Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE9Q0Z00RV2EX632WNXJT5K

The three deadbolts took Rory longer than they should have, her fingers fumbling over the last one when she heard the knock again—soft, unhurried, like whoever stood there had all the time in the world. She yanked the door open with a curse already forming. Lucien stood in the hallway, rain darkening the shoulders of his charcoal suit, cane resting against his leg like an afterthought. "You didn't return my calls," he said. "I didn't return your calls because I don't have your number anymore. I deleted it. Along with several photos, a scarf you left, and about a month of dignity." "Charming as ever." "What do you want, Lucien?" He looked past her into the flat, at Ptolemy stretched across a pile of Eva's research notes, at the chaos of scrolls and half-empty mugs. "Is Eva home?" "No. She's out. Which means you can say whatever you came to say and then leave." "May I come in? The hallway smells like someone's frying fish, and I find it distracting." Rory held the door another second, weighing the satisfaction of shutting it in his face against the practical matter of Eva's neighbours already gossiping about strange visitors. She stepped back and let him pass, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, close enough that she caught the scent of him—cedar and something underneath it she'd never been able to name, something not quite human. "You look well," he said, setting the cane against the wall. "You look like you're stalling." "I am stalling. Old habits." She crossed her arms, put the width of the coffee table between them like it might do something useful. "Three months, Lucien. Three months and not a word, and now you're standing in Eva's flat commenting on fish smells." "I was working. There was a situation in Southwark that required my full attention." "There's always a situation." "That's rather the nature of my work, yes." "That's not what I meant." She sat on the arm of the sofa, not quite sitting, not quite standing, poised like she might still throw him out. "I meant you always have a situation when it's convenient. When things get complicated between us, suddenly Southwark needs you. Suddenly there's a client. Suddenly you're four languages deep in someone else's problem and I'm the one left standing in your flat wondering if I imagined the whole thing." "You didn't imagine it." "Then what was it?" He didn't answer right away. He walked to the window instead, looked down at the wet street, at the curry house sign blinking red through the drizzle. Ptolemy uncurled and padded over to investigate his shoes. "I panicked," he said finally. "There. Is that satisfying?" "Not particularly." "I've spent thirty-two years being very good at reading people, Aurora. Knowing exactly what they want, what they're hiding, what they'll do next. And then you—" He stopped, exhaled through his nose. "You I couldn't read. I still can't. It's unsettling for a man who makes his living on certainty." "So you left." "I retreated. There's a difference." "There isn't, actually. Not from where I was standing." He turned from the window. In the grey light his eyes looked stranger than usual, the amber gone dull, the black one darker still. "I came here to apologise. I realise it's overdue." "You came here because Eva's not answering her phone either and you need information, don't you? Something's happened." The pause told her everything. "Unbelievable." She stood, the sofa arm creaking under released weight. "You couldn't even manage a clean apology. There's always an angle with you." "There is a situation," he admitted. "A client of mine has gone missing. Eva has research I need. But that isn't why I knocked on this door instead of ringing the bell downstairs and asking the barman to fetch her." "Then why?" "Because I wanted to see you. And I told myself I could manage seeing you without saying anything I'd regret, and I have already failed at that within five minutes of you opening the door." Rory studied him, arms still crossed, though something in her shoulders had loosened. "You're doing the thing where you talk in circles until I feel sorry for you." "Is it working?" "No." "Pity." She almost laughed—caught it before it fully surfaced, turned it into something closer to a scowl. "You hurt me, Lucien. Not the leaving. The way you left. Like I was a problem you'd solved and moved past." "You were never a problem." His voice lost its polish for a moment, something rawer underneath. "You were the one thing I couldn't solve. I didn't know what to do with that, so I did what I've always done. I disappeared before anyone could see me fail at something that mattered." The rain picked up outside, drumming against the window glass. Ptolemy gave up on Lucien's shoes and jumped onto the sofa, unbothered by the tension thickening the room. "That's the most honest thing you've said to me in a year," Rory said. "I'm aware. It's costing me considerably." "Good. You should feel it cost something." "I do." He took a step closer, stopped himself, hand tightening on the cane he hadn't picked back up. "For what it's worth, Aurora—and I understand it may not be worth much—I've regretted it since the door closed behind me. I simply didn't have the nerve to say so until a missing client gave me an excuse to knock." "That's a pathetic excuse for an excuse." "I never claimed otherwise." She looked at him a long moment, at the rain-damp hair falling slightly out of its slick, at the tightness around his mouth that hadn't been there three months ago. Whatever she'd built in his absence—the careful walls, the deleted number, the practiced indifference—none of it collapsed, not entirely, but something in the mortar gave. "Eva keeps her research in the second bedroom," she said. "I'll get the file for you. But this doesn't fix anything, Lucien. Don't mistake me helping you for forgiveness." "I wouldn't dare." "You'd dare. You'd absolutely dare." She moved past him toward the hallway, close enough again that neither of them quite breathed normally. "But not tonight."