Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE8QPS3DB5X62JZPKR2WCCN

The three deadbolts took Rory longer than usual, her fingers fumbling on the last one when she heard the knock again. Ptolemy yowled from the windowsill and darted under the sofa, scattering a stack of Eva's research notes. She yanked the door open ready to snap at whoever had the nerve to disturb her at midnight, and the words died somewhere behind her teeth. Lucien stood in the hallway, rain darkening the shoulders of his charcoal suit, cane hooked over one forearm like an afterthought. His black eye caught the hallway light strangely, the amber one not catching it at all. "You look surprised," he said. "I did knock." "You could've called." "I did. Four times." He tilted his head, water dripping from his slicked-back hair onto the collar of his shirt. "You didn't answer, which either means you lost your phone or you're still furious with me. I'm guessing the latter, given the state of your face right now." "My face is fine." "Your face is doing something complicated." She almost laughed, caught it before it escaped, and folded her arms instead. Behind her, the flat smelled of jasmine tea and old paper, and she was suddenly conscious of how she must look — hair scraped back, an oversized jumper that had definitely belonged to Eva at some point, no shoes. "What do you want, Lucien." "May I come in? It's rather wet out here, and I'd rather not conduct this conversation in a corridor that smells of someone's dinner." "That's curry from downstairs. It's actually lovely." "I'm sure it is. May I?" She stepped back before she'd decided to, and he moved past her with that same unhurried grace he always had, cane tapping once against the floorboards before he tucked it under his arm. He took in the flat — the towers of books, the maps pinned to the wall with red string connecting locations she hadn't wanted to explain to him, the general chaos that was Eva's idea of organised research — and said nothing, which was somehow worse than if he'd commented. "You've redecorated," he said finally. "This isn't my flat." "I know whose flat it is." He turned, and there it was — that look, the one that made her stomach do something unpleasant and familiar. "I know where you're staying, Aurora. I've known for three weeks." "Then why haven't you shown up until now?" "Would you have let me in three weeks ago?" She didn't answer that, because the honest answer was no, and they both knew it. "So what's changed?" she asked instead. Lucien set his cane against the arm of the sofa, careful, like everything he did was careful, calculated three steps ahead. He looked older in the lamp light, or maybe just tired, the kind of tired that didn't come from lack of sleep. "There's a problem," he said. "One I think you'll want to know about, given your involvement with a certain restaurant and its owner." "Yu-Fei." "Yu-Fei," he agreed. "Though that's not really why I'm here at midnight in the rain, and you know it." "Don't." "Don't what? I haven't said anything yet." "You're about to. I can see it happening on your face, that particular thing you do before you say something you think is charming and I think is infuriating." "They're not mutually exclusive." "Lucien." He exhaled, and something in his posture shifted, the practiced ease dropping just slightly, enough that she caught a glimpse of whatever sat underneath it. He looked toward the window, toward the rain streaking the glass, rather than at her. "I should have come after you," he said. "When you left Le Rêve, that night. I should have come after you instead of standing there like an idiot with a glass of wine in my hand, watching the door." "You had your reasons." "I had excuses. There's a difference, and you were right to call them that at the time, even if I didn't have the grace to admit it then." Rory sat on the arm of the chair across from him, careful to keep the coffee table between them, careful to keep some kind of distance that felt necessary even if she couldn't articulate why. Ptolemy's tail flicked from beneath the sofa. "You told me I was a liability," she said. "That whatever this was between us, it made you sloppy. Those were your words. A liability." "I remember." "So which is it, Lucien. Am I still a liability, or did that change too, along with your sudden willingness to show up in the rain?" He looked at her then, properly, the amber eye and the black one both fixed on her face like he was trying to read something written too small. "You're still a liability," he said. "You make me want things I have no business wanting, in my line of work. That hasn't changed. I've simply decided I don't particularly care anymore." "That's not the same as an apology." "No. It's not." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped. "I am sorry, Aurora. For Le Rêve. For the weeks after, when I let you think it didn't matter to me, when it mattered a great deal. I'm not good at this — the saying of things. I'm considerably better at the not saying of things, as you're well aware." "I noticed." "I'm trying to be different about it. Right now. This is me trying." Rory studied him — the rain still clinging to his shoulders, the cane resting against the sofa like a held breath, the careful, unpractised honesty sitting strange on features built for concealment — and felt something in her chest loosen, just slightly, just enough to be dangerous. "You said there was a problem," she said. "With Yu-Fei. Tell me about that first." Something like relief crossed his face, quickly hidden, though not quickly enough that she missed it. "There is," he said. "But it can wait five more minutes if you'd rather sit here and be angry with me a while longer. I find I don't mind either way, so long as I'm not standing in that corridor."