Run: 2026-02-20-01KHY7V3MWNGXCJ6AXNQB8G66N

Aurora Carter pushed open the door to The Raven's Nest, the green neon sign flickering like a hesitant beacon against the Soho drizzle. She hadn't meant to stop here—London was a sprawl of anonymous corners, and she'd been wandering since dusk, her duffel bag slung over one shoulder, heavy with the remnants of a life she'd fled. Cardiff felt like a ghost already, Evan a specter she'd outrun on the train. But the rain had turned insistent, and the bar's dim glow promised shelter, if nothing else. She shook water from her straight black hair, shoulder-length strands clinging to her damp jacket, and scanned the room. Walls papered with faded maps and black-and-white photos of forgotten streets. A handful of patrons nursed pints at scarred wooden tables, their conversations a low murmur beneath the jazz crooning from an old jukebox. She slid onto a stool at the bar, the worn leather creaking under her five-foot-six frame. Her bright blue eyes flicked to the bartender, a tall man with grey-streaked auburn hair and a neatly trimmed beard to match. He moved with a slight limp, favoring his left leg as he polished a glass. Something about him tugged at her memory—a quiet authority, the way he held himself like he was listening to whispers no one else heard. She ordered a whiskey, neat, her Welsh lilt softened by exhaustion. "Make it a double." The man set the glass down with a nod, his hazel eyes meeting hers. He paused, the silver signet ring on his right hand catching the low light. "Rory? Aurora Carter?" She froze, the glass halfway to her lips. The voice—deep, edged with a faint London polish—unlocked a door in her mind. Silas Blackwood. Uncle Silas, her father had called him, back when Brendan Carter's barrister circles overlapped with whatever shadowy world Silas inhabited. They'd met a handful of times during her childhood summers, Silas dropping by the house in Cardiff with stories sanitized for a girl's ears, his laugh a rare, rumbling thing. But that was years ago—fifteen, maybe more. She'd been a kid, all scraped knees and endless questions; he'd been invincible, or so he'd seemed, before the limp, before the grey in his hair. "Silas?" Her voice cracked, surprise blooming into a tentative smile. She set the glass down, tracing the small crescent scar on her left wrist absentmindedly, a habit from nerves. "Bloody hell. What are you doing behind a bar in Soho?" He chuckled, but it didn't reach his eyes, those hazel depths shadowed now, like storm clouds over the Severn. "Running it, last I checked. The Raven's Nest. My little kingdom." He leaned on the bar, his slight limp more pronounced as he shifted weight off his left knee. "And you? Last I heard from your father, you were buried in pre-law books at Cardiff Uni. Not exactly the type to haunt dives like this." She took a sip, the whiskey burning a path down her throat, buying time. Changed—that's what he was. The Silas she remembered had been a ghost in tailored suits, slipping in and out of her family's life with envelopes for her dad, hints of adventures in places like Prague or Berlin. Now, at fifty-eight, he carried the weight of those years in the lines around his mouth, the careful way he moved, as if every step reminded him of a fall he couldn't forget. Retired, she guessed. Or broken. "Uni didn't stick," she said finally, her cool-headed demeanor slipping into place like armor. Rory had always been quick, out-of-the-box thinking her escape hatch from Evan's rages. "Life... intervened. Needed a change of scenery. London called." She didn't mention Evan, the bruises that had faded but left echoes, the way she'd packed in the dead of night after Eva's urgent texts. "What about you? Dad used to say you were some kind of spymaster, always off saving the world. This—" she gestured at the bar, the secret back room hidden behind a bookshelf she hadn't noticed yet "—feels like retirement." Silas poured himself a measure of the same whiskey, his signet ring clinking against the bottle. He raised the glass in a mock toast. "Retirement's a kind word for it. Botched op in Prague, knee took the brunt. MI6 pensioned me off, figured I'd fade into the wallpaper." His voice was steady, but there was a tension in it, like a wire pulled taut. He glanced at the photos on the wall—a grainy shot of the Charles Bridge, another of a rainy London street—and his limp seemed to echo in the silence. "Opened this place as a front. Keeps the old network humming, you know? Clandestine meetings in the back, the odd favor traded over pints." She nodded, sensing the unspoken layers. The weight of time pressed in, the bar's dim light casting long shadows that mirrored the gaps between who they'd been. She remembered him teasing her about her scar, that childhood tumble from a tree in the garden— "Badge of courage, Rory girl," he'd said, ruffling her hair. Now, she was twenty-five, cool and intelligent on the surface, but carrying regrets like stones in her pockets. Evan had changed her, twisted her trust into something wary, made her flee to a city where she knew no one. Or so she'd thought. "You look different," she said, her bright blue eyes searching his face. "Not just the hair. The limp—it's from Prague?" He set his glass down harder than necessary, the sound sharp in the quiet bar. "Yeah. Bullet shattered the knee. Docs pieced it back together, but it's never the same. You learn to live with the reminders." His hazel gaze flicked to her