Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQWQ1Q5NS56W3V8EYCT1MC

The distinctive green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest hummed with a low-frequency buzz that Rory felt in her teeth. It was a Tuesday, the sort of night where Soho breathed a little slower, the rain slicking the pavement into a dark, oil-slicked mirror. Rory ducked inside, the bells above the door chiming a familiar, flat note. She shook her umbrella, the droplets scattering across the worn floorboards, and inhaled the scent of the place: old mahogany, stale hops, and the faint, medicinal tang of the gin Silas favored. Silas was behind the bar, his grey-streaked auburn hair catching the amber light from the back-shelf lanterns. He was polishing a highball glass with the methodical precision of a man who had once disassembled sidearms in the dark. As Rory approached, he offered a short, practiced nod. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the light, a silent reminder of the life he’d left behind in Prague. "Quiet night, Silas," Rory said, sliding onto a stool. She leaned her elbows on the wood, the sleeve of her jumper riding up just enough to reveal the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. "The best kind," Silas replied, his voice a low gravel. He moved with that slight, rhythmic hitch in his left leg, a souvenir from a botched operation he never talked about. He set a glass of water down before she could even ask. "You're late for your shift at the Empress tomorrow, Rory. Don’t let Yu-Fei catch you staring at the bottom of a glass tonight." "Just one," she promised, her bright blue eyes scanning the room. The Nest was a tomb of maps and monochrome photographs, a place meant for hiding in plain sight. It was why she lived upstairs. It was why she felt safe here. But as she turned her head toward the corner booth, the safety curdled. A man sat there, half-shrouded in the shadows of the bookshelf that hid Silas’s private office. He was wearing an expensive charcoal overcoat that looked out of place against the peeling wallpaper. He was staring at a glass of whiskey as if it held the secrets to a life he’d lost. Rory froze. The air in her lungs suddenly felt thin, like the oxygen had been sucked out by a vacuum. "Evan?" she whispered. The man looked up. The years had been kind to his face but cruel to his expression. He looked hollowed out, the sharp handsomeness she remembered now blunted by a weary, sagging disappointment. When he saw her, his eyes widened, the recognition hitting him like a physical blow. "Laila?" he said, using the middle name she hadn't touched since she fled Cardiff. She didn't move. She didn't breathe. Silas’s hands stopped moving on the glass. The old spymaster didn't look at them directly, but Rory saw his posture shift—the subtle tightening of his shoulders, the way he shifted his weight off his bad knee, ready to vault the bar if the ghost from her past became a threat. "It's Rory now," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. Evan stood up slowly, his hands held out as if approaching a skittish animal. "I didn't think... I’ve been looking for you. For years. Your father wouldn’t say a word. Eva blocked my number." "They were following instructions," Rory said. She stayed on the stool, wanting the height advantage of the bar. Evan moved closer, stopping a respectful few feet away. In the dim light, he looked smaller than she remembered. The man who had loomed over her life, whose moods had dictated the weather of her soul, was just a person in a coat that cost more than her monthly rent. "You look different," Evan said, his gaze drifting to her straight, shoulder-length black hair. "The blonde is gone. Your face... you look harder." "I grew up," Rory said. "And I left." "I know why you left," he said, and for a second, the old softness returned to his voice, that manipulative velvet that had once kept her trapped in a cycle of apologies. "I deserved it. I know that now. I’ve spent a long time in therapy, Rory. I’ve changed." Rory glanced at Silas. The older man was watching them through the reflection in the mirror behind the bottles. He looked like an owl observing a mouse. Rory looked back at Evan and felt a strange, cold flick of pity. "Everyone changes, Evan. That’s just the passage of time. It’s not necessarily growth." "Can I sit?" he asked, gesturing to the stool beside her. "No," Rory said. The rejection hung in the air, heavy and unyielding. Evan shrank back an inch. He looked around the bar, at the dusty maps of Eastern Europe and the faded photographs of people long dead. "This is where you've been? Delivering Chinese food and living in Soho? Your father wanted you at the bar, Rory. You were the smartest person in the lecture hall. You could have been anything." "I am something," she said. "I’m safe. I’m quiet. I’m not looking over my shoulder every time a door opens—or at least I wasn't, until five minutes ago." Evan ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture she remembered. "I didn't come here to cause trouble. I was in London for a meeting. I saw you through the window. I thought... maybe there was a version of us that could at least say hello." "The version of us you’re looking for died in a flat in Cardiff three years ago," Rory said. She reached for her water, her fingers brushed the crescent scar. "How did you find me? Truly? This isn’t a place people stumble into." Evan hesitated. He looked at Silas, who was now leaning against the back bar, arms crossed, the silver ring glinting like a warning light. "I hired someone," Evan admitted, his voice dropping. "Just to find an address. I needed to know you were okay. I had dreams, Rory. Bad ones. I thought maybe I’d broken you so badly you’d disappeared." Rory felt a sharp, crystalline laugh bubble up and die in her throat. "You think you’re that important? That you could break me so well I’d just cease to exist?" She leaned forward, her blue eyes blazing. "I didn't disappear, Evan. I started. This life—the restaurant, Silas, this dusty old bar—it’s mine. Every bit of it. I earned it by surviving you." Silas cleared his throat, a sound like grinding stones. "The gentleman was just leaving, wasn't he, Rory?" Evan looked at Silas, then back at Rory. He saw the way she didn’t flinch. He saw the way she looked at him—not with fear, not even with the white-hot rage that fuels a confrontation, but with the cold, sterile detachment of a scientist looking at a specimen. "You really don't want me here," Evan said, a statement rather than a question. "I want you to be a memory," she said. "I want you to be the thing I grew out of. Nothing more." Evan lingered for a moment, his mouth opening as if to offer one last defense, one final apology that would surely, this time, bridge the chasm. But the silence in The Raven’s Nest was absolute. Even the neon sign seemed to hold its breath. He turned away, his expensive coat swishing against his legs. He walked toward the door, his footsteps heavy. When the bells chimed again, the cold air from the street rushed in for a brief, sharp second before the door clicked shut. Rory didn't move. She watched his shadow pass by the frosted glass of the front window, turning into a blur under the green neon before vanishing into the Soho night. Silas moved slowly down the bar. He took her water glass, which she hadn't touched, and replaced it with a small glass of dark, peat-heavy scotch. "On the house," he said. Rory picked up the glass. Her hand was shaking, just a little. She looked at the crescent scar on her wrist, then at the bookshelf that led to Silas’s world of secrets and shadows. She thought of her father in Cardiff, of the law books she’d left behind, and the woman named Laila who had once believed love was supposed to hurt. "He's smaller than I remembered," she murmured. "They usually are," Silas said, picking up his polishing cloth again. "Time has a way of stripping the paint off people. You see what’s underneath eventually." Rory took a sip of the scotch. It burned, a clean, sharp heat that settled the trembling in her fingers. She looked at her reflection in the mirror—the black hair, the tired eyes, the set of her jaw. She didn't look like a victim. She looked like a resident of the Nest. "I'm not going back, Silas," she said, her voice a promise. "I know," Silas said, his hazel eyes meeting hers in the glass. "You've got a shift tomorrow. Best get some sleep." She nodded, stood up, and walked toward the stairs in the back, her boots clicking firmly on the wood. She didn't look back at the booth where the ghost had sat. The weight of the past was still there, a dull ache in the atmosphere, but as she climbed the stairs toward her flat, she felt the lightness of someone who had finally seen the monster in the light and realized it was only a man.