Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQS2B4G7ZA5QQGCZ40S8X4

The green neon above The Raven’s Nest flickered against the February dark, casting a sickly pallor over the wet pavement of Soho. Inside, the air tasted of stale hops and beeswax, the walls crowded with yellowed maps of forgotten territories and black-and-white photographs of men in hats who had died before Aurora Carter was born. She sat at the far end of the bar, her delivery jacket draped over the stool beside her, the Golden Empress logo embroidered in red thread on the back catching the low light like a wound. Her fingers traced the crescent scar on her left wrist, a habit she couldn’t break, feeling the raised white flesh that marked a childhood accident with a garden gate, back when damage was simple and location-specific. The door opened, letting in a gust of cold that made the photographs tremble on their hooks. A woman stood silhouetted against the streetlight, her coat expensive, tailored, the kind of charcoal wool that looked as though it had never been rained on. When she stepped forward, Rory’s hand stopped moving. "Laila," the woman said. Rory looked up. The voice was deeper, smokier, but the cadence—that particular Cardiff lift—was unmistakable. Eva. She had changed her hair. Gone was the aggressive violet dye, the buzz cut she’d maintained through their shared years at university as a declaration of war against propriety. In its place was a sleek chestnut bob, cut with geometric precision that spoke of salons where appointments were made three weeks in advance. She wore pearls at her throat—real ones, Rory suspected, not the plastic knockoffs they’d bought together at the Cardiff Market, laughing until their ribs hurt. But it wasn’t the clothes or the grooming that struck Rory; it was the way Eva held herself, as though she had been hollowed out and filled with something heavier, slower. The Eva Rory remembered had buzzed with static energy, had thrown her arms around strangers, had talked Rory into fleeing to London in the first place with breathless, midnight logic. This woman moved like she was underwater, each gesture careful, considered, afraid of disturbing the sediment. "You cut your hair," Rory said. The words felt stupid in her mouth, inane. Eva touched the bob, a gesture that seemed rehearsed. "You didn’t." "Uniform code," Rory lied. She hadn’t cut it because she hadn’t thought about it. Because surviving took up all the room that grooming used to occupy. Behind the bar, Silas Blackwood limped into view, his grey-streaked auburn hair catching the lamplight. The silver signet ring on his right hand clinked against the glass he was polishing, a steady metronome. He didn’t look at them, but Rory knew he was listening. He always listened, the retired spymaster cataloguing weakness and want the way other men noted football scores. His limp, that slight drag of the left leg that spoke of Prague and bad exits, was more pronounced tonight, or perhaps Rory was simply more aware of other people’s damage when her own was being excavated. "I didn’t know you drank here," Eva said, sliding onto the stool two down from Rory, leaving a deliberate gap of polished mahogany between them. "I live upstairs." Rory gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, toward the small flat with the water stain in the shape of a country she couldn’t name. "Above the bar." Eva’s eyes—still the same hazel, still quick—flickered toward Silas, then back. "The Spymaster’s tower. How appropriate." So she knew about Silas. Or knew of him. The whisper-network of London, where ex-MI6 and runaway barristers’ daughters crossed paths in the dim hours. "You look..." Rory started. "Don’t," Eva said, sharp. Then, softer: "Don’t say good. Don’t say well." "I was going to say tired." Eva laughed, a sound like breaking glass. She ordered a whisky—neat, no ice—from Silas without looking at him. When he set it down, the silver ring tapped the wood, and Eva wrapped her fingers around the glass. Rory saw that her knuckles were swollen, arthritic or bruised, incongruous with the pearls. "He died," Eva said. "Evan. Last month. Car accident." Rory’s breath stopped. The scar on her wrist seemed to burn, a phantom pain radiating outward. "I know," Rory said quietly. "I saw it in the Western Mail. Online." "You didn’t call." "You didn’t call either." The silence stretched between them, elastic, ready to snap. The maps on the walls seemed to lean closer, the old cartographers eavesdropping on this new, uncharted territory of pain. Silas moved away, giving them the privacy of distance, his limp