Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQMV1HBRW3K7YHFCPEVVWA

The knock at the door wasn’t loud—a measured, insistent rhythm that threaded through the muffled hum of Brick Lane after midnight. Aurora froze where she stood in Eva’s postage-stamp kitchen, a chipped mug of chamomile suspended halfway to her lips. Ptolemy, all green eyes and twitching whiskers, appeared in the archway, tail crooked questioningly. Her mind cartwheeled through possibilities: Eva, gone for a pharmacy run and maybe locked out. The upstairs neighbor, finally fed up with the state of their underfloor soundproofing. Or something sharper, darker, that fluttered in the air like live current. Rory set the mug down, wiped her hands on the hem of her T-shirt. Her heart was already stuttering. People don’t knock at this hour unless they’re desperate—or dangerous. She padded to the door, careful not to disturb the scatter of open books or trip over a bundle of manuscripts Eva had left behind. Three deadbolts: she unfastened all of them with ritual care, pausing on the last. A breath. Then she pulled it open. Lucien Moreau stood on the narrow landing, backlit by the jaundiced glow of the stairwell, umbrella tucked, hatless, shoulders squared in a tailored charcoal suit that did nothing to disguise the coil of tension running through his body. No one else wore suits at this hour, not around here. The air smelled faintly of rain—maybe it had just started. She couldn’t look directly at his eyes. Not at first. They’d always unmoored her: one amber, one obsidian, set in an expression schooled to indifference. Rory leaned one stiff shoulder against the doorframe, matching his posture, arms folded, blocking the threshold. “You’re supposed to call first.” A ghost of a smile flickered at his lips, then vanished. “I could have, but we both know you wouldn’t have answered. Besides” —he glanced past her, taking in the sea of books and the cat, who now leapt delicately onto the windowsill— “it’s a matter best handled in person.” “Of course it is.” She kept her tone flat, eyes unblinking. The last time she’d seen him was three months ago, in the heart of winter, her breath frosting between them in a Soho alley. Then it had been shouting, old hurts tearing loose, things she couldn’t take back even as she said them. He’d left first. She’d thrown his umbrella after him and regretted it instantly. Now he was here, looking impossibly composed. Underneath the polish, she read exhaustion—a paleness at his temples, a tremor in the hand resting on his ivory-handled cane. Another splinter driving in: concern, unwelcome, lodged just under her ribcage. She didn’t move. “Eva isn’t home. And before you try—no, she didn’t leave your dossier, or your contacts list, or that bloody silver key here.” He inclined his head, a silent acknowledgment. “I’m not here for Eva.” His voice—carefully modulated, with that soft drag of Marseille in it—curled around her like smoke. “Then what?” Her voice was sharp enough to slice. The pause between them went brittle. In the stillness, the distant hiss of tires on wet stone, the whir of the curry house’s venting system below. Lucien’s gaze dropped to her hands—her left wrist, exposed, crescent scar pale as moonlight. Rory felt her face flush. She steadied herself, fingers drumming against her bicep. “Well?” He waited a beat longer, then did something unexpected. He reached up, as if to press fingertips to his own forehead, then—changed course, fixed the knot of his tie instead. “I need your help, Aurora.” He’d slipped into using her full name. Not Rory, never Rory when it was serious. It triggered something old and battered between her lungs. “You’ve got people for that,” she said. The sneer felt false even to her own ears. “Slick in from the shadows, tip your hat, get what you need. Why come here?” His smile came raw this time. “There are certain talents I can’t buy, and certain trust I can’t outsource.” He appraised her, gaze lingering on the scar, and she realized he hadn’t moved—didn’t even seem to breathe. “May I come in?” Rory stared hard at the old parquet, resisting the urge to shiver. Maybe she should slam the door. Maybe she should tell him to take his secrets and his broken promises and vanish. But she didn’t. She stepped back, just far enough to clear the jamb. “Don’t touch the ancient Greek translations on the kitchen counter,” she said. “Eva will have my head.” Lucien entered, moving with the restrained grace of a predator in a cage—not limping, but sparing the leg, cane always an extension of himself. He paused, studying the bent reading lamp, the balled-up jumper tossed over the radiator, Ptolemy’s inscrutable stare. He set his umbrella and cane against the wall by the door, gloves tucked inside his coat. In the closer light, the lines around his eyes were starker. “You’re alone.” She bristled, chin tilted. “Should I not be?” He said nothing for a moment, only traced her with that odd, two-tone gaze. “No, it’s just—” He bit the sentence off and exhaled. “Merde. This is harder than I’d imagined.” A flicker of real concern. She wanted to rage against it, shove him back outside with his diplomacy and his impossible gentleness—she wanted to let it in, too. “Lucien,” she said quietly, “just say it.” He looked down, lips twisting. “I’d rather not entangle you, but I haven’t another choice. There’s a package arriving tomorrow morning. There are…people who would like me dead before I take possession. I trust you to be there. You’re smart enough not to get killed.” A bitter taste shot up behind her teeth. “Flattery after three months of radio silence?” The heavy silence expanded, pressing in. Then, quietly: “I never meant for things to end like that.” Lucien’s voice didn’t waver, but something in it unraveled. “I tried to keep you clear of all this. Of me.” He looked up. “But I missed you, Aurora. That’s the truth of it. I miss you even now, standing here, ten feet away.” She felt it then, the old ache—prickling through her sternum, where grief lived beside something mercifully unnamed. “Missing me is easy. Staying is harder.” He laughed, once—soundless, humorless. “You forget, I’m very good at hard things.” She started to turn away, fighting the pull of him, the urge to step into those arms, to pick at the scar between them with apologies and what-could-have-beens. “Tea?” she said, grasping for an ordinary gesture. “I don’t have brandy, unless you count the dregs of Eva’s bootleg bottle.” He watched her, wary hope flickering. “Tea is perfect.” She busied herself with the kettle, fingers seeking something to do. Ptolemy wound himself around her ankles, as if aware of the tension thickening the room. Rory kept her back to Lucien, pouring boiling water over old leaves, watching the swirl of steam. Behind her, his footsteps creaked closer—then stopped just shy of intimacy. She could feel him there, as if he’d reached out and cupped the air between them. “Was it all terrible, Rory? Us?” She clutched the mug. Her throat wouldn’t work right. “No. It was never that simple.” The clock ticked; outside, rain bled down the glass, scattering neon reflections. She brought him his tea, held it out in both hands. Their fingers brushed—deliberate, not accidental. She looked up finally, into the mismatched eyes that had been her undoing. For a second, he did nothing. Then Lucien closed both hands over hers, tea growing cold between them, and the truth pressed out of her in a whisper. “I missed you too.” He shook, just a little, and she saw that neither of them were barricaded anymore. The books, the cat, the wet city night—all faded to the thrum that was only them, suspended in the half-light of Eva’s overcrowded flat, longing unraveling slowly between their hands.