Run: 2026-07-01-01KWEA4GT9C8KGYFY413QQX0KR

The three deadbolts took Rory longer than usual to work through, her fingers fumbling on the third one when she heard the voice through the wood. "Rory. It's me." She knew the voice before she finished turning the bolt. Low, faintly accented, the kind of voice that made ordinary words sound like they cost something to say. She yanked the door open anyway, because not opening it would have meant admitting she was afraid of what was on the other side. Lucien stood on the landing in one of his charcoal suits, rain darkening the shoulders, his cane held loose in one hand like an afterthought. The amber eye caught the hallway light. The black one didn't. "You could've called," Rory said, arms crossed over an old jumper that had definitely been Eva's at some point. "You blocked my number." "That was the general idea, yeah." He almost smiled, that small tilt of his mouth that used to undo her in about four seconds flat. It still worked in three. "May I come in? Or would you rather conduct this on the landing, for the benefit of your neighbours." Ptolemy chose that moment to yowl from somewhere behind a stack of books, as if lodging his own objection. Rory stepped back and let the door swing wider, which was as close to an invitation as she intended to give. "Two minutes," she said. "Then you're back out in the rain." "Generous." Lucien stepped over the threshold, glancing at the scrolls piled on the armchair, the candle stubs melted into saucers, the general chaos of Eva's research. "She's still playing at scholar, I see." "She's not playing. She found a binding circle in Deptford that actually worked." "I heard." He set the cane against the wall, deliberate, unhurried, the way he did everything. "That's rather why I'm here." Rory's stomach dropped an inch. "Of course it is." "Rory—" "No, go on. Tell me this isn't about you needing something. I'd love to hear it." "It isn't only that." "Right." She laughed, short and humourless, and crossed to the kitchenette to put the kettle on because her hands needed something to do that wasn't reaching for him. "Because the last time I saw you, you walked out of that warehouse without looking back, and I haven't heard a word in six weeks. Now you're on my doorstep in the rain talking about binding circles." "I looked back." His voice had gone quieter. "You weren't looking at me, so it hardly mattered." She turned the tap on harder than necessary. "Don't." "You wanted honesty. I recall you being quite insistent about that, actually, standing in that warehouse, soaked to the bone, telling me you were done with men who disappeared when things became difficult." "And you disappeared." "I was protecting you." "That's what they all say." The kettle clicked. She didn't move to pour it. "You could have told me what you were walking into. Instead I found out from Silas that you'd gone three streets over to negotiate with something that eats faces, Lucien. Faces." "It went perfectly well." "That's not the point." "Then what is the point, exactly? Because from where I'm standing, the point seems to be that you're furious with me for surviving." Rory turned around at that, and something in her chest that had been carefully wound tight for six weeks came a little loose. "The point is you didn't trust me enough to let me in. You never do. You'll hand me a cane with a blade in it and half a joke and call that intimacy, and then when it actually matters, when it's dangerous, you shut the door." "I was frightened," Lucien said, and the words landed strange in the cramped little kitchen, too plain for a man who usually spoke in half-truths and elegant evasions. "Not of the thing in the warehouse. Of what happens to me if something goes wrong and you're standing close enough to be part of the wreckage." Rory stared at him. Rain still clung to his hair, dripping slow down the platinum strands gone dark and heavy. "That's not your decision to make for me." "I'm aware." "So why are you here? If not to apologise properly, then what — you need Eva's research, you need me to ask her for something, and you thought you'd soften me up first?" "I came because Yu-Fei's restaurant had four deliveries cancelled last night after the drivers didn't come back," Lucien said, evenly now, business voice sliding back into place like armour. "Two of them were in your usual rotation, near Limehouse. I wanted to warn you before you found out by walking into it." The kettle steamed uselessly behind her. Rory felt something cold slide down her spine that had nothing to do with old hurt. "Limehouse," she repeated. "Something's hunting delivery drivers. I don't yet know what." His jaw tightened. "I would rather you heard that from me than from Yu-Fei tomorrow morning, after the fact." "You could have texted that." "I could have." His gaze didn't waver. "I wanted to see your face when I said it. I wanted, selfishly, five minutes in a room with you that wasn't ended by a slammed door or a locked one." Rory looked at him for a long moment, at the rain-damp shoulders and the too-careful stillness of his hands, and felt the old pull under her ribs, stubborn and unhelpful and entirely undiminished by six weeks of silence. "Two minutes is up," she said, but she reached past him to pull two mugs down from the cupboard instead of pointing him back toward the door.