Lucien
Lucien Ashcroft did not believe in coincidence.
People mistook timing for fate because it comforted them. In his experience, timing was merely preparation meeting opportunity and Sirene Valemont had been neither accidental nor unexpected.
He had known she would come to the restricted wing before she did. Not because he watched her, exactly but because he watched patterns, and she moved like someone accustomed to quiet access.
She did not hesitate at locked doors.
That alone made her dangerous.
Lucien stood alone in the archive long after she left, the air still faintly carrying her presence. He could have followed her. Chosen proximity. Applied pressure.
He did none of it.
Power did not announce itself. It waited.
Sirene Valemont had been raised to survive men like him. He could see it in the way she spoke—carefully, as though every word passed through a filter before being allowed into the world. In the way she never reached for reassurance. Never asked questions she wasn't prepared to answer herself.
She did not want safety.
She wanted truth.
That was worse.
Lucien folded the ledger entry once more and slid it back into his coat. He had not shown it to threaten her. He had shown it to observe reaction and she had given him exactly what he wanted.
Control.
Not fear. Not outrage. Control sharpened into curiosity.
It unsettled him more than he allowed himself to acknowledge.
He had been warned about her family once. Valemont women, his father had said, did not love carelessly. They learned early that affection was leverage and they wielded it with precision.
Lucien had never feared leverage.
He feared underestimation.
When he finally left the archive, he paused at the threshold, glancing once more at the ledger where her name had been written beside his.
Not aligned.
Not intersecting.
Parallel.
For now.
He closed the door softly behind him, already certain of one thing.
Sirene Valemont would not ruin him quickly.
She would ruin him slowly—
and he would let her.