a reminder that everyone here was broken in some way, held together by scar tissue and professional discretion. Eva drank. "I should have. When you left. When you actually took my advice and ran." "You told me to come to London. You didn’t say I’d be doing it alone." "I was busy," Eva said, and the word landed like a slap. Busy. With her law degree, with her clerkship, with the life she was building while Rory was dismantling hers to escape the man who now lay dead in Welsh soil. "You changed," Rory said. Not an accusation. An observation of fact, like noting weather. "We both did." Eva looked at her then, really looked, her gaze lingering on Rory’s collarbones, visible now, sharp beneath the delivery uniform. "You’re smaller, Rory. Not just thinner. Smaller. Like you folded yourself up to fit into a space that doesn’t suit you." Rory looked at her hands. The scar. The thinness. The years of carrying other people’s food up four flights of stairs, of checking shadows for Evan’s face, of learning to be quiet, quick, unobtrusive. Cool-headed, yes. But cool meant distant. Meant safe. Meant no longer taking up room. "I had to," Rory said. "I know." Eva’s voice cracked, splintering the polished veneer. "That’s what I can’t forgive. That I told you to run, and you ran, and I stayed behind and let you think you were the only one who was scared. I let you think I was strong." Silas shifted behind the bar, rearranging bottles, his presence a steady anchor. Rory watched the light catch his signet ring, a flash of silver against the dark wood. "You look like money," Rory said, changing the subject because the real one was too sharp, too close to the bone. "The pearls. The coat." "Camouflage," Eva said. "I’m a junior partner now. Family law. I spend my days watching marriages curdle and fighting over who gets the china. The pearls are armor. They click when I talk in court. It intimidates the opposing counsel." She didn’t say: I married a man like Evan. She didn’t say: I look at my clients and see myself. She didn’t say: I am terrified every time I walk to my car. But Rory heard it, the subtext vibrating in the green-tinted air, heavy with unspoken regret. "Do you remember," Eva said, "when we were nineteen, and we broke into the Philosophy department to watch the sunrise? You said you’d never let anyone make you small." Rory remembered. The cold stone wall against her shoulder blades. The taste of cheap cider. The certainty that they would devour the world, not the other way around. "I lied," Rory said. "No," Eva said. "You adapted. There’s a difference. I’m the one who lied. I pretended I wasn’t breaking. I’m still pretending." She reached out, her fingers hovering over Rory’s wrist, near the scar but not touching it, as though the mark were a holy relic or a live wire. "Does it still hurt?" "Not the scar," Rory said. Eva nodded. She withdrew her hand, finished her whisky. The liquid was gone too fast, suggesting this wasn’t her first of the night, despite the steady hands. "I’m moving to Edinburgh," Eva said. "In March. New office. Fresh start. Or that’s what I tell myself." "Congratulations," Rory said, and meant it, and hated the word for its inadequacy. "Come with me," Eva said, sudden, desperate. "Leave this. The deliveries. The flat above the spy bar. Come to Scotland. We could—" "We could what?" Rory asked, gentle. "Be nineteen again? Break into buildings? You have a life, Eva. The pearls. The courtrooms." "I have a costume," Eva corrected. She stood, smoothing the wool coat, and for a moment the old Eva was there, the straight spine, the challenge in the eyes. Then it faded, like the green neon flickering against the dark. "I miss you, Laila. I miss who I was when I knew you." "That person isn’t gone," Rory said. "She’s just wearing different clothes." Eva smiled, sad, final. She dropped a twenty on the bar—too much for one whisky—and turned toward the door. At the threshold, she looked back, her face half in shadow, half in the sickly green light. "He didn’t deserve you. Evan. And I didn’t deserve you either. But I’m sorry I didn’t try to be better." Then she was gone, swallowed by the London night. Rory sat alone. Silas limped over and poured her a measure of the same whisky, neat, the silver ring flashing. He didn’t ask. He simply pushed the glass toward her, a silent offering. "Old ghosts?" he asked, his voice rough as gravel. "Old friends," Rory corrected. She touched the glass but didn’t drink, her thumb running over the rim. Outside, the neon flickered, marking time, marking nothing at all, while the maps on the walls watched in silence.