Run: 2026-06-24-01KVX35A3XSM25GJT3DH5ZCDK8

The third deadbolt stuck the way it always did, and Rory cursed under her breath as she wrenched it sideways. She'd been mid-sentence in her head — rehearsing what to say to Eva about the overdue rent — when the knock came. Three sharp raps. The kind that didn't falter. She pulled the door open. Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hallway with rain still beading on the shoulders of his charcoal suit, his ivory-handled cane hooked over one arm, and an expression on his face that she wanted to slap right off. He looked like he'd walked out of a magazine spread. He always did. That was part of the problem. "Rory." "You can't be here." "I am, though." His gaze moved past her shoulder, scanning the stacks of books and scrolls visible through the doorway. "May I come in?" "No." Ptolemy chose that moment to wind between her ankles and slip through the gap in the door, purring against Lucien's trouser leg. Traitor cat. Lucien crouched, one gloved hand smoothing along the tabby's spine. The motion was precise, almost tender. His mismatched eyes — that unsettling amber and black — lifted to meet hers. "Your friend isn't home." "How do you know that?" "The lights in the curry house below are still on. Eva works Tuesdays." He straightened, adjusting his cuff. "I waited until she left." Something cold moved through Rory's chest. "You watched the building." "I observed it. There's a distinction." "Not to me." She gripped the door's edge. Her knuckles went white. Three weeks. Three weeks since the warehouse, since the blood on his collar and the words she'd thrown at him like grenades, since she'd walked away from his car without looking back. She'd told herself that was the end of it. Of him. Of whatever tangled, reckless thing lived between them. "What do you want, Lucien?" "I need to speak with you. It concerns Evan." The name landed like a stone in still water. She felt her jaw tighten. "Evan's gone. That was the whole point." "He's not gone. He's in London." The hallway seemed to shrink. Rory became aware of the curry smell rising through the floorboards, the distant clatter of pans from the restaurant below, the ridiculous domesticity of this moment against the weight of what he'd just said. She stared at him. "Let me in, Rory." She stepped aside. Lucien moved past her into the flat with the kind of ease that made her teeth ache — like he belonged in cramped spaces surrounded by other people's research, like the clutter of Eva's life was something he could navigate without disturbing. He set his cane against the wall beside the door and began unbuttoning his overcoat. She didn't offer to take it. She didn't offer him a seat. She crossed her arms and leaned against the kitchen counter, watching him take in the flat — the towers of linguistics texts, the corkboard pinned with news clippings in three languages, the sleeping bag rumpled on the sofa where Eva crashed most nights. "You've been staying here." Not a question. "My flat had a visitor. Silas is handling it." "Another visitor?" "Same kind as the last." She watched his face. Watched the micro-expression — the tightening around his mouth, the brief flicker of something that might have been concern before it was smoothed away. "So Evan's in London. How long?" "I received word this morning. He crossed through two nights ago, using a passage near Heathrow that the Court sealed three months ago." "Sealed passages don't just unseal." "No. They don't." Lucien turned to face her. Without the coat, his suit was immaculate as ever — fitted, dark, wrong for a rain-soaked Tuesday in East London. He looked like he'd stepped out of a boardroom, not the wet street. "Someone opened it for him. Someone with enough pull to override the Court's wards." "And you think I know who." "I think you know more than you've told anyone. Including me." He took a step closer. The flat was small enough that one step halved the distance between them. "At the warehouse, you said Evan had information. Connections. You said he'd been funneling things out of Cardiff for months before you left." "I said a lot of things at the warehouse. Most of them I meant." Something shifted in his expression. A crack in the polish. "Is that what this is? You're still angry about the warehouse?" "I'm not angry." "You're furious." She laughed — short, brittle, nothing like a real laugh. "Don't profile me." "I'm not profiling you. I've known you long enough to—" "You don't know me." The words came out harder than she intended. Ptolemy, who'd been sniffing at Lucien's shoes, startled and darted under the desk. "You know the version of me that needed your help. That needed your contacts and your maps and your—your_fixing_. That's not the same thing." Lucien was quiet for a moment. Rain dripped from his hair — that ridiculous platinum hair, slicked back and barely disturbed — and landed on the shoulder of his jacket. He didn't seem to notice. "I didn't come here to argue about the warehouse." "Then why did you come here? You could have called. You could have sent one of your people. You could have done literally anything other than showing up at my friend's flat at—" She glanced at the clock on the microwave. "—nine forty-five on a Tuesday night, looking like you just came from accepting a BAFTA." "I came because you wouldn't have answered the phone." She hated that he was right. She hated more that he knew he was right. "I came because Evan is looking for you." His voice dropped. Not soft — Lucien's voice never went soft — but lower, more controlled. Like he was holding something back. "And I came because the last time someone was looking for you, I found out third-hand, three days too late, from a bartender who told me you'd already moved out of your own flat." "That was different." "How?" "Because Evan is my problem. Not yours." "You made him my problem the night you came to me with a split lip and asked me to help you disappear." The silence that followed was dense enough to lean against. Rory felt the crescent scar on her wrist itch — that old ghost-pain that surfaced whenever Evan's name came up, whenever the past pressed too close. She pressed her wrist against her ribs and held Lucien's gaze. His amber eye caught the light from the kitchen lamp. His black eye swallowed it. "I shouldn't have come to you," she said. "Perhaps not." He reached for his coat. "But you did. And I helped you. And then you walked away — not just from me, but from everything I offered afterward. The protection. The resources. The—" "What? The arrangement?" She pushed off the counter. "You offered me a place in your world, Lucien. A world where I'd owe you favors and you'd decide when they got collected. That's not protection. That's a leash." He paused with one arm through his coat sleeve. His jaw worked. For a moment, he looked almost human — almost like a man standing in a rain-soaked jacket in a flat that smelled of curry, being told things he didn't want to hear. "Is that really what you think." "I think you don't do things for free. I think you're a fixer, and fixing comes with invoices." She swallowed. "I think that night at the warehouse, when you showed up — I think you did it because you told yourself it was transactional. Because admitting anything else would cost you something." Lucien pulled the coat on the rest of the way. He retrieved his cane from beside the door and held it at his side, the ivory handle catching the light. "Evan is in London. He has backing from someone in the Court — I don't yet know who. He's been asking about you in the circles where people ask dangerous questions." His voice had gone flat. Professional. The mask back in place. "I came to warn you because despite what you believe, not everything I do comes with an invoice. Some things I do because—" He stopped. "Because what?" Lucien's gloved fingers tightened on the cane. The leather creaked. "Because some things I do because I want to." He met her eyes. "Goodnight, Rory."