Run: 2026-02-20-01KHY8N621G1A1MZACNACCRM52

The green neon of The Raven’s Nest bleeds through London’s rain-slicked Soho streets, painting Rory’s delivery bag—emblazoned with the Golden Empress’ red dragon, its strap frayed from a mugger’s tug last week—an unsteady lime. She’s lived above the bar for three months, her flat’s creaky floorboards echoing the bar’s midnight laughter through the ceiling, and she’s stared at that neon sign from her window every night she couldn’t sleep, the glow a faint anchor against the memories of Evan’s hands around her throat. Tonight, though, her left wrist throbs—its crescent scar pulsing with the memory of a childhood bike crash and the eight hours she’s spent hefting steamer trays of dim sum—and her rain-soaked socks squelch in her boots, and she can’t bear the thought of climbing the stairs to her empty flat where the only heat comes from a broken space heater that smells like burnt wiring. She pushes the door open, and the bar’s hush wraps around her like a frayed blanket. The air smells of aged whiskey, polished oak, and the faint, sweet smoke of a pipe someone abandoned an hour prior. Walls lined with old maps—one of Prague’s winding alleyways faded at the edges, its cobblestones marked with a tiny X she can’t place, another of Cardiff’s bay creased where a thumb has rubbed it a hundred times—stare down at her, and black-and-white photographs of stoic men and women with unreadable eyes cling to the gaps between frames. One photo catches her eye: a woman in a tailored suit, her hand on a revolver, standing in front of a Parisian café. She doesn’t have time to linger—her chapped, nail-broken hands are already reaching for the bar’s wooden edge. A man stands behind the bar, wiping a crystal tumbler with a rag that’s seen better days, his grey-streaked auburn beard neat as a pressed suit save for a crumb of cheese sandwich stuck in its edge. His left leg dips slightly with each shift of his weight, a limp so pronounced he has to brace his hand on the bar when he reaches for a bottle of bourbon. Rory’s gaze falls to his right hand: a silver signet ring, its face etched with a raven’s head, glinting under the bar’s amber lights. “Hot cocoa,” she says, her voice rough from yelling over Soho’s traffic to be heard above delivery van horns. “Extra marshmallows, if you’ve got ’em. I can’t afford whiskey tonight.” The man pauses. His hazel eyes lock onto hers, and for a beat, Rory’s chest tightens—like she’s seen those eyes before, in a Cardiff office where sunlight filtered through floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and her father’s law books lined the walls. He turns to grab a ceramic mug from a shelf behind him, his limp more pronounced as he reaches for the cocoa tin (its label peeling, a gift from a regular, he’ll later say), and his fingers brush the Prague map’s frame as he passes. He sets the hot cocoa in front of her, and their hands brush. His fingers are calloused from wiping glasses and fixing broken bar stools, the signet ring pressing into her palm. “You’ve got that scar still,” he says, his voice low, like he’s speaking to a memory he thought he’d buried under whiskey bottles and secret meetings. Rory’s thumb brushes the crescent on her wrist, the scar still pale from the childhood bike crash where she’d slammed into her grandmother’s garden gate trying to outrun a group of bullies. “Childhood bike crash,” she repeats. “Sewed up in Cardiff Royal, my mom reading me *Harry Potter* while the doctor stitched it.” She leans forward, her bright blue eyes searching his face—for the auburn hair without the grey streaks, for the straight leg without the limp, for the agent who’d made her laugh with stories of secret missions in Paris. “The ring. You were in my dad’s office in Cardiff. 2014. You were consulting him on a case you called ‘too tangled for words.’” The man’s rag stills on the tumbler. “Aurora Carter,” he says, the name rolling off his tongue like a secret he’d meant to keep but couldn’t. “Rory. You used to sneak in with your soccer ball, your straight black hair pulled into a ponytail that kept falling in your face.” “Silas,” she whispers. She’d only known him by his first name back then—he’d refused to give his last, saying it was “bad for business” and winking like he was sharing a joke only they understood. She’d spent weeks after he left asking her dad about him, but her father had only shaken his head and said, “Some people can’t stay. Not without putting the ones they care about in danger.” Silas leans against the bar, his signet ring tapping the wood in a steady rhythm. The Prague map on the wall catches his eye, and his jaw tightens—she’ll later learn the X marks the alley where his knee was shattered during the botched op. “I left abruptly,” he says, as if reading her unspoken anger at his sudden disappearance. “Prague. A botched MI6 op. My network was compromised, and I didn’t want you tangled up in it. Your dad made me promise I’d stay away—said you were too young, too bright, to be dragged into my mess.” Rory stares at her hot cocoa, the marshmallows melting into a sweet sludge that sticks to the mug’s bottom. She’d spent the next nine years chasing her father’s dream of pre-law, her straight black hair pulled into a tight bun for lectures, her intelligence sharpened by case studies of corporate fraud and criminal defense—until Evan had grabbed her left wrist during a fight, his fingers digging into her scar until she cried out, and told her she was “too smart for her own good” and “needed to be put in her place.” She’d fled Cardiff three months ago, Eva’s text (“Come to London— I’ve got a place for you and a delivery job at Golden Empress”) burning in her pocket, and had stumbled into the flat above The Raven’s Nest because it was the only one she could afford with her $12-an-hour delivery wages. “You could have sent a note,” she says, her voice cracking as she thinks of the letters she’d written him and never sent, stashed in a box under her bed in Cardiff. “A single word. I thought you’d forgotten me. That I was just a kid you’d