Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNFCS59Y53D2SP8P17FQXE7

The Raven's Nest hummed with its usual Tuesday night crowd—a mix of locals nursing pints and tourists drawn by the green neon sign that flickered like a dying firefly against the Soho drizzle. Aurora Carter slipped through the narrow door, shaking raindrops from her delivery jacket. The familiar smell of wood polish and whiskey wrapped around her like an old blanket. "Kitchen's closed, Rory," Silas called from behind the bar without looking up. He was polishing glasses with the same methodical precision he brought to everything—left to right, three clockwise turns, hold to the light. His silver signet ring caught the amber glow of the overhead lamps. "Not here for food." She hung her jacket on the coat rack by the door, noting how her landlord's limp seemed more pronounced tonight. The weather, probably. "Yu-Fei gave me the evening off. Thought I'd see if you needed help with inventory." Silas glanced up then, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. "Since when do you volunteer for inventory?" Since she'd noticed him wincing every time he climbed the stairs to the stockroom. Since the knee that had ended his career seemed to be giving him more trouble than usual. But Aurora just shrugged and made her way behind the bar. "Since I'm already wet and miserable. Might as well be useful." She was reaching for an apron when the door chimed. A woman stood in the entrance, designer heels impractical for the weather, blonde hair swept into a style that probably cost more than Aurora made in a week. The woman's gaze swept the room—past the faded maps of Prague and Berlin, past the black-and-white photographs of faces whose names Silas never shared—before landing on Aurora. "Rory?" Aurora's hands stilled on the apron strings. That voice, polished now with received pronunciation but still carrying traces of Cardiff underneath. "Eva?" The woman who'd once been Eva Marsh—who'd eaten cheese sandwiches on Aurora's bedroom floor while they studied for A-levels, who'd held Aurora's hair back after too many shots of cheap vodka at university, who'd sent the text that had saved her life (*Come to London. Now. Don't tell him*)—clicked across the worn floorboards in those ridiculous heels. "My God, it is you." Eva's smile was perfect, the kind that came from years of practice at corporate events. "What are you doing here?" "I live upstairs." Aurora heard how flat her voice sounded, how the words dropped like stones into still water. "What are you doing here?" "Client drinks ran late. Someone mentioned this place had character." Eva's laugh tinkled like crystal, nothing like the snorting giggle Aurora remembered. "I can't believe it. How long has it been?" Three years, two months, and sixteen days since Eva had stopped returning her calls. But Aurora just said, "A while." Silas had stopped polishing glasses. He stood perfectly still, the way he did when he was cataloging every detail of a scene. Aurora could practically feel him filing away Eva's manicured appearance, the Hermès bag, the way she kept touching her pearl earrings—a nervous habit that apparently even finishing school hadn't cured. "Can I get you something?" he asked, breaking the silence that had stretched too tight. "Gin and tonic. Hendrick's, if you have it." Eva perched on a barstool like she was posing for a photograph. "Unless you're helping? I don't want to interrupt." "Just started my shift," Aurora lied. She pulled down a glass, added ice. Her hands moved automatically—two parts gin, three parts tonic, cucumber slice balanced on the rim. The same drink Eva had ordered the night they'd celebrated their university acceptances. The night before everything began to unravel. "Still at Cardiff?" Eva asked, watching Aurora work. "You must be nearly finished with law school by now." The bottle of tonic slipped slightly in Aurora's grip. "I left. After first year." "Oh." Eva's perfectly shaped eyebrows drew together. "But you were so determined. Your father must have been—" "Disappointed. Yes." Aurora slid the glass across the bar. "Seven pounds fifty." Eva fumbled for her wallet, clearly thrown by the transaction. "Rory, I—" "It's Aurora now." She turned to wipe down the already-clean bar, unable to meet those familiar brown eyes. "Rory was a long time ago." "Right. Of course." Eva took a sip of her drink. "I work for Deloitte now. Senior consultant. The hours are murder, but the money..." She trailed off, perhaps remembering their old jokes about selling out to corporate overlords. "What about you? What do you do?" Aurora gestured vaguely at the bar, at her faded t-shirt and jeans. "This. Delivery work during the day." "Delivery work," Eva repeated, as if the words were foreign. "But you're brilliant. You could—" "Could what?" The sharpness in Aurora's voice made Silas look up from where he'd retreated to give them space. "Could go back to university? Could pretend the last three years didn't happen? Could forget why I left in the first place?" Eva's hand found her earring again. "I tried to call. After you left Cardiff." "No, you didn't." Aurora's voice was steady now, each word precise as a blade. "You texted once to ask if I'd made it to London safely. Then nothing." "I didn't know what to say." Eva stared into her gin and tonic as if it held answers. "Evan kept asking about you. Showing up at my flat. I thought if I stayed away, he'd leave you alone." Aurora's hand went unconsciously to her left wrist, where the crescent scar seemed to burn beneath her skin. Not from childhood, despite what she told anyone who asked. "And did he?" "I don't know. I transferred to the London office six months later." Eva looked up then, and for a moment Aurora saw her old friend beneath the corporate veneer—the girl who'd shared her lunch money, who'd taught her Welsh curse words, who'd known something was wrong before Aurora could admit it to herself. "I should have done more. I know that." The bar had gone quiet around them. Even the usual Tuesday night regulars seemed to sense the weight of the conversation, turning back to their pints and hushed discussions. Silas polished the same glass over and over, his presence solid and reassuring at Aurora's back. "You did enough," Aurora said finally. "You got me out." "But then I left you." Eva's voice cracked, just slightly. "I was scared. Of him. Of what it meant that I hadn't seen it sooner. Of how close I'd come to losing you." She pushed the drink away, barely touched. "I'm not proud of it." Aurora studied the woman across the bar—the expensive highlights, the designer clothes, the careful makeup that couldn't quite hide the shadows under her eyes. Success worn like armor against the world. She wondered what Eva saw when she looked back—a university dropout serving drinks in a dingy Soho bar, living above her workplace, delivering takeaway to make ends meet. "We were different people then," Aurora said. It wasn't forgiveness, exactly, but it was acknowledgment. Of time passed. Of choices made in fear and self-preservation. Of the strange alchemy that transformed friendship into regret. Eva pulled out a business card, cream-colored with raised lettering. "If you ever want to talk. Or if you need—" "I'm fine." Aurora didn't take the card. "Really." Eva stood, leaving a twenty-pound note beside her barely touched drink. "It was good to see you, Rory. Aurora. I mean that." She clicked toward the door in those impractical heels, pausing at the threshold. For a moment, Aurora thought she might turn around, might say something to bridge the three years of silence. Instead, Eva pulled her coat tighter and stepped out into the rain. The green neon sign painted her retreating form in sickly light before the darkness swallowed her whole. Silas finally set down the over-polished glass. "Old friend?" "Old something." Aurora picked up the twenty-pound note, stared at it. Clean and crisp, like Eva herself. Nothing like the crumpled fivers they used to pool for late-night chips. "Keep the change in the till." "You all right?" She considered the question, rolling her left wrist where the scar ached with phantom memory. "Yeah. Just strange, seeing who people become." "Or who they always were," Silas said quietly. "Sometimes it takes distance to see clearly." Aurora thought about that as she resumed wiping down the bar. About the girl who'd saved her life with a text message and then disappeared. About the woman who'd walked in wearing success like a shield. About herself, hiding in a bar in Soho, using a name that wasn't quite hers anymore. The door chimed again, bringing in a gust of cold air and two laughing tourists. Aurora straightened her shoulders, pulled on her professional smile. "What can I get you?" The night moved on, as nights do. But the ghost of Eva's perfume lingered, mixing with the whiskey and wood polish, a reminder that some regrets never quite wash clean. Outside, the green neon sign continued its eternal flicker, casting long shadows on the rain-slicked streets of Soho.