Run: 2026-07-01-01KWEAAZ3RKRAZ84GBF9FJMW98

The knock came three times, evenly spaced, like whoever stood on the other side had rehearsed it. Rory set down the mug of tea she'd been nursing and crossed the small kitchen barefoot, floorboards cold under her feet. She opened the door and the breath went out of her. "Lucien." "Rory." He stood in the narrow hallway with rain still clinging to the shoulders of his charcoal coat, cane hooked over one forearm, that amber eye catching the hallway light while the black one swallowed it whole. Three weeks. Three weeks since she'd watched him walk away from her outside the Golden Empress without looking back once. "You've got some nerve." She didn't move from the doorway. "Showing up like this." "I did try calling first." He held up his phone, screen cracked across one corner. "You blocked my number." "Funny, that." "Rory." The way he said her name, low and worn at the edges, hadn't changed. "Five minutes. That's all I'm asking." She glanced past him down the hallway, half expecting Silas to poke his head out from downstairs, but the bar noise stayed muffled beneath the floor, business as usual. She stepped back from the door, not quite an invitation, more a surrender, and he took it as one, moving past her with that careful economy of motion he always had, like he was measuring the room even as he walked through it. "Nice place," he said, taking in the mismatched furniture, the stack of delivery bags by the door. "Suits you." "Don't." "Don't what?" "Don't do the charming thing. Not tonight." She shut the door harder than she needed to. "You left. You don't get to walk back in here and comment on my decor." He set his cane against the arm of her sofa, unhurried, and that irritated her more than anything he could have said. "I didn't leave because I wanted to." "You didn't exactly stay to explain that part." "Would you have listened?" His amber eye found hers, steady. "You were so certain I'd lied to you. About Marchetti, about the ledger, about all of it. I could have talked until my throat gave out and you still would have shown me the door." "Maybe if you'd tried instead of just—" she gestured, sharp, at the empty air between them, "—vanishing for three weeks, I'd have had something to work with." "I was protecting you." "That's what men like you always say." Something flickered across his face, quick and gone, like a candle catching wind. "Men like me." "You know what I mean." "Enlighten me." She crossed her arms, aware of how close he stood, aware of the particular quiet he brought into a room, the way the air seemed to thicken around him. "Half-demon fixers who disappear the second things get complicated and come back expecting open arms." "I'm not expecting anything." His voice dropped. "I came because Marchetti's dead and the people who did it know your name, Rory. That's not a courtesy call. That's a warning." The anger in her stalled, caught on something colder. "What people?" "Sit down and I'll tell you everything." He paused, something almost gentle threading through the words. "Properly, this time. No half-truths." She didn't sit. She stood there with her arms still crossed, studying the line of his jaw, the tired set of his shoulders under that immaculate coat, and she hated how much she wanted to close the distance instead of widen it. "You had three weeks to tell me the truth," she said. "Why now?" "Because now there's a knife pointed at you and I'd rather you hate me alive than miss me dead." The words landed somewhere she hadn't guarded properly. She turned away, busying her hands with the kettle she didn't need to fill again, needing something to do besides look at him. "You could have led with that." "I could have. I wanted five minutes where you weren't afraid first." "I'm not afraid of you." "I didn't say you were afraid of me." His voice moved closer; she heard the soft creak of the floorboard he'd stepped onto. "I said I wanted five minutes before the fear set in. Selfish of me. I'm aware." She turned, and he was closer than she'd braced for, close enough that she caught the faint smell of cedar and rain on his coat, close enough to see the fine white scar along his jaw she'd never asked about. "You don't get to be selfish with me anymore," she said, though it came out quieter than she meant it to. "Not after that." "No," he agreed. "I don't suppose I do." Neither of them moved. The kettle clicked and hissed behind her, steam curling up unnoticed. His gaze dropped, briefly, to her mouth, and she felt the pull of three weeks' worth of unfinished business gathering in the small space between them, then he stepped back, deliberate, putting air where there hadn't been any. "Sit," he said again, gentler this time. "Let me tell you what I know. All of it. Then you can throw me out with a clear conscience." She exhaled, some of the fight draining out of her, replaced by something heavier and more complicated. She gestured to the sofa. "Talk fast," she said. "Before I change my mind about the throwing out part." The corner of his mouth lifted, not quite a smile, more the ghost of one, and he sat, resting the cane across his knees, and began.