amused for an hour and then left behind.” Silas’s limp carries him to the end of the bar, where he grabs a bottle of whiskey and pours a shot into a glass. He doesn’t drink it—he hasn’t had a full shot since Prague, he’ll later say—just twists the signet ring on his finger until his knuckles turn white. “I watched you once,” he says, his voice quieter now, like he’s sharing a secret he’s never told anyone. “Six months after I left. I was in Cardiff on a quiet errand, hiding in a café across from your university, and I saw you walking to a lecture, your backpack slung over one shoulder, laughing with a friend. I couldn’t approach you—my knee was still healing, I could barely stand for five minutes without pain, and I was scared my pursuers would find you. I thought you were better off without me.” Rory’s delivery bag slips off the stool, hitting the floor with a thud that echoes through the emptying bar. The Golden Empress’ red dragon stares up at her, a reminder of the life she’s been hiding in—delivering dim sum to office workers who don’t look at her, avoiding her father’s calls because she’s ashamed to tell him she quit pre-law, checking over her shoulder for Evan’s face in every crowd. She’d been so proud of her pre-law acceptance, so sure she’d follow her dad into the courtroom and solve crimes instead of running from them. Now, she’s a delivery person hiding in a flat above a bar, her only ambition to make it through the day without being recognized. Silas’s hazel eyes harden when he sees her face fall. He slams the whiskey shot down on the bar, the glass clinking against the wood so hard a drop of whiskey spills onto the Prague map. “I should have come back,” he says, his quiet authority boiling over for a second, the retired agent peeking through the bar owner’s mask. “I should have protected you. I should have made sure he never touched you.” Rory shakes her head, her hair falling in her face. “You couldn’t have known. I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Eva, until it was too late. I thought I could fix it myself—thought I could be the strong pre-law student my dad wanted, thought I could change Evan.” She glances at the bookshelf in the corner, the one with the leather-bound books that look out of place among the bar’s whiskey bottles. She’s noticed it before, the way the third shelf sticks out a fraction of an inch, like someone’s been pulling on it. “What’s behind there?” Silas follows her gaze, his shoulders relaxing. “A secret room,” he says. “For clandestine meetings. My network of old MI6 contacts still comes by sometimes, to share information, to check in. I run a small operation now—nothing dangerous, just keeping an eye on the people who need protecting.” He’s a bar owner with a limp and a secret, not the sharp agent who’d made her laugh with stories of secret missions in Paris. He’s changed, irrevocably, from the man she knew. The rain taps harder against the window, and the bar’s only other patron—a man in a trench coat who’d been staring at the Paris café photo—leaves, his boots squelching against the floor. Silas’s limp carries him back to Rory’s side, and he pulls out a stool next to her, his knee aching so badly he has to adjust his position three times before he’s comfortable. “I regret not saying goodbye,” he says, his voice soft. “I regret letting you think I forgot. I regret every night I spent hiding in this bar instead of reaching out.” Rory picks up her hot cocoa, the mug warming her cold hands. She thinks of her 16-year-old self, sitting in her father’s office, asking Silas about his secret missions, dreaming of a life where she could solve crimes instead of running from them. She thinks of her 25-year-old self, hiding in a flat above a bar, delivering dim sum to pay the rent. The weight of time presses down on her, thick as the bar’s whiskey fumes, and she can feel the regret hanging between them, unspoken but heavy—his regret for leaving, her regret for not reaching out, both of them regretful for the years they lost. “I regret not looking for you sooner,” she says. “I thought you were gone forever. That the agent from my dad’s office was just a story I’d made up to escape my boring pre-law lectures.” Silas taps his signet ring against the bar, his eyes on the Prague map’s X. “I’m not gone,” he says. “Not really. The network’s still there, the secret room’s still there, I’m still there.” He glances at her delivery bag’s frayed strap, then at her scar. “If you ever need help—with Evan, with your dad, with anything—you know where to find me. The bookshelf opens with a pull on the third volume of *The Odyssey*. I remember you loved that book—you told me you wanted to be like Odysseus, fighting your way home.” Rory stares at the bookshelf, the third volume of *The Odyssey* sticking out just enough to be noticed. She’d read that book in her pre-law days, her notes scribbled in the margins about justice and accountability, about fighting for what’s right. Now, it’s a key to a secret room, a reminder that life is full of hidden doors she’s been too scared to open. The rain slows, and the green neon sign stops bleeding into the streets. Silas reaches into his pocket and pulls out a mint—just like the one he gave her in her father’s office—and hands it to her. “For the road,” he says, winking. Rory takes the mint, her fingers brushing his signet ring again. She picks up her hot cocoa, the mug warming her cold hands, and takes a sip, the marshmallows melting on her tongue. She’s lived above The Raven’s Nest for three months, but tonight, for the first time, she feels like she’s found a piece of the home she thought she’d lost forever. The weight of time is still there, but now, it’s balanced by the hope of what’s to come—by the secret room behind the bookshelf, by the man who’s finally come back, by the chance to stop running and start fighting. She glances at the Prague map, at the tiny X marking the alley where Silas’s knee broke, and understands: scars are not just stories they carry on their skin—they’re bridges back to the parts of themselves they thought they’d lost.