Run: 2026-04-24-01KPZV0XM87NSVJ4QHT5777V5Q

The third deadbolt clicked, then the second, then the first. Rory cracked the door, chain still drawn, and through the gap she saw him — leaning on that bloody ivory cane like he'd been born with it in his hand, amber eye catching the hall light, black eye swallowing it. "Évangeline said you were ill," Lucien said. "You look insultingly well." "Eva lied." "Eva is a professional liar. I came anyway." Ptolemy threaded between her ankles and she nudged him back with her heel. She didn't undo the chain. "It's half past ten." "I'm aware of the hour, Aurora." The way he pronounced it — Au-ro-ra, the first syllable gilded — still did something to her sternum she wasn't prepared to negotiate with. She slid the chain free and stepped back, arms folded, because folded arms were a kind of armour and she'd take what she could get. He came in slowly, the cane tapping once against the floorboards. He smelled the same. Bergamot, tobacco, and something underneath that she'd never been able to name and had once, stupidly, tried to. "Shoes off." "You're joking." "Eva's rule. Take it up with her." He bent, unlaced his oxfords with the patience of a man who'd never rushed anything in his life, and lined them beside the mat. When he straightened, his eyes did that inventory thing — the one that had, six months ago, made her feel mapped. Now it just made her feel looked at. "Sit down," she said. "Or don't. I'm making tea because I want tea, not because you're here." "Noted." She went to the kitchen — two steps, really, in a flat this size — and filled the kettle with her back to him. The tap ran long past full. She heard the cane settle against the arm of the sofa, the faint exhale as he sat. "Why are you here, Luc?" "I was in the area." "You were in Marseille last I heard." "Marseille is in the area." She almost laughed. She hated that. "Try again." A pause. The kettle clicked on and began its low labouring hum. "A name came up," he said. "In a room I was in. A room I shouldn't have been in, and a name I shouldn't have heard. Yours." She turned. He was looking at Ptolemy, who had claimed his lap with the entitlement of a small emperor. Lucien's gloved hand rested on the cat's back but did not stroke it, as though he hadn't yet decided whether to be that kind of man tonight. "Which name?" "Malphora." The mug in her hand felt suddenly far away, like she was holding it through a glove of her own. She set it down carefully on the counter. "No one's called me that in six months." "Someone has." "Who?" "I don't know yet. That's what I came to tell you. I don't know yet, and I didn't want you to hear it from someone who didn't care whether you heard it well." "And you care how I hear it." "Apparently." She crossed the room before she'd decided to, stopped two feet from the sofa because two feet was the furthest she trusted herself to stand. Ptolemy blinked up at her and made a small, betrayed sound at the interruption. "You could have called." "You blocked my number." "I unblocked it." "When." "March." His mouth did a thing — not a smile, a recognition, the corner lifting a quarter of an inch and then deciding against the whole expression. "Then I could have called," he said. "You're right." "So why didn't you." "Because if you heard my voice you'd hang up, and if you didn't hang up I'd say something I hadn't rehearsed, and I wanted to rehearse." "Did you?" "Rehearse? Yes. On the plane. Extensively." "How's it going." "Poorly." She sat down. Not beside him — the armchair, Eva's armchair, the one with the dent in the cushion shaped like a woman who read too much. She pulled her knees up. "The last thing you said to me," she said, "was that I was a distraction you couldn't afford." "Yes." "Do you remember what I said back." "Every word." "Say it." He looked at her then, properly, both eyes, and the black one seemed deeper in this light, a pupil that went all the way through. "You said, 'Then don't afford me.' And you closed the door. I stood in the corridor for eleven minutes." "You counted." "I had nothing else to do." The kettle screamed. Neither of them moved. After a moment it clicked itself off, unappeased. "I shouldn't have said what I said," he told her. "I said it because I meant it and I meant it because I was frightened, and I have since learned that those are not the same justification." "Learning. At thirty-two." "Late, I agree." "Don't do that." "Do what?" "The charming self-deprecation. You do it when you don't want to say the real thing." He was quiet for a long beat. Ptolemy resettled, purring, unbothered by human disasters. "The real thing," Lucien said, "is that I came tonight because someone in a back room in Southwark said your name, and before I could think about the job or the contract or the trouble it put me in, I thought, she doesn't know, and I cannot be a man who lets her not know. That's the real thing. The rest is — decoration." She looked at the ceiling. The damp patch. The crack that ran from the light fitting to the cornice, shaped like a river with one tributary. "Make the tea," she said. "I can't do this standing up and I can't do this without something in my hands." "You're sitting down." "Metaphorically, Luc." He eased Ptolemy off his lap with the apology of a man who knew he was being used as furniture and accepted the role. He rose, took the cane in one hand, and went to the kitchen. He knew where the mugs were. That was the part that nearly undid her — that six months had passed and he still knew, without looking, which cupboard.