Run: 2026-02-25-01KJ95Q7N31Y7S4H5SZC226H4Y

The green neon of The Raven’s Nest flickered, casting a rhythmic, sickly pulse against the condensation on the window. Inside, the air tasted of stale hops and the sharp, medicinal tang of gin. Silas moved behind the mahogany bar with a hitch in his rhythm, his left leg dragging just enough to announce his presence over the low hum of the refrigerator. He buffed a heavy tumbler with a linen cloth, the silver signet ring on his right hand catching the amber glow of the overhead lamps. Aurora sat on the end stool, her shoulder-length black hair shielding her face as she traced the rim of her glass. The smell of ginger and soy from the Golden Empress still clung to her sweater, a stubborn reminder of the twelve-mile delivery loop she’d finished an hour ago. She ran a thumb over the crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a small, white ridge of history. The heavy oak door groaned. A man stepped in, shaking a black umbrella and bringing the scent of the Soho rain and expensive wool with him. He paused, his eyes adjusting to the dim cavern of maps and monochrome photographs. Silas stopped polishing. He didn't recognize the face, but he recognized the way the man searched the room—deliberate, out of place, like a collector in a junkyard. Rory looked up as the man approached the bar. Her heart did a slow, heavy roll in her chest. "I thought it was you through the window." Niall looked exactly like the life she’d burned behind her. He wore a charcoal overcoat that cost more than Rory earned in three months of navigating London traffic. His hair was shorter than it had been in Cardiff, groomed with a precision that hinted at courtrooms and high-stakes lunches. "Niall." The name felt like a piece of gravel in her mouth. Silas slid a coaster toward the newcomer, his hazel eyes Narrowing. "Bourbon. Neat." Niall didn't look at the bar owner. He pulled out the stool next to Rory, the wood scraping against the floorboards like a sharp intake of breath. He looked at her jacket, the utilitarian fabric, and then at the way she held herself—shoulders squared, eyes alert, the cool-headed pragmatism of a woman who had learned to live in the shadows of a city that didn't know her name. "You look different, Laila. Or do they call you that here?" "Nobody calls me that anymore." She reached for her drink, her hand steady despite the sudden heat behind her ribs. "I saw your mother last month at the market. She looks older. She thinks you’re working for a firm in Bristol. She tells the neighbors you’re on the partner track." Niall took the bourbon Silas offered. He rotated the glass, the liquid swirling in a tight, controlled vortex. "It’s better if she thinks that." "Is it? Your father still keeps the law books in your old room. He hasn't moved a single volume of your Pre-Law texts." Rory’s gaze drifted to a map of the Prague underground pinned to the far wall. The geography of her current life was simpler—street names, delivery times, the quiet safety of the flat above this very floor. The weight of the barrister’s daughter she was supposed to be felt like a ghost sitting on her chest. "Cardiff is a long way from Soho, Niall. Why are you here?" "A deposition. Some commercial dispute in the City. I saw the green light and thought of that old lamp you had in your dorm. Then I saw the black hair. I almost didn't believe it." He leaned in, the scent of his cologne—something woody and sharp—cutting through the grease of the Golden Empress. He looked at her wrist, his eyes lingering on the crescent scar. "Evan asks about you. Occasionally. When he’s had enough to drink to forget he’s supposed to be ashamed." The mention of the name caused the air to chill. Silas, who had been rearranging bottles on the back shelf, paused. He didn't turn around, but the set of his auburn-grey shoulders tightened. "I don't care about Evan's shame." Rory stood, her stool clicking against the footrail. "You’re hiding, Rory. You went from being the smartest girl in the room to... what is this? A basement in London?" Niall gestured to the room, his hand sweeping past the photographs of faces long forgotten by everyone but Silas. "It’s not a basement. It’s a bar. And I’m not hiding. I’m living." "You’re delivering food. I saw the bike outside. One of the guys at the office mentioned a girl who looked like you near the Strand. I laughed. I told them Aurora Carter was destined for better things than a thermal bag and a moped." Niall took a long swallow of the bourbon, his throat moving as he gripped the glass. "Destiny is a word people use when they want to justify their own entrapment. You took the path they carved for you. You stayed in the lines." Rory leaned against the bar, her bright blue eyes locking onto his. There was no warmth