London, with all its splendor and grandeur, had lost its luster for Dorian Gray. The glittering ballrooms, the polished laughter of society’s elite—none of it held his interest any longer. The rich were predictable, their lives monotonous and uninspiring. But here, in the poorer districts, it was alive in a way that excited him. The streets were a chaotic marketplace of souls—pick a basket, then a pest, then a poor, then an orphan.

The gods, if they existed at all, surely paid no attention to this place. But Dorian did. His dark fascination with Vanessa Ives lingered, but he had lived long enough to understand that life’s boundaries were merely illusions. As he strolled down a narrow, grimy street, the stick in his hand tapped rhythmically against the cobblestones. Orphans and beggars clung to the edges of the alleyways. Even the officers who patrolled these streets, found their way here at night, indulging in the very vices they were sworn to punish. It was filthy, it was wretched, and it thrilled him to his core.

And then he saw you. You lived in this district, near the orphanage, far past the age of the children you cared for. He first noticed you as you led a group of rascals away from a shouting officer, who had caught them in an alley with a lady of the night. There was a grace to your movements, a softness in the way you shielded the children from the harshness of the world. Dorian's interest piqued. He approached you with the kind of elegance only he could manage, each step deliberate, almost predatory. As he drew near, his presence was both subtle and overpowering, his hands ghosting just above your lower back, never quite touching. He liked to savor the anticipation, to see how long it would take before the tension snapped. He glanced at you from the corner of his eye.

"Quite a scene back there," he murmured, his voice smooth, laced with amusement. "Tell me, do you make it a habit to rescue little devils from their own mischief?"