AI The Raven’s Nest pulsed with a familiar hum, a low murmur of voices and the clink of glasses. Rory moved with practised ease behind the bar, her movements economical. She wiped down the polished wood, trailing a damp cloth over invisible rings left by absent patrons. The green neon sign above the entrance cast a soft, emerald glow over the street outside, blurring the edge of Soho’s late afternoon bustle. Silas, perched on a stool at the far end of the bar, polished a single malt glass, his movements slow and deliberate. His grey-streaked auburn hair caught the dim light, mirroring the subtle sheen of his signet ring.
A figure filled the doorway, blocking the last sliver of natural light. Rory lifted her gaze. The man stood framed in the archway, a tailored suit clinging to his broad shoulders, a stark contrast to the usual denim and leather crowd. He surveyed the room, his eyes sharp, scanning over the old maps and black-and-white photographs that lined the walls.
Rory’s hand tightened on the cloth, knuckles white. The air thinned in her lungs. The man turned, his gaze sweeping across the bar, before landing on her. A slow smile spread across his face, not quite reaching his eyes .
"Malphora?" he called, his voice booming slightly in the quiet space. The name, dusty with disuse, grated against her ears.
Rory felt the blood drain from her face. She hadn’t heard that name in years. She hadn't been Malphora since Cardiff, since before London. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
"Liam O’Connell," she replied, her voice flat, barely a whisper . Her bright blue eyes widened , betraying the cool mask she usually wore.
Liam walked towards the bar, his gait confident, the expensive leather of his shoes making no sound on the worn floorboards. He stopped a respectful distance away, leaning forward slightly on his elbows. His perfectly coiffed dark hair hadn't a strand out of place. He’d filled out since she last saw him, the angular intensity of his university days replaced by something harder, more defined. But the eyes, those deep brown eyes that always held a spark of ambition, they hadn’t changed. They still probed, assessed.
“Last place I expected to find you, Carter,” Liam said, a glint entering his eyes . He glanced around the bar, a hint of disdain lingering in his peripheral vision. “Working here, of all places.”
Rory swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She unclenched her hand from the cloth, smoothing its dampness against the bar. Her fingers brushed the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a ghost of an old childhood accident. “Things change, Liam.”
“Indeed they do,” he murmured, his gaze lingering on her face. “You certainly have.” He paused, his head cocked . “Still refusing to be Malphora, I see. Always did hate that name.”
“It’s Aurora now. Or Rory.” She watched him, an old tightness settling in her stomach . He was a fragment of a life she’d deliberately cleaved away.
“Rory,” he repeated, testing the sound. It felt alien on his tongue. “Right. Always knew you as Malphora. Or Carter. Malphora Carter, the girl who was going to take the legal world by storm.” He straightened, a faint smile on his lips. “I remember our last tute. You were arguing the finer points of common law versus civil jurisdiction. Passionate. Fierce.”
Rory gripped a fresh glass, polishing it with unnecessary vigour. “That was a long time ago.”
“Was it?” Liam’s eyebrows rose. “Felt like yesterday. Then you just… vanished. No word, no explanation. Just gone. Everyone back in Cardiff wondered what happened. We all thought you were going to be the first Associate from our year to make partner.”
He leaned closer, lowering his voice slightly . “Evan was… quite beside himself. He looked for you, you know.”
The mention of Evan’s name was a physical blow. Rory flinched, almost dropping the glass. She placed it carefully on the shelf beneath the bar. A cold dread seeped into her bones. Silas, from his end, paused his polishing, his head tilted just enough to catch the exchange, though he offered no visible reaction.
“Did he?” Rory asked, her voice tight, barely audible . She kept her gaze fixed on the pristine rows of bottles.
“For a while,” Liam continued, oblivious to the shift in her demeanour. “Then he moved on. Got a good gig at Davies & Finch. He’s doing well. Married, actually. To… what was her name? Gemma, I think. She was a year below us.”
A bitter laugh escaped Rory. “Good for him.” The words felt like ash in her mouth . She remembered Gemma, the girl with the wide, admiring eyes who always seemed to be around Evan when Rory wasn’t.
Liam watched her, a calculating expression in his eyes. “You always did hate the small talk, didn’t you? Cutting straight to the chase. That’s what made you such a formidable debater.” He paused, a new note entering his voice . “So, seriously, Rory. What happened? Why the sudden vanishing act? Why give up everything?”
