Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTQSYSWSQAE7ZBF63F59AKY

Rain clung stubbornly to Soho’s pavements, smearing the city lights into ribbons of green and gold as Aurora Carter ducked beneath The Raven’s Nest’s dripping awning. Wind pressed at her back. The bar’s neon sign, cracked in one corner, buzzed and flared with promise. She pushed in, clutching her satchel to her chest. Inside, warmth closed around her. The air shimmered with the sharp tang of whiskey, pine soap, old leather, and a dozen wet coats left dripping at the door. Maps clung to the walls, their countries faded by decades of cigarette smoke, and above every table, old photographs stared down from burnished frames—adventurers, soldiers, smiling strangers. At the bar, a pair of solicitors argued about football. Someone nearer the back coughed up a laugh that carried a note of despair. Aurora waited at the edge, stomach knotted, uncertain whether she’d come for the drink or for quiet. Her satchel slipped from her shoulder; she stooped to recover it. That’s when she noticed the figure hunched over the farthest corner table. He looked older. His auburn hair had thinned, streaked through with grey, beard clipped tight to his chin. He hunched that massive frame over a page of notes, the elbow of his right arm cocked wide as if the ache had carried through the years undiminished. Silas Blackwood. The limp in his left leg gave him away as much as the signet ring shining under the thin, glass-shaded light. A breath caught in her throat. Silas—Si, from days when she’d thought bravado would shelter her from consequence—looked up, spotted her. His hazel eyes flickered, narrowed, tracking her features as if waiting for an enemy to reveal herself. Then, at last, he beckoned without a word, fingertips drumming twice on the battered wood. “You look bloody awful, Si,” she grinned, letting the memories smooth the edge from her nerves. She gripped the backrest opposite him, not quite sitting yet. He didn’t smile back. “Age is a bastard, Rory. Find yourself in hiding, and suddenly a decade’s caught you. Sit down, unless you’re angling to run again.” She sat. The seat sagged under her weight, springs protesting. Rainwater dribbled from her coat hem and pooled around her boots. “So. You still playing den mother, or just hiding behind paperwork these days?” Silas leaned back. The ring caught the lamplight, argent and steady. His gaze lingered on her clothes—cheap black turtleneck, trousers scuffed at the knees, the faded canvas satchel she’d procured from a charity shop when her money stretched thin. “Didn’t expect you, Rory. I thought…” He paused, collecting a thought and abandoning it. “Didn’t think you’d come back.” Aurora’s mouth twisted. “City’s got a way of dragging out old ghosts, you notice?” “One or two have taken up permanent residence.” Silas’s smile was brief, brittle. “Not all of them so cheerful as you.” She dropped her bag to the foot of the table, arms folding tight over her chest. Rain drummed at the windows. “Does Jen know you’re working here again?” Silas watched her, clinical, like she might fracture under his stare. “Mum thinks I’m at Oxford. Dad keeps asking when I’ll finish law.” Rory shrugged. He picked up his glass, swirling whisky. The ice clinked. “Is this about him?” “Evan?” She spat the name. “It stopped being about him the second I stepped off that train. This—” her chin jerked at the walls “—is for me.” He didn’t buy it; she saw that. “You wear your ghost like a badge, Rory. You get lonely in London or just looking for trouble?” Aurora glanced away, tracing a crease in the tabletop. “Some things you just walk with. I learned that from the best.” “Bollocks.” His voice cracked, low and quiet. “That’s not learning. That’s hiding in plain sight.” She stared at him, sharp lines around her mouth etching deeper. “Look at yourself. You’re still here, holding court over disintegrating maps and strangers’ secrets. You want to lecture me on plain sight?” Silas’s knuckles whitened around his glass. “Do you remember what I told you, after Budapest, the first time your cleverness landed us both in the doghouse?” He didn’t wait. “I said: sometimes the smart move is knowing when to leave.” “And sometimes the smart move is standing your ground.” Aurora’s voice cracked like a whip. “But you’d know about leaving.” That landed. His eyes flickered, jaw clenched. “I stayed here,” he said after a long beat. “Made something of this… bloody mausoleum.” “Is that what this is? Your penance?” She let the accusation hang. All the old hurts—the nights spent waiting for him to show, waiting for news when Prague went black—clung to the silence. He forced a brittle laugh. “You always cut to the quick. That’s never changed.” Gaze sweeping her face, as if searching for the child who’d trusted him, who’d taken orders from the spymaster of Soho when she should have been at home, safe and naive. “No one ever talks about the things you lose. If you’d asked me ten years ago, I’d have sworn I’d never walk with a cane, never fear a knock at the door.” Rory rubbed her wrist, fingering the thin crescent scar there. “We changed. What’s so wrong with that?” He looked at her with a mixture of wonder and grief. “You looked up to me, once. Don’t tell me the city’s knocked that loose as well.” She smiled, but the expression wobbled. “I looked up to the stories, Si. The legends. The man teaching card tricks in smoky back rooms because he thought the world was worth saving. You—” He favoured her with the ghost of a smile. “I’m still here, Rory. Still waiting for some sod to bring me a story worth telling.” Rory tilted her chin, eyes glinting. “Depends on who’s doing the telling. Maybe it’s my turn.” His hand settled on the table, palm up, fingers flexing as spasms wracked the joint—a nod to the limp and scar tissue, another inheritance. “London’s changed. You’ll find it meaner than you remember.” She shrugged, rolling her shoulders as if shedding a weight. “I didn’t come here for mercy.” He regarded her in silence, the space between them thickening with the years, the words both unsaid and unnecessary. At last, he took a slow breath. “You want the top room—yours, if you want it. Just don’t expect forgiveness for running.” Rory’s eyes welled with old affection and sharper regret. “Forgiveness isn’t what I came for.” He slid the battered room key across the table. It caught the light and winked like a signal. Above them, a man at the bar launched into a bitter song about lost love; outside, the rain fattened, the city’s secrets sluicing down storm drains. Rory looked down at the key. Her fingers hovered, uncertain. She sucked in a breath, shoulders squared. “I won’t run, not this time.” Silas’s expression softened. His gaze roved her face, as if anchoring himself on each new line and loss. “Good,” he muttered, voice a cracked thread. Her hand closed on the key. In that gesture, the years collapsed between them—regret and hope knotting tight, binding them to the neon-lit hush of The Raven’s Nest and the territory they’d both carved out, inch by inch.