Run: 2026-04-24-01KQ0G6BJAC05400FNRHQ45WQW

The third deadbolt gave with a reluctant thunk, and Rory pulled the door open an inch before she'd bothered to look through the peephole. That was her first mistake. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing like he'd been poured into his suit that morning, cane resting against his shoulder, rain beading along the charcoal wool. Platinum hair slicked back as though the weather hadn't dared touch it. One amber eye, one black. Both fixed on her. "You're meant to check before you open." "I knew it was you." A lie. She shoved the chain back into its runner and wedged her bare foot against the door. "Eva's not here." "I didn't come for Eva." Ptolemy threaded between her ankles and made a break for the stairwell. Rory scooped him up, the tabby going limp with betrayal, and used the movement to buy herself a breath she badly needed. "Then you can turn around," she said into Ptolemy's fur. "Whatever you want, the answer's no." "You haven't heard it." "I know you." "Mm." He tilted his head, that half-smile doing the work his mouth refused to. "Do you, Aurora." Her full name, from him, still landed like a hand between the shoulder blades. She hated that. She hated more that he'd noticed her notice. "Five minutes," he said. "Then I go." She held the door another beat, long enough to let him think she might close it. Long enough to pretend she was weighing something. Then she stepped back and let him in. The flat was at its usual worst: books stacked three deep on the coffee table, a half-eaten bowl of cereal fossilising on the windowsill, Eva's research spread across the rug in a fan of yellow legal paper. Lucien took it in without remark, which was its own species of remark. He set his cane against the wall. Didn't sit. "Tea?" The word left her before she could stop it. Old habit. Bad one. "Please." She put Ptolemy on the armchair and went to the kettle because it gave her hands something better to do than shake. The tap coughed. The gas ring ticked twice before catching. Behind her, Lucien did not pace. He never paced. He just existed in a room until the room arranged itself around him. "You look thin," he said. "I look fine." "Both, then." She set two mugs down harder than she needed to. "You came for tea and commentary?" "I came because someone in Camden has been asking after a girl matching your description, and I don't love the people doing the asking." The kettle hit its note. She poured, watching the water turn amber, and only afterwards did she trust her voice. "Evan?" "Not him. Someone he paid." "How much?" "Enough that I thought you should know before you went to work tomorrow and found him parked outside the Empress." She passed him the mug. Their fingers brushed on the handle, and she felt the small animal part of her brain go very quiet and very alert, the way it used to when he stood close in doorways and didn't move. "Thank you." She meant for the warning. She meant for the care of it. She meant to sound less like someone whose sternum had just cracked open. Lucien drank. Didn't sit. He was letting her keep the room. "You could have phoned," she said. "I could have." "But you didn't." "No." "Why." He put the mug down on the stack of books beside him — carefully, a coaster of paperbacks — and looked at her properly for the first time since she'd opened the door. The black eye did what it always did, which was refuse to tell her anything. The amber one was worse. The amber one told her too much. "Because the last time I phoned," he said, "you didn't pick up." "Luc—" "For three weeks." "I know how long it was." "Do you." She set her own mug down. The crescent scar on her wrist caught the lamplight — pale little moon — and she covered it with her thumb without meaning to. He saw that too. He saw everything. "I needed the time," she said. "I gave you the time." "You gave me an opinion, Lucien. Dressed up as time." "I told you not to go back to Cardiff alone." "I didn't go back." "I know. That's not the argument." "Then what's the argument?" He was quiet. The rain did a soft, consistent thing against the window. Downstairs, someone in the curry house shouted about onions in a language she didn't speak. A very ordinary Tuesday, in the middle of which stood a man in a tailored suit she had kissed twice and walked away from once. "The argument," he said, "is that I told you I was worried about you, and you heard me trying to own you." "That's not—" "And I don't know how to be worried about you quietly, Aurora. I have tried. It is not a thing I'm good at." She took a step. She hadn't planned to. The floorboard under the rug creaked at her, traitor. "You don't have to be good at it." "I have to be better at it than I was." "Luc." He looked up. "Sit down," she said. "Before I say something I'll regret standing." A flicker of something — amusement, or the older, quieter thing underneath it — crossed his mouth. He sat. The armchair accepted him like it had been waiting. Ptolemy, outrageous traitor, climbed immediately into his lap and began kneading the wool of a suit that probably cost more than her rent. Rory stayed standing. It felt important to stay standing. "I didn't pick up," she said, "because I was going to. And I knew if I did, I'd come back to yours that night, and I wasn't — I wasn't steady enough to come back to yours that night and mean it." "And now?" "Now I'm standing in my friend's kitchen at ten p.m. not drinking tea with you." "That's not an answer." "It's the one I've got." He stroked Ptolemy's ear with one gloved finger. Watched her over the cat's head. "Then I'll wait for a better one," he said.