in the look, only the hard-won clarity of someone who had survived a collapse. "I’m an Associate, Rory. I have a house in Penarth. I’m marrying Sarah Jenkins in June. I didn't stay in the lines. I built the damn lines." "And yet you’re sitting in a dive in Soho on a Tuesday night looking at me like I’m a ghost you’re afraid to touch." Niall flinched. He set the glass down with enough force to make the ice rattle. "I thought you’d be dead. Or worse, back with him. When you vanished, the rumors were... people said you’d finally snapped." "I did snap. That was the point. The person I was supposed to be broke. I like the pieces I have now better." Silas moved closer, picking up the bottle of bourbon and holding it near Niall’s glass. The silver signet ring caught the green light from the sign outside. "Another, or are we settling up?" Silas’s voice was like grinding stones, quiet but heavy with the weight of authority. Niall looked at Silas, finally registering the man's presence—the neat beard, the stillness of a predator at rest. He looked back at Rory, noticing for the first time how she didn't look like a victim. She looked like a regular. She looked like she belonged to the maps and the secrets of the room. "She was meant to be a Queen’s Counsel." Niall spoke to Silas, as if Rory had already left the room. "She looks like someone who knows exactly where she is to me." Silas didn't pour the drink. He waited. "Is this what you wanted? This life?" Niall’s voice dropped, the arrogance bleeding out into something that sounded dangerously like envy. "I wanted to wake up without a hand on my throat, Niall. I wanted to walk down a street where nobody knew who my father was. I wanted to be quiet." Rory reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled ten-pound note, laying it on the bar for her ginger ale. "You look miserable in that coat. It’s too heavy for you." "It’s a bespoke fit." "It wears you. You’re still trying to fill the space they left for you." Niall reached out, his hand hovering near her sleeve, but he didn't make contact. The distance between them wasn't just the three years since she’d fled; it was the entire geography of intent. "Your mother thinks you’re happy. That’s the lie I’ll tell her when I go back. That you looked happy." "Tell her the truth. Tell her I’m still black-haired and stubborn and that I’m not coming home." Rory turned away from him, nodding to Silas. "See you tomorrow, Si." "Tomorrow, Rory." Silas watched her walk toward the back, his hazel eyes tracking her until she disappeared through the door that led to the flat above. The limp in his leg was more pronounced as he moved to reclaim the empty glass from the bar. Niall sat alone, the neon green light washing over his charcoal coat. He looked at the maps on the wall, the old photographs of people in places he’d never go. The silence of the bar stretched out, filled only by the hum of the fridge and the rain tapping against the glass like a thousand small, insistent fingers. He reached for his glass, but it was empty. He looked at his hands, clean and manicured, and then at the door through which Rory had vanished. "She always was the fastest of us." Niall’s voice was a whisper, lost in the shadows of the maps. Silas wiped the spot where Rory’s glass had been. "Fast enough to stop running." The rain intensified, a sudden deluge that blurred the Soho streets into a smear of grey and neon. Niall stood, buttoning his coat, pulling the collar tight against his neck. He looked around the room one last time, searching for a trace of the girl he’d known, but the room only gave back the cold, steady gaze of Silas Blackwood and the maps of a world Niall didn't understand. He pushed the door open, the bell chiming a lonely, sharp note. The Soho wind rushed in, smelling of damp earth and exhaust, before the door swung shut, leaving Silas alone in the amber glow of the Nest. Silas picked up the ten-pound note and tucked it into the register. He looked at the silver signet ring on his hand, then at the staircase. He knew the weight of a past that wouldn't stay buried, and he knew the cost of the silence Rory had bought for herself. The green light outside continued to pulse. Rory sat in the dark of her flat upstairs, listening to the rain on the roof, her thumb resting on the crescent scar on her wrist, her breathing slow and measured in the quiet of the London night. She didn't look out the window to see if he was gone. She didn't need to. The world of Cardiff and law books and Evan was a ghost, and she had long since learned how to live with the haunting. Below her, the floorboards creaked as Silas moved about the bar, closing up, his rhythmic hitch a steady heartbeat in the belly of the building. The maps on the walls held their secrets, and for now, so did she.