow pulls. Anger collided with the raw pull of having him three inches away, half-undressed and bleeding in Eva's cluttered kitchen. Every speech she had rehearsed while biking orders through East London rain crumbled like dry plaster. Hurt remained, sharp-edged and stubborn, refusing to yield ground.
"I have a working brain, Luc. You could have woken me up."
"And told you what? Pack another suitcase and run like you had to leave Wales?"
"That wasn't your decision!"
"It became mine the second my shadow marked your door in chalk."
"My name is in that ledger anyway!"
She gestured with her free hand toward the singed red volume beside the kettle.
"Six weeks of dead air, six weeks of thinking I invented whatever happened between us, and it bought nothing. My name is inked on page twelve all the same."
Lucien raised his hand. He did not grab her wrist. His fingertips brushed the angle of her jaw, sliding into her black hair until his palm cupped the nape of her neck. A faint tremor in his hand betrayed the cost of the Avaros runes tearing at his blood.
"Not under my accounts, chérie. Under Vane's."
Rory’s breath hitched.
"Explain."
"When I cut ties, you went hunting. You asked questions in Limehouse. You traded debts with the river hags to track my movements."
Heat crept up Rory's neck, traitorous and fierce. She tugged her chin against his hold, refusing to let him read the confession written across her face, yet his grip stayed firm—gentle enough that one twist would break it, anchored enough to send warmth pooling beneath her collarbones.
"I wanted to know if you were floating face-down in the Thames."
"Tu me rends fou, Aurora."
His forehead dropped against hers. Eyes half-shut, breath ragged against her lips, he inhaled the ginger soap and rain clinging to her skin. Rory's left palm flattened against the uninjured side of his chest, straight over the heavy thud of his heart. Her fingers curled inward, nails biting into warm muscle, caught between shoving him backward and pulling him off the stool.
"You went looking for me, and Vane's watchers noticed a bright-eyed human girl kicking through a half-demon's ashes. They logged you as leverage."
His thumb brushed the corner of her bottom lip, tracing the tension held there.
"So I bought the book back tonight with four inches of rib."
"You idiot."
"Without question."
"The tracker you lost in Spitalfields. Forty minutes, you told me?"
Lucien tilted his chin so his mouth grazed hers—not a kiss, a ghost of contact that raised gooseflesh down both her arms.
"Twenty-eight, now."
Rory drew back half an inch, breaking the brush of his mouth, though her palm stayed splayed over his heartbeat. She lifted the threaded surgical needle between them, letting the kitchen bulb glint off the curved steel point.
"Hold your breath."
"I have no intention of letting go of you so you can concentrate."
"Did I ask you to let go?"
Lucien's mismatched eyes darkened. His fingers tightened in the hair at her nape as Rory braced her scarred wrist against his ribs and touched the steel point to his skin.