Run: 2026-07-01-01KWEADG34122AKQQ8PAYJD7ZH

The three deadbolts stuck the way they always did, and Rory swore under her breath as she wrestled with the middle one. Ptolemy wound around her ankles, unbothered by the hour, unbothered by anything except the tin of tuna she'd forgotten to open. She yanked the door open ready to tell Eva to stop losing her keys again. Lucien stood on the landing instead, rain darkening the shoulders of his charcoal suit, cane hooked over one forearm like he'd just stepped out of a different century. "You're not Eva." "An astute observation. May I come in, or do you intend to leave me decorating the stairwell?" "Depends on why you're here." "Does it matter? I'm already wet." Rory held the door another second before she stepped back, more out of habit than hospitality. Lucien crossed the threshold and surveyed the flat the way he surveyed everything — cataloguing exits, weak points, things worth stealing. His eyes caught on the stacks of books, the scattered scrolls, the general chaos Eva called research and Rory called a fire hazard. "Charming as ever," he said. "Though I confess I expected more wards. Given the company you keep." "Eva handles that. I handle the door." "A division of labour. How practical." He set his cane against the arm of the sofa, the movement precise, unhurried, the kind of care that made Rory's jaw tighten. She remembered that precision on her skin once, in a hallway three months and a lifetime ago, before she'd told him to get out and meant it. "You could've called," she said. "I did. Four times." "I blocked your number." "Ah. That would explain the silence." He said it lightly, but something moved behind his mismatched eyes, amber catching the lamp, black staying flat and unreadable. Rory crossed her arms, aware of how thin her jumper was, how the flat suddenly felt too small for the two of them and a cat. "So talk," she said. "Then leave." "Straight to business. I'd forgotten how efficient you are when you're angry." "I'm not angry." "You're holding your own elbows like you're keeping yourself from throwing something. At me, presumably." "Don't flatter yourself. I'm cold." "It's July." "It's London." That almost got a smile out of him, the corner of his mouth twitching before he caught it, tucked it away like he did everything else. He sat without being asked, which was so entirely him that Rory felt something old and stupid flare in her chest, somewhere between fondness and fury. "There's a problem," he said. "With the Ashworth contract." "There's always a problem with the Ashworth contract. That's not why you're here at eleven at night looking like you walked through the Thames." "No," he admitted. "It isn't." "Then why." He didn't answer right away. He looked at the window instead, at the rain streaking the glass, at anything that wasn't her face. "I heard about Evan," he said finally. The name landed like a dropped glass, and Rory felt the old flinch before she could stop it. She unfolded her arms, refolded them the other way. "How." "I make it my business to know things. You're aware of this." "I don't want your pity, Lucien." "Good. I haven't brought any." "Then what did you bring?" "An apology, mostly unused. I find I don't know how to give it properly." Rory laughed, short and disbelieving, the sound scraping out of her before she could smooth it into something more composed. "You? Not knowing how to do something? That's new." "I've had practice at everything except this." "At what, exactly? Showing up soaking wet at midnight?" "At telling someone I was wrong." The rain kept going outside, tapping the glass in that patient London way, like it had nowhere else to be and neither did they. Rory sat on the arm of the chair across from him, not quite trusting her legs to hold her if she stood there any longer pretending this was easy. "You weren't wrong," she said. "You were careful. There's a difference." "Careful got you hurt. I watched you walk into that man's orbit and said nothing, because I told myself it wasn't my place, that I had no claim, that—" "You didn't have a claim, Lucien. That was the whole point. You made sure of that." "I know." "You made very sure. Very charcoal-suit, very ivory-cane, very 'I don't do attachments' sure." "I know," he said again, quieter this time, and something in his voice cracked just enough to let the truth through. "I told myself distance was a kindness. That whatever I am — whatever my father left in me — wasn't fit to be near something as breakable as affection." "I'm not breakable." "No. You're not. I was wrong about that too." Rory looked at him properly then, at the rain still clinging to his hair, at the tired set of his shoulders that no tailored suit could disguise. She remembered the hallway, the way his hands had been careful even when his voice wasn't, and how she'd hated him a little for being gentle right before he left. "You can't just turn up," she said. "Three months of nothing, and now you're on my — Eva's — doorstep with an apology you don't know how to finish." "I'm aware of the timing being poor." "The timing is atrocious." "Shall I go, then?" She should say yes. The word sat right there, easy, obvious. Ptolemy jumped onto the arm of the sofa and settled against Lucien's leg like a traitor, and Lucien's hand moved to scratch behind the cat's ear without thinking, an absent, unguarded gesture that undid something in Rory's chest she'd spent three months trying to keep stitched shut. "Stay till the rain stops," she said. "That's all I'm offering." "That's more than I expected." "Don't get used to it." "Wouldn't dream of it," he said, and the smile he gave her then was smaller than his usual, careful in a different way than before — like he was handing her something breakable and trusting her not to drop it.