Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE925HJ0G2SXQDXG1PNPCTA

The third deadbolt stuck the way it always did, and Rory swore under her breath as she wrenched it free, already annoyed before she even got the door open. It was gone eleven. Eva was at the shop till midnight restocking shelves that didn't need restocking, and Ptolemy had been yowling at the window for the better part of an hour like he'd scented something on the wind that Rory couldn't. She should have listened to the cat. Lucien Moreau stood in the narrow hallway with his ivory-handled cane resting against one shoulder, platinum hair combed back without a strand out of place, as if he hadn't just climbed three flights of stairs above a curry house that smelled permanently of cardamom and frying onions. His amber eye caught the hall light; the black one swallowed it whole. "Rory," he said, like her name was a password he'd been waiting months to use again. "No," she said, and started to close the door. He caught it with the cane before it latched, not forcing it, just holding it open the way he held everything — with the absolute confidence that force would never be necessary. "That's not very hospitable." "I'm not feeling hospitable. Funny, that." "May I come in?" "You're already halfway in, Lucien, so I don't see what asking accomplishes." But she stepped back anyway, because six months ago she would have slammed the door on his foot and meant it, and now she just stood there with her arms crossed over an old jumper of Eva's, feeling the particular exhaustion of wanting to hate someone and not quite managing it. He came in slowly, taking in the flat the way he took in everything — cataloguing it. Books stacked on the radiator, scrolls curling out of a biscuit tin on the windowsill, Ptolemy sitting fat and imperial on top of a pile of research notes about wardstones, glaring at the newcomer with the same suspicion Rory felt but wasn't allowed to show, apparently, because that would mean admitting it mattered. "Cosy," Lucien said. "It's Eva's." "I know whose it is." He set the cane against the sofa arm, unhurried, and unbuttoned his suit jacket like he intended to stay long enough to need to. "I also know you've been avoiding my calls for four months, which is impressive dedication, considering I only called eleven times." "Eleven?" "Twelve, if you count the one where I hung up before you answered." "That doesn't count." "It counts to me." He looked at her then, properly, and something in his expression cracked open for half a second before he smoothed it back into that unbothered, amused mask he wore like the suit — tailored, expensive, impenetrable. "You look well, Rory." "Don't." "I'm allowed to say you look well." "You're not allowed to show up at midnight and say it like nothing happened." "I didn't say nothing happened." His voice dropped, lost some of its polish. "I said you look well. Those are different sentences." She wanted to throw something at him. She wanted, more than that, and more shamefully, to close the space between them and put her head against his chest the way she used to when the world got too loud and he was — inexplicably, infuriatingly — the quiet in it. Neither urge was acceptable. She settled for staying exactly where she was, arms crossed, feet planted on Eva's threadbare rug like it was a line she'd drawn herself. "Why are you here, Lucien?" "Would you believe me if I said I missed you?" "No." "Good instinct." He picked up a scroll from the windowsill, unrolled an inch of it, found nothing of interest, and set it back precisely where he'd found it — a habit she remembered, that meticulous returning of things to their place, as if disorder physically pained him. "There's a man asking questions about a courier who works the East End. Black hair, blue eyes, rides a bike that's older than she is. Doesn't stop for anyone. Delivers noodles for a woman who's very particular about her ginger chicken." Her stomach dropped. "Who's asking?" "Someone who works for someone who works for someone I don't like the smell of." He looked up, and the flippancy was gone entirely now, scraped away to something that looked almost like fear, on a face that she'd never once seen afraid. "I came because you needed to know, and because I wasn't going to let you find out from anyone else." "You could have called." "You don't answer." "You could have left a message." "Some things," he said, "shouldn't be a voicemail." The flat was very quiet. Somewhere below, the curry house was closing up, chairs scraping tile, and Ptolemy had abandoned his glaring to curl into the notes on wardstones like they were a bed made specifically for him. Rory became aware, all at once, of how close Lucien was standing, close enough that she could smell the cedar and rain of him, close enough that four months of silence collapsed into the three feet of space between his shoes and hers. "You left," she said, quieter than she meant to. "In February. You just — left." "I had a reason." "You always have a reason. That's the problem. You have reasons for everything except the one thing I actually asked you." His jaw tightened. For a man who traded in other people's secrets for a living, he was remarkably bad at parting with his own. "I told you it wasn't safe. For you. To know certain things about me." "That wasn't your decision to make." "No," he agreed, and something in his voice cracked, just slightly, just enough. "It wasn't. I know that now. I knew it then, if I'm honest, and I did it anyway, because I am — occasionally — a coward, Rory, dressed very well." She laughed, once, without much humor in it, because it was such a Lucien thing to say, self-aware and self-lacerating and somehow still charming despite itself, and charm had always been the problem, hadn't it, charm was how he'd gotten past every wall she'd built. "You can't just come back," she said. "Not with a warning wrapped around it like a present. Not like that fixes anything." "I'm not trying to fix anything tonight." He picked up his cane again, and for one terrible moment she thought he meant to leave, and hated the way her chest seized at the thought. But he only turned it in his hand, amber eye steady on her. "Tonight I'm trying to keep you alive. The rest — the apology, the explanation, whatever you'll let me give you — I'll earn that. Slowly. If you'll let me." "And if I don't?" "Then I'll still tell you when men are asking questions they shouldn't be asking. Because that part was never conditional." He moved toward the door, close enough as he passed that his shoulder nearly brushed hers, close enough that she caught, again, cedar and rain and the particular ache of missing someone standing directly in front of her. At the threshold he paused, hand on the frame, and looked back. "Lock all three," he said. "Please." Then he was gone, down the stairs, past the shuttered curry house, out into a London night that suddenly felt considerably less safe than it had an hour ago — and Rory stood in the doorway a long moment before she slid the bolts home, one, two, three, and leaned her forehead against the cool wood, furious at herself for the thing her heart was doing, which was, unmistakably, hoping he'd knock again.