Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HJZYZA4WMTT94KJGEMR0G

Aurora opened Eva’s door with the chain still on and found Lucien Moreau standing in the narrow gap. For a moment she saw him in pieces: platinum hair darkened by rain, a charcoal suit with one shoulder soaked through, the ivory handle of his cane beneath his hand. Then he lifted his face. His amber eye caught the hall light; the black one gave nothing back. “Rory,” he said. She had not heard him call her that in six weeks. “How did you know I was here?” “Eva told me I might find you.” “Eva’s in Bristol.” “She answered her telephone.” That sounded like Eva. Rory kept one hand on the edge of the door. Behind her, Ptolemy wound around her ankle, purring at the prospect of a visitor who might have the sense to feed him. Lucien looked past her only long enough to see the cat. “May I come in?” It was such a careful question that she wanted to say no. He had once come to the flat above Silas’s bar at two in the morning with blood on his cuff and let himself talk to her until dawn. He had kissed her there, too, in the kitchen with the faulty light, his cane propped against the fridge. The next evening he had stood on the pavement outside the Golden Empress and told her, in a voice so even it had felt rehearsed, that they ought to stop seeing each other. Rory closed the door enough to release the chain. The three deadbolts clicked back one by one. “You have ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll try not to waste them.” He stepped inside, bringing the smell of wet wool and cold pavement into Eva’s flat. It was barely large enough for the two of them when Eva was there to direct traffic. Books rose in stacks beside the sofa, scrolls occupied the chair, and research notes were pinned to the wall wherever the wallpaper had not already surrendered. A pot of tea had gone cold on the table. Rory had been here since lunchtime, helping Eva sort a set of translations before Eva caught her train; she’d stayed because the work was easier than going home. Lucien set his cane by the door. Water dripped from his hair onto his collar. “Your coat?” Rory asked. “I didn’t bring one.” “I can see that.” Ptolemy abandoned her to investigate his shoes. Lucien bent to offer two fingers, and the cat pressed his head into them at once. Traitor, Rory thought. She pushed a stack of books off the sofa and onto the floor. “Sit down.” Lucