Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HB1ATKY55MF99ZKZR92ZR

Aurora opened the door as far as the chain allowed. Lucien Moreau stood beneath the landing’s bare bulb, a charcoal suit darkened at one shoulder by rain. He held his ivory-handled cane against his leg. A drop slid from his platinum hair onto the collar he had neglected to turn up. For three weeks, she had pictured what she would say if she saw him again. None of it survived the sight of him on Eva’s landing. “You found me.” “I knew where you were.” “That wasn’t what I meant.” From inside the flat, Ptolemy pushed his striped face into the gap between Aurora’s ankle and the door. Lucien looked down. The cat withdrew with a noise of deep offence. “Eva’s away,” Aurora told him. “I came to see you.” The curry house below sent heat and the smell of toasted cumin up the stairwell. Behind Lucien, the narrow stairs disappeared into shadow. Aurora kept one hand on the door and the other against the frame, her left wrist turned inward. The little crescent scar caught against a splinter in the paint. “You could have called.” “You blocked my number.” “You could have knocked before eleven.” “Would you have opened it?” She looked at the wet shoulder of his jacket. “You’ve had an answer.” Lucien rested both hands on the cane’s handle. His amber eye held hers; the black one caught the landing bulb without giving it back. She remembered those eyes across a restaurant table, the amber one warm over the rim of his glass. She remembered them in the alley behind Silas’s bar, when he had told her to leave and hadn’t followed. A door opened on the floor below. Someone called an apology into the stairwell, followed by the clatter of keys and footsteps. Aurora shut the door, slipped the chain free, and opened it again. “Come in before Mrs Patel decides you’re here to collect a debt.” Lucien stepped across the threshold. He stopped on the strip of bare floor between Eva’s books and the tower of research notes that leaned beside the coat rack. Aurora shut the door and turned each deadbolt. The third caught halfway; she lifted the handle until it slid home. “I can leave,” he told her. “You’re already wet on the rug.” He looked down, then moved off it. That, more than anything, made her want to shut him out. Lucien had once walked into her flat above Silas’s bar as though he belonged there, had set his cane beside her chipped kitchen table and known which cupboard held the mugs. Now he stood with rain dripping from his sleeve, careful not to touch Eva’s books. “Take your jacket off.” “It’s fine.” “Eva will charge me for the water damage.” He unbuttoned the jacket and eased it off. A narrow split showed in his white shirt beneath his right arm, the fabric stained rust-brown. Aurora’s hand closed around the coat hook. “Whose blood?” “Mine.” “How much?” “Less than it looks.” “That answer hasn’t improved since the last time you used it.” She took the jacket from him before he could refuse and hung it over the bath door. When she came back, he had stayed where she left him. Ptolemy sat on Eva’s desk, tail wound around a stack of notebooks, watching the cane. Aurora pulled a tea towel from the kitchen drawer and held it out. Lucien took it, his fingers brushing hers. Cold skin. She withdrew her hand. “What happened?” “A man took objection to a conversation.” “Did the conversation involve that blade in your cane?” “Not until he brought a knife.” Lucien pressed the towel against his side. Aurora knew the shape of his answers. He gave her enough to stop one question and leave three more waiting. Three weeks ago, she might have tugged the towel away and inspected the cut herself. Tonight she stayed by the kitchen counter. “What do you want, Lucien?” He glanced at the books spread across Eva’s table. Maps of East London lay beneath a cracked green mug. A page of Eva’s notes hung off the edge, covered in tight handwriting and red circles. “I came to apologise.” Aurora let out a breath that scraped her throat. “For which part?” “For telling you I regretted taking you to Avaros.” “You did regret it.” “I regretted that you were hurt there.” “You made that sound like the same thing.” “I know.” Below them, a cook struck a pan against the stove. The metal rang up through the floorboards. Ptolemy hopped down from the desk and crossed the room with an air of grave purpose, then settled on the chair furthest from Lucien. Aurora picked up Eva’s mug and moved it away from the notes. “You said I’d been a mistake. You chose the words. I heard them.” “I thought you had.” “That’s a remarkable start to an apology.” Lucien lowered the tea towel. Blood had soaked through one corner. “The man in the alley worked for my father.” Aurora’s fingers tightened on the mug handle. “You knew he was there.” “I recognised him after you went inside.” “And you sent me upstairs.” “Yes.” “You could have told me.” “I could have.” She set the mug down hard enough to make the spoons inside rattle. “That’s what you came here for? To give me another reason you couldn’t bear to look at me?” Lucien crossed no further into the room. “I looked at you through the bar window until Silas closed the shutters.” The words landed where she had kept her anger. Aurora turned toward the sink, where Eva had left a plate with a crust of toast on it. She had spent that night at her own window, watching the pavement for a charcoal coat. The next morning, Lucien’s number had gone unanswered. By the third day, she had blocked