She finally met his gaze, her blue eyes colder than he remembered. “It wasn’t sudden. And it wasn’t ‘everything’.” She wiped down the same spot on the bar again. “Some things aren’t worth holding onto.”
“Like a promising career? A future already mapped out?” Liam scoffed softly . “Or a relationship that was the envy of the entire campus?”
Her jaw clenched . The memory of Evan, of the careful control he exerted, of the slow erosion of her confidence, washed over her. The casual dismissiveness in Liam’s tone, the way he framed her past as a series of enviable accomplishments, grated. He presented it as a given, a path she had no right to deviate from.
“You don’t know anything about it, Liam.”
“Maybe not the specifics, no,” Liam conceded, raising his hands slightly in a gesture of surrender that felt more like a prelude to attack. “But it was a shock. You were our star, Malphora. The one everyone expected to blaze a trail. And then, poof. You drop off the grid, end up in a London dive bar.”
He gestured vaguely around The Raven's Nest, the gesture encompassing the dimly lit room, the worn leather banquettes, the very essence of Rory’s current life. It was a judgment, plain and unambiguous. Silas, at the end of the bar, finally placed his polished glass down with a soft *clink *.
“This isn’t a ‘dive bar’,” Rory countered, her voice low, a dangerous edge to it . “This is a living, breathing place with its own history. Its own character.”
“Sure, sure,” Liam said, his tone patronizing . “Character. Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad place, just… not you. Not the Malphora Carter I knew. I mean, you were always so driven. So ambitious. What happened to that ambition?”
She met his gaze head-on. “It didn’t vanish. It just… found new directions.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed . “New directions. Serving drinks? Delivering takeaway?”
The question hung in the air , a thinly veiled insult. Rory gripped the edge of the bar, her knuckles white. She could feel the familiar burn behind her eyes, the familiar urge to lash out. But then Silas’s quiet presence, his steady gaze from the corner of the room, anchored her. She took a slow, deep breath.
“It’s an honest living,” she said, her voice even. “It’s honest work. And it’s mine. From the ground up.”
Liam let out a short, humourless laugh. “From the ground up. You always did have a flair for the dramatic, Malphora. I remember when we were arguing that property law case, you turned a simple tenancy dispute into a battle for human rights.”
He smiled, a nostalgic, self-satisfied smile that made Rory’s stomach churn . He remembered the moments of her brilliance, but he hadn’t seen the quiet desperation that fuelled her, the fear of disappointing the expectations of others. He saw the performance, not the performer.
“You still have that fire, I can see it,” Liam continued, oblivious to the resentment building in her. “It’s just… misplaced now, isn’t it? Wasted on…” He gestured vaguely around the bar again. “On this.”
Rory felt a cold fury begin to simmer. He stood there, impeccable in his suit, his success radiating off him like heat, judging her and the choices she’d made to survive. He saw what she was doing , but not *why *. He saw a failure where she saw a rebuild.
“And you, Liam?” Rory challenged, her voice low and sharp . “What about you? Still chasing the next big case? Still measuring yourself against everyone else in the room?”
Liam’s smile faltered slightly . “Someone has to make a difference, Rory. Someone has to uphold the law.” He puffed out his chest almost imperceptibly. “I work for one of the top firms in the city now. We handle high-profile corporate litigation. It’s exactly what we talked about, back in the day.”
“Yes,” Rory murmured, her eyes holding his . “We always talked about it. The prestige. The power. The money.” She let the unspoken implication hang between them: a future she was meant to want, a future he had achieved, and a future that felt utterly hollow to her now.
Liam’s expression hardened. The easy confidence he’d arrived with began to crack, replaced by a flicker of defensiveness. “And you’re saying you don’t care about any of that? The girl who worked herself to the bone, who pulled all-nighters in the library just to perfect an essay, suddenly doesn’t care about success?”
“I care about different things now,” Rory said simply. She reached for a clean rag beneath the counter, gripping it like a lifeline. “Things you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” Liam scoffed.
Rory looked at him, truly looked at him, noticing the subtle lines of stress around his eyes, the tightness in his jaw despite his polished exterior. He was a perfect picture of the life she could have had, the life everyone expected of her. But she also saw the hollowness. He hadn’t changed as much as she thought. He was still striving , still performing, still chasing. And it seemed he was still, in his own way, as trapped as she once was.
“Freedom,” Rory said. “Peace. A life where I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not.”