Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR6F5WGYGH0S4MAXWZPQ1W

The rain had followed Rory inside, dripping from her jacket onto the worn floorboards of The Raven's Nest. She'd made four deliveries in the past hour, and her shoes squelched with each step toward the bar. The green neon glow from outside cast strange shadows through the front window, mixing with the amber warmth of the interior lights. Silas looked up from polishing a glass, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. "Rough evening?" "Just wet." She peeled off her jacket and hung it on the brass hook by the door, the one that always stuck a little. "Yu-Fei's got me running all over Soho. Some poor bastard ordered dim sum in this weather." "That poor bastard has good taste." Silas set down the glass and reached for a clean towel. "Tea? Something stronger?" "Tea's fine. I've got two more runs before I can call it." She was halfway onto a barstool when she heard the laugh. Not loud—barely more than a breath—but it hit her like cold water. She knew that laugh. Had known it since she was seven years old, sitting in the back of her father's old Volvo on the way to swimming lessons. The woman sat three stools down, her profile half-hidden by shadows and the fall of honey-colored hair that Rory remembered as wild and frizzy but now hung in expensive-looking waves. She wore a charcoal suit that probably cost more than Rory made in a month, and her fingers—ringless, Rory noticed, though that might mean nothing—curved around a tumbler of something amber. Eva Morrison. Eva fucking Morrison, who'd begged Rory to come to London. Who'd promised she'd be there. Who'd vanished like smoke six months after Rory had arrived, broken and desperate and sleeping on her couch. Eva must have felt the weight of Rory's stare because she turned, and for a moment something flickered across her face. Recognition. Maybe guilt. Then it smoothed into a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Rory? Christ, is that you?" Silas glanced between them, his hand paused over the electric kettle. His former-spymaster instincts were probably cataloging every micro-expression, every shift in posture. "Eva." Rory's voice came out steadier than she felt. She traced the small crescent scar on her left wrist with her thumb, an old nervous habit. "Didn't expect to see you here." "I'm staying nearby. Hotel around the corner." Eva gestured vaguely with her glass. "This place was the only one with lights on. Needed a drink after..." She trailed off, took a sip instead of finishing. "After what?" Eva's laugh had a sharp edge now. "After everything. You know how it is." But Rory didn't know. Didn't know why Eva had disappeared. Didn't know where she'd gone or why she'd stopped answering texts and calls. Didn't know why the person who'd once stolen chips off her plate and cried on her shoulder about her parents' divorce now looked like she'd stepped out of a corporate magazine. Silas placed a steaming mug in front of Rory—chamomile with honey, the way she liked it—and retreated to the far end of the bar. He pulled out the ledger he kept for inventory, but Rory caught the way his eyes stayed alert, watchful. Ready to intervene if needed. "How long has it been?" Eva asked. "Two years?" "Three years, four months." The precision surprised them both. Rory wrapped her hands around the mug, felt the heat seep into her fingers. "Not that I was counting." "Rory—" "You look good. The corporate thing suits you." She didn't mean it kindly, but Eva took it at face value or pretended to. "Marketing director at Ashford & Grey. It's exhausting, but the salary's obscene." Eva swirled her drink. "You're delivering food?" There it was. The judgment wrapped in a question. Rory had heard it before from her father, that particular tone that said I expected better. She felt her jaw tighten. "For now. It pays the rent." "What happened to law school? You were going to be the one who made it out. Your dad's dream." "My dad's dream," Rory repeated. "Not mine. You knew that. Or you used to." Eva flinched, a barely perceptible motion, but Rory caught it. Good. Let her feel something. The silence stretched between them, filled with the low murmur of conversations from the corner booth and the clink of glass against wood. Above their heads, one of Silas's old maps—Prague, Rory had noticed months ago—curled slightly at the edges. A black-and-white photograph beside it showed two men in suits from another era, frozen mid-laugh. "I'm sorry," Eva said finally. "About disappearing. I meant to call, but—" "But what? Your new life was too busy? Too important?" Rory heard the bitterness in her voice and couldn't quite regret it. "I came here because you said I could stay with you. Because I needed to get away from Evan and Cardiff and all of it, and you said you'd help." "I know." "Do you?" Rory leaned forward, her bright blue eyes searching Eva's face. "Do you know what it was like? Sleeping on your couch for two weeks, looking for work, trying to piece myself back together, and then waking up one morning to find you'd packed a bag in the night and left me a note that said 'something came up'?" Eva's knuckles whitened around her glass. "I had to go." "Where?" "It doesn't matter now." "It mattered then." The front door opened, bringing in a gust of wet wind and two laughing women who made their way to a corner table. Silas moved to serve them, his slight limp more pronounced than usual—the weather always made his knee ache. Rory watched him go, grateful for the momentary reprieve. When she turned back, Eva was staring at her with something that might have been pain or might have been its distant cousin, regret. "I got scared," Eva said quietly. "Seeing you like that—seeing what Evan had done to you—it terrified me. You were always the strong one, Rory. The one with her shit together. And suddenly you weren't, and I didn't know how to handle it." "So you ran." "So I ran." Eva drained her glass and set it down with deliberate care. "Took a job offer in Edinburgh. Threw myself into work. Pretended I was fine." She looked down at her hands, at the absence of rings, at the manicured nails that gleamed dully in the bar's warm light. "My therapist says I have attachment issues." Despite everything, Rory almost laughed. "Mine says I have trust issues. Wonder where those came from." "You're seeing someone? A therapist?" "Silas insisted." Rory jerked her chin toward the bar owner, who was now wiping down tables with methodical precision. "Turns out having a former spymaster as a landlord has its perks. He knows people." "Spymaster?" "Long story. He's good people, though. Steady." Unlike some, she didn't add, but Eva heard it anyway. Another silence, but this one felt different. Less jagged. Eva traced a finger through the condensation on her empty glass, and Rory noticed her hands trembled slightly. "I'm engaged," Eva said. "Was engaged. She ended it last week. Said I never let her in. Said I kept everyone at arm's length." She looked up, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "She wasn't wrong." Rory felt something loosen in her chest. Not forgiveness—not yet, maybe not ever—but understanding. They'd both been running. Just in different directions. "I'm sorry," Rory said, and meant it. "Me too. For all of it." Outside, the rain picked up, hammering against the window. Rory checked her phone—one more delivery, across town. She should go. Should leave this conversation unfinished, return to the simple mathematics of orders and addresses and tips. But she stayed on her stool, and Eva ordered another drink, and when Silas brought it over, he brought Rory a second cup of tea without being asked. They talked, carefully at first, about safer things. Eva's flat in Edinburgh. Rory's job at the Golden Empress. The weather. London. Anything but the gulf between who they'd been—two girls sharing secrets in the back of a Volvo—and who they'd become.