Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQP7H6HX94TJMWAS4GMXJZ

The scent of lemongrass and fryer oil clung to her clothes, a stubborn ghost of her last delivery for the Golden Empress. Rory pushed through the heavy oak door of The Raven’s Nest, the familiar chime of the bell a welcome sound. The air inside was thick with the smells of old wood, spilled beer, and Silas’s lemon polish. It smelled like safety. Silas looked up from where he was wiping down the bar, his grey-streaked auburn hair catching the low light. A small, knowing smile touched his lips. “Tough one?” “The usual Friday rush.” Rory slid onto her favorite stool at the far end of the bar, the one with the slight wobble. She dropped her keys on the polished wood, the jangle loud in the relative quiet of the early evening. “The city’s starving.” He moved toward her, his slight limp more pronounced when he was tired. He didn’t ask what she wanted. He just pulled a clean glass from the rack and reached for the tap. His silver signet ring flashed as he worked. “On the house. You look like you’ve been battling dragons.” “Just mopeds and tourists,” she said, managing a weak smile. The cold pint glass felt good in her hands. She watched the bubbles rise, a slow, mesmerizing dance. Around her, the Nest was a cocoon of shadows and hushed conversations. The old black-and-white photographs and faded maps on the walls were like old friends, their silent stories a constant comfort. This was her place. The flat upstairs, this bar below—the small, circumscribed world she had built brick by careful brick. She took a long swallow of the lager, the cold fizz cutting through the day’s grime. She was just starting to unwind, the tension in her shoulders beginning to ease, when the bell over the door chimed again. She didn’t look up, not at first. It was just another customer, another body to fill the comfortable gloom. Then a voice cut through the low murmur. “A pint of your best bitter, please.” The breath caught in Rory’s throat. A cold dread, sharp and sudden, snaked its way up her spine. It was a voice she had hoped to never hear again outside of a nightmare. Smoother now, a little deeper, but unmistakably his. She kept her eyes fixed on her glass, her knuckles white where she gripped it. *Don’t look. Maybe it’s not him. It’s a common accent. Just some guy from back home.* But she knew. You don’t forget a voice that has whispered promises and threats in your ear with the same intimate cadence. She risked a glance in the bar mirror behind the shelves of bottles. The reflection was distorted, wavy, but the figure was clear enough. Taller than she remembered, or maybe just straighter. The scruffy university student was gone, replaced by a man in a tailored charcoal suit that looked too expensive for him. His black hair was shorter, styled with a precision that was utterly alien. Evan. Here. In her sanctuary. He collected his drink from Silas and turned, scanning the room. His eyes, the same pale, washed-out grey, swept past her once, then snapped back, widening in disbelief. A slow smile spread across his face, the kind he used when he thought he’d won something. “Aurora?” he said, the name a stone thrown into the placid pool of her new life. No one called her Aurora anymore. She was Rory. He walked toward her, his expensive shoes making soft, confident clicks on the floorboards. She felt a phantom pressure on her arm, the memory of his grip. She forced herself to stay still, to not let him see her hands tremble. “Evan,” she said. Her voice came out flat, devoid of emotion. It was the best she could do. “My God. What are the odds?” He stopped a few feet away, holding his pint like a prop. “I’m in London for a conference. I ducked in here to get out of the drizzle. And you’re just… sitting here.” He laughed, a brittle sound that didn’t reach his eyes. “You look good. Different, but good.” “It’s been a while,” Rory said, taking another sip of her beer. The liquid felt like ice in her stomach. She could feel Silas’s eyes on them from the other end of the bar. A silent, steady presence. “Five years,” Evan said, his smile faltering slightly at her coldness. “Almost to the day.” He slid onto the stool next to her, uninvited. He smelled of rain and a sharp, citrusy cologne she didn’t recognize. “So, what are you doing with yourself? Last I heard, you were… well, you were gone.” “I work,” she said simply. She wouldn’t give him anything. The details of her life were hers, treasures she’d fought for. The part-time deliveries, the quiet evenings with a book, the easy friendship with Silas—they were not for him to inspect or pass judgment on. “Right.” He took a drink, studying her over the rim of his glass. “Still the artist? All that charcoal and angst?” “No.” The silence stretched. He seemed to be waiting for her to ask about him, to fill the void with the polite inquiries of a normal reunion. She wouldn’t grant him the satisfaction. She had spent two years of her life orbiting his needs, his moods, his fragile ego. She was done. Finally, he broke. “I’m in finance now. With Barclays. In Cardiff Bay.” He said it with a casual pride that was anything but casual. He was performing, showing her the man he’d become. The successful man. The man she’d been a fool to leave. “Good for you,” she said, looking straight ahead at the row of whiskey bottles. “It is, actually,” he insisted, a defensive edge to his voice. “I’m engaged, too. To a girl from work. Cerys.” Rory felt a sharp, unexpected twist of something that wasn’t quite pity. She thought of this Cerys, this stranger, and hoped she knew how to read the weather in his eyes, the subtle shift in his tone that preceded a storm. She pushed the thought away. Not her problem. Not anymore. “Congratulations.” “Look, Rory…” he sighed, his voice dropping to the low, conspiratorial murmur she remembered so well. The one he used to reel her back in. “I know things ended… badly. We were kids. I was an idiot.” The casual dismissal of it all, the neat packaging of her fear into a box labeled ‘we were kids,’ sent a hot spike of anger through her. She turned to face him fully for the first time. She let her bright blue eyes meet his. She saw a flicker of something in them—not remorse, but a flash of the same entitled petulance she remembered. “You broke three of my ribs, Evan.” The words hung in the air between them, stark and ugly. The manufactured bonhomie vanished from his face, replaced by a guarded scowl. “That’s not fair,” he muttered, looking down into his beer. “You’re twisting things. You were hysterical.” “Was I?” She held his gaze, unblinking. Her heart hammered against her ribs—the ones that had healed, at least—but her hands were steady now. She was no longer that girl, the one who flinched and looked away. He shifted on his stool, uncomfortable under her direct stare. He was looking for an anchor, a way back to familiar ground. His eyes fell on her left hand, resting on the bar. He reached out, his fingers brushing against her wrist. “You still have that little scar,” he said, his voice soft again. He traced the small, pale crescent shape. “I remember when you got that. Fell off your bike trying to race me down Pen-y-lan Hill.” His touch was like a brand. Not because of the memory he’d chosen—a harmless, sun-drenched day from their childhood, long before the darkness set in—but because of the casual ownership in the gesture. The assumption that he still had the right to touch her, to reminisce about her body as if it were a shared artifact. Rory pulled her hand back as if from a flame. “Don’t,” she said, her voice low and tight. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend we’re old friends catching up. We’re not.” Evan stared at her, his face a mask of wounded pride. “I was just trying to be civil, Aurora. I’ve changed.” “I’m sure you have,” she said, her tone utterly flat. She looked at his suit, his haircut, his polished shoes. He had changed. He had built a new, shiny facade over the same rotten foundation. But she had changed, too. She had rebuilt herself from the ground up. “I think you should go,” she said. It wasn’t a request. He opened his mouth to argue, a familiar stubborn set to his jaw. But then he seemed to truly see her. Not the ghost of the girl he knew, but the woman sitting before him, cool-headed and unmovable. He saw the finality in her eyes. He saw that the door he was knocking on had been bricked over years ago. He drained his pint in two angry gulps and slid off the stool, slapping a twenty-pound note on the bar. “Fine,” he snapped. “Keep the change.” He walked to the door without looking back. The bell chimed his exit, and a gust of damp London air swirled in, clearing away the scent of his cologne. Rory let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her entire body vibrated with a strange, delayed tremor. Silas appeared at her elbow, quietly swapping her half-empty pint for a small glass of amber liquid. Jameson. “Drink this,” he said, his voice a low rumble. She picked it up, her fingers still shaking slightly. She saw her reflection in the mirror again—a woman with straight black hair and tired, bright eyes. The small, crescent scar on her wrist stood out against her pale skin, not a mark of a shared past, but a reminder of a life she’d survived. She had not been erased. She had escaped. And for the first time since he had walked in, she realized the only regret she felt was that she hadn’t left him sooner.