wrist, the scar peeking from her sleeve. "We all have our badges, don't we?" The comment hung there, laced with regret he didn't voice. Silas had always been the mentor type, even in those fleeting visits—guiding her dad's cases with whispered intel, teaching her card tricks that relied on misdirection. But time had eroded that invincibility. She wondered if he regretted the life that left him limping in a bar, trading secrets instead of chasing them. And her—did he see the changes in her? The way her quick wit now masked a deeper caution, the out-of-the-box thinking born from survival rather than play? "Tell me about it," she prompted, leaning in. The bar felt smaller now, the other patrons fading into the background hum. "Prague. Sounds like one of your stories, but real." He hesitated, fingers drumming on the bar, the signet ring a dull gleam. "Not much to tell that isn't classified. Target was a arms dealer, slippery bastard. Intel went south—ambush in a back alley. I got out, but not clean." His voice lowered, the narrative voice of the spymaster slipping through. "Partner didn't. Left him there, bleeding out on cobblestones. You make choices in the field, Rory. Split-second, and they haunt you." Unspoken regret thickened the air between them. She saw it in the way he avoided her eyes, focusing on the maps instead—old worlds he could no longer traverse without pain. Silas, the man who'd once seemed larger than life, reduced to this dimly lit nest, his quiet authority a shield against what he'd lost. And her own regrets mirrored it: leaving uni, staying with Evan too long, the way she'd let fear dictate her path until Eva's pleas pulled her free. Time had carved them both, widening the chasm between past selves and present shadows. "I'm sorry," she said softly, the words inadequate. "Dad never mentioned... any of that." "Your father knows enough to keep quiet." Silas straightened, his limp evident as he turned to grab a cloth, wiping the bar with unnecessary vigor. "And you? This 'change of scenery'—doesn't sound like a holiday. Running from something?" She traced the rim of her glass, the whiskey's warmth doing little to thaw the chill of memory. "Someone. Ex-boyfriend. Evan. Things got... ugly." Her voice stayed even, intelligence shining through in the careful omission of details—the black eyes, the shattered phone, the nights locked in the bathroom. "Eva—childhood friend—pushed me to leave. Said London would swallow me up, let me start over." Silas nodded, his beard twitching with a suppressed frown. "Smart girl, Eva. And you're here now. That's something." But his eyes held a flicker of regret, perhaps for not being there sooner, for the years that had slipped away while he chased shadows and she navigated her own storms. He poured them both another round, the liquid amber in the low light. "You know, I always thought you'd end up like your dad—barrister, sharp as a tack. What happened to pre-law?" She laughed, bitter and short. "Felt like a cage. Lectures, essays, the weight of expectation. Then Evan came along, made it all seem secondary until it wasn't." The tension coiled in her gut, the unspoken why didn't I leave sooner echoing in her mind. Time had stolen her momentum, left her adrift in a city that felt both vast and confining. "Regrets, right? We collect them like those maps on your wall—paths not taken." He glanced at the wall, his hazel eyes distant. "Regrets are the worst operatives. They infiltrate, sabotage from within." His limp carried him a step back, as if putting distance from the admission. "I regret Prague every day. The choices that left me here, limping through life instead of running it. But you—you're young, Rory. Don't let them define you." The conversation stretched, the bar's jazz underscoring their words like a melancholy soundtrack. She told him about the delivery job she'd lined up—Golden Empress restaurant, part-time gigs on a scooter, weaving through London's chaos. He offered her the flat above the bar, a spare room gathering dust. "No strings," he said, but she sensed the mentor in him stirring, the spymaster seeing a protégé in her quick mind. Yet beneath it, the regret lingered—the years they'd lost, the changes that time had wrought. Silas, no longer the invincible uncle; Rory, no longer the wide-eyed girl. As the night deepened, patrons trickling out into the rain, they talked of lighter things—her mother's teaching tales, his bar's eccentric regulars—but the tension remained, a undercurrent pulling at them. Who they'd been haunted the space between words, the weight of unspoken apologies heavy as the duffel at her feet. Silas limped to the bookshelf, revealing the hidden door with a wry smile. "For old times' sake, a tour of the real Nest." She followed, stepping into the secret room, its walls lined with files and flickering screens. Here, in this clandestine heart, the changes felt starkest—his world shrunk to whispers, hers expanded into uncertainty. Regret bound them, time's invisible thread, drawing old friends together in a bar that smelled of whiskey and rain, where past and present collided like waves against a weathered shore. They sat there until closing, the conversation ebbing into comfortable silences, but the regret never fully dissipated. It lingered in his limp as he locked up, in her scar as she climbed the stairs to the flat he'd offered. Two souls, altered by the years, finding in each other a mirror to what was lost—and perhaps, a path forward.