it before she could call again. “You watched me go upstairs.” “I watched to make sure no one followed.” “You should have come up.” “Yes.” His plain answer left her with nowhere to put the argument she had rehearsed. She gripped the edge of the sink. Rain tapped at the glass above it. Lucien shifted his weight. His face pinched before he smoothed it out. Aurora turned. “Sit down.” “Rory—” “Sit. You’re bleeding on Eva’s floor.” He took the chair beside the table. Ptolemy rose from the other one and leapt to the windowsill. Aurora found Eva’s first-aid box beneath a mound of photocopies, exactly where Eva had told her it would be. She carried it over and set it beside Lucien. “Lift your shirt.” “You don’t have to do this.” “I’m aware.” He unfastened the bottom two buttons. The cut ran along his ribs, shallow at one end and deeper toward his back. Aurora peeled the towel away and saw that the blood had begun to clot. She tore open a packet of gauze with her teeth. “He got close.” “He knew the blade was in the cane.” “That must have ruined your surprise.” “It did spoil the evening.” She pressed gauze to the wound. Lucien drew a breath between his teeth but kept still. Up close, she could smell rain in his hair beneath the sharp scent of his soap. The familiarity made her hands less steady than the blood did. “Why come here hurt?” she asked. “You have people for this.” “Your block of flats has had a visitor for two nights.” Aurora looked up. “What visitor?” “A man near the entrance to Silas’s bar. Brown coat. Burn across his neck.” “I saw him yesterday.” She pressed fresh gauze over the cut. “He asked for directions to the station.” “He knows where the station is.” “Is he one of your father’s?” “No. He works for the man I met tonight.” She lifted her hand from his side. “You could have led him here.” “I checked the street before I came up. I didn’t see him.” “You didn’t see the man who cut you until he had a knife out?” “I saw him.” Lucien held her gaze. “I stayed to find out why he had been watching your building. He told me your name.” Aurora folded the bloodied gauze into her palm. “You could have opened with that.” “I should have.” “Yes, you should have.” She reached for antiseptic. “What does he want?” “He believes you brought something back from Avaros.” “I brought a bruised knee and a coat that smelled of smoke. You saw me empty the pockets.” “I told him.” “And he believed you?” “He cut me.” She poured antiseptic onto a pad. “This will sting.” “It already does.” She cleaned the cut. Lucien’s hand closed around the edge of the table. She watched his knuckles pale and eased the pad across the deepest part. Her wrist brushed his skin; the little scar grazed the open edge of his shirt. His gaze fell to it. “You still hide that when you’re angry.” “I’m holding a bandage.” “You hid it in the alley.” Aurora reached for tape. “I was angry in the alley.” “I know.” “No, you don’t.” She drew a length of tape from the roll and snapped it against the dispenser. “I’d told you about Evan. You knew what it cost me to stay while someone decided which pieces of the truth I was allowed to hear. Then you told me to go upstairs, called me a mistake, and expected me to trust that you had a good reason.” Lucien released the table. “I didn’t expect you to trust me after that.” “Then why did you do it?” “Because I saw my father’s man behind you, and I wanted him to hear that you meant nothing to me.” “He’d been listening?” “He came out of the alley when you turned towards the door.” Aurora remembered the scrape of a shoe behind a stack of empty kegs. She had taken it for one of Silas’s deliveries. “You could have warned me,” she told him. “With him close enough to hear?” “Inside. Afterwards.” “I intended to.” “You didn’t.” “He followed me when I left the bar. By the time I’d lost him, you wouldn’t answer.” “I waited all night.” She smoothed the clean dressing over his ribs. “I waited the next morning too.” Lucien looked at her. For once, he gave her no polished answer. “I’m sorry,” he told her. Aurora pressed the last strip of tape into place. “I know.” That surprised him. She saw it in the slight lift of his brows. “I believe you regret it,” she added. “I haven’t decided what to do with that.” “You don’t need to decide tonight.” “No. Tonight I need you to tell me everything about the man outside my building.” She closed the first-aid box and stood. Lucien buttoned his shirt, stopping short of the dressing. When she reached for the bloodied gauze, he caught her hand. His fingers circled her wrist without covering the scar. “Rory. I didn’t regret taking you with me.” She looked at his hand, then at his face. “You said you’d made a mistake.” “I meant leaving you alone there. I meant making you ask me to stay when I already wanted to.” The flat seemed to shrink around the table. Aurora remembered the bridge in Avaros, its stone warm beneath her palms, and Lucien beside her while sparks from the market fires rose into a violet sky. She had asked him to stay until sunrise. He had. His grip loosened. She could have pulled away. Instead, she turned her hand and felt his thumb come to rest against her palm. A key rattled in the front door. Ptolemy sprang from the windowsill as the first deadbolt shook. “Rory?” Eva called through the wood. “Why are all three on?” Aurora drew her hand back and looked at Lucien’s stained shirt. “We’ve got company.” “So have I,” Eva called. “Open up. The bloke behind me followed me from the corner.”