Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTZ36C19FRVB58AG2DVBFBV

The brass handle turned with a stubborn screech that Ptolemy had long since stopped reacting to. Three deadbolts. Eva's paranoia, or perhaps her brilliance—Rory had never decided which. She thumbed the final lock open and pulled the door toward her, already rehearsing the sharp remark she'd prepared for the delivery driver who insisted on ringing twice even after she'd asked him not to. The words died somewhere between her throat and her tongue. Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hallway, one hand raised as if to knock again, the other gripping the head of his cane like a gentleman about to tip his hat. The fluorescent light above him caught the silver threads in his charcoal suit, threw shadows across the sharp angles of his face. His heterochromatic eyes found hers—the amber one warm, the black one fathomless—and something flickered there. Surprise, maybe. Or relief dressed up as surprise. "Rory." The name fell from his lips in that low register she'd spent eight months trying to forget. She hadn't succeeded. She'd simply gotten better at not thinking about it, about the way he'd said it that night in the back room of Silas' bar when the shadows had been longer and the silence between them had felt like a held breath. "Luc." She heard her own voice, flat and foreign. "This is a surprise." His gaze moved past her, cataloging the apartment behind in a single sweeping glance—the towers of books crowding the tiny sitting area, the scrolls stacked beside the radiator, the yellow legal pad on the kitchen counter still open to whatever rabbit hole Eva had dragged her into this week. Ptolemy wound between her ankles, oblivious to the tension coiling in the doorway. "I tried your phone," he said. "Several times." "I changed the number." "I know." A pause. "I had it traced." Of course he did. He was Lucien Moreau, information broker, fixer, the man who could find a needle in a haystack and sell the haystack for a profit. Asking how he'd found her would be a waste of breath. She knew better than to ask questions she already knew the answers to. "I'm not interested in whatever job you've got." She moved to close the door, but his cane caught in the gap—a practiced move, she realized, the blade inside likely keeping the wood from splintering. "Go through Silas if you need a runner. I'm off the circuit." "It's not about a job." "Then what?" He didn't answer immediately. His eyes returned to her face, and she watched something shift behind them—the careful mask slipping, just for a moment. She remembered that look. It had been there the night he'd told her he was leaving, that the information he'd gathered about her ex—the ex she'd fled Cardiff to escape—had turned sour. That someone had leaked her location, that staying near her meant putting her in danger, that he was leaving and she couldn't come with him and please, Rory, please don't make this harder than it already is. She'd made it harder anyway. She'd screamed at him, called him a coward in four different languages because he spoke four and she'd wanted to prove she could match him. He'd walked away without looking back. She'd spent three weeks drunk on cheap gin and convinced she hated him. Now she stood here, two feet away from him in a doorway that felt like a battlefield, and she didn't hate him at all. "I needed to see you," he said quietly. "That's all. I needed—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "I shouldn't have come." "No," she agreed. "You shouldn't have." But neither of them moved. Ptolemy meowed, aggrieved at being ignored, and padded toward the kitchen bowl that was now empty. The moment stretched, fragile as spun glass. "Alright." Rory stepped back, gesturing sharply toward the apartment. "You're here. You've seen me. I look the same as I did eight months ago, same flat, same mess, same—" She stopped, glancing at the legal pad. "Same research. You can leave now." "Liar." He stepped inside without invitation, and she let him because stopping him would have meant touching him and touching him would have meant— "You look exhausted, Rory. You haven't been sleeping." "Don't." "You never sleep when you're deep in research. It's why you take those ridiculous delivery shifts, to force yourself into a routine." He set his cane against the wall,顺手. "You're working on something. What?" "It's not your concern." "It is." His voice hardened. "It became my concern the moment you started running. Did you think I'd just—what? Forget you exist?" "I hoped." She crossed her arms, defensive. "I hoped you'd take the easy way out like you did last time. Walk away, let me sort my own mess, stop pretending you ever actually—" "Pretending?" He closed the distance between them in two strides, and suddenly he was too close, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something dark and expensive, a scent that had haunted her for months. "You think I was pretending?" "You left." The words came out ragged. "You told me it was too dangerous, told me you'd only bring trouble, and then you just—you left. Like I was something you were done with." "Like you were something worth protecting." His voice cracked on the last word, and she saw it—the crack in the facade, the exhaustion beneath the polished exterior. "Evan found you, Rory. He found you because of me, because I got sloppy, because I thought—" He laughed, bitter and short. "I thought I could keep you safe. I was wrong." "Evan's in prison." She hadn't meant to say it like that, like she was reassuring him. "He won't—" "You don't know that. You don't know what he had, who he knew—" "I know I'm still here." She reached out, impulse or madness, and touched the lapel of his suit. His breath caught. "I'm still here, Luc. I've been here the whole time." "You shouldn't have been." But his hand came up, covered hers where it rested against his chest. "You should have run further, changed your name, done everythingEva tried to teach you—" "Eva's dramatic. You've met her." "Evacuation plans are not dramatic when someone's life is at stake." "My life is my life." She pressed her palm flat against his heart, feeling it beat—too fast, too warm, something not quite human running through his veins. "It's my choice who I let into it." He looked down at her hand, then back at her face. The amber eye was bright, almost glowing. "You've made that choice before. You chose badly." "I chose you." The silence that followed was absolute. Ptolemy, returning from the kitchen with his whiskers still wet, wound between their ankles and looked up as if wondering why they'd stopped talking. "You're going to regret that," Lucien said finally. "Probably." She stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him. "I've regretted worse." He kissed her like a man drowning—the edge of desperation, the taste of something long denied. She kissed him back with all the anger she'd been carrying, eight months of it, and when his arms came around her she let herself be held. Let herself stop thinking about the danger, the risk, the thousand reasons this was a terrible idea. When they finally broke apart, breathless and trembling, she pressed her forehead to his. "You're staying," she said. "I—" "You're staying. We can talk about the rest tomorrow. Right now you're staying, and you're going to help me feed Ptolemy because he's looking at us like we've personally offended him." A laugh escaped him, low and wondering. "You've lost your mind." "I lost it eight months ago." She pulled back, meeting his eyes. "You could help me find it." He was quiet for a long moment. Then his hand came up, touched her cheek with a tenderness that made her chest ache. "I never stopped looking," he said. "For you. For reasons to come back." "I know." She took his hand, led him toward the kitchen where Ptolemy's bowl sat empty and the kettle was already cooling on the counter. "I know, Luc." Later, there would be explanations. There would be talk of Evan, of the information he'd gathered, of the debts he still owed and the people who still wanted him dead. There would be conversations that would hurt and confessions that would sting. But that was later. Right now, there was only the cramped flat on Brick Lane, the cat demanding his dinner, and two people who had finally stopped running from each other.