Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE8R8GRXQ83M5GGFSV201NS

The knock came three times, sharp and deliberate, cutting through the bassline thumping up from Silas' bar below. Rory set down her mug of tea, glanced at the clock — half eleven, too late for deliveries, too early for trouble that announced itself politely. She pulled the door open expecting a drunk patron who'd wandered up the wrong stairs. Lucien stood in the hallway, ivory cane resting against his shoulder, platinum hair catching the weak light from the bare bulb overhead. He hadn't changed the suit. Charcoal, always charcoal, like he owned the colour outright. "You look surprised," he said. "I did knock." "You could've called first." "I did. Four times, actually. You never pick up when it's me." Rory crossed her arms, blocking the doorway with her body rather than actually stopping him, because they both knew a closed door had never meant much to Lucien Moreau. "Funny how that works out." "May I come in, or would you rather conduct this conversation for the benefit of your neighbours?" She stepped back, more out of habit than invitation, and he took it as one anyway, sweeping past her with that particular economy of movement that made everything look choreographed. He set the cane against her bookshelf like he'd done it a hundred times before, which — he had. "Tea's gone cold," she said, nodding at the mug. "I'm not making more." "I didn't come for tea." "Right. What did you come for, then? Because it's not for the pleasure of my company, not after last time." His jaw tightened, just barely, the amber eye catching light while the black one stayed flat and unreadable. "Last time you told me to get out and never come back. I'm noting the irony." "I meant it." "I know you did. I still came." Rory sat on the arm of her sofa, arms still crossed, putting furniture between them because her body remembered things her mind was trying very hard to forget — the weight of his hand at the small of her back, the low murmur of French against her ear in a alley off Brick Lane while they hid from something with too many teeth. That had been three months ago. She'd left him standing on this exact landing after that, told him whatever this was between them wasn't worth the trouble he brought with him. "You could've sent someone," she said. "Isn't that the whole point of you? Information broker, fixer, middleman for every unsavoury thing in this city. Send a runner." "This isn't business." "Then what is it?" He didn't answer straightaway. Instead he looked around her flat like he was cataloguing what had changed — the new stack of books by the window, the mug with the chip in the handle, the coat thrown over the chair that wasn't hers, one of Eva's, probably. Lucien noticed everything. It was what made him good at his job and unbearable as a person to try and keep secrets from. "Yu-Fei's restaurant," he said finally. "Someone's been asking after you. Specific questions. Where you live, who you associate with, whether you still work deliveries on Tuesdays." Rory's arms loosened slightly. "Who?" "I don't know yet. That's rather the problem." He moved closer, not touching, just closing the distance enough that she had to tilt her head back to keep looking at him. "I wanted to tell you myself. Not send a runner, as you put it." "You could've led with that instead of standing there being smug." "I wasn't being smug." "You're always being smug, Luc, it's practically your resting state." The corner of his mouth twitched, the closest he came to a real smile these days, and for a second the three months evaporated and they were just two people who used to laugh at each other's jokes in the dark. Then he seemed to remember himself, straightened, put the distance back. "I should've told you sooner. About the questions. I've known for a week." "A week?" She stood up now, temper flaring easy, the way it always did with him because he made her feel too much too fast. "A week, and you're only telling me now because what, you needed an excuse to show up?" "I don't need excuses to worry about you." "You made it very clear what you needed and didn't need, last time you were here." "I said I couldn't promise you safety. That's not the same thing." "Feels the same from where I was standing." Lucien exhaled, and for once there was nothing performed in it, nothing calculated — just tired. "I've spent three months telling myself you were better off. That I do this—" he gestured vaguely, meaning the underworld, the deals, the things he traded in that left blood on his hands even when it wasn't his own "—and you don't need it following you home. And then someone starts sniffing round Golden Empress asking about you, and I find I can't quite manage to stay away after all." "That's not fair." "No. It's not." He picked the cane back up, turned it once in his hand like he needed something to do with his fingers. "I'm not asking you to forgive how I left things. I'm telling you because you deserve to know, and because whatever's between us, I'd rather you angry and alive than not know I tried." Rory looked at him — really looked, past the suit and the cane and the careful blankness he wore like armour — and saw the same thing she'd seen the night she'd told him to leave. Someone who wanted to stay and didn't trust himself to be good for her if he did. "Tuesdays," she said. "How do they know I work Tuesdays?" "That's what worries me." She sat back down, slower this time, the anger draining into something colder and more useful. "Tell me everything. Then we'll talk about the rest of it." "There's a rest of it to discuss?" "There's always a rest of it with you, Luc. Sit down. You're making the room stuffy just standing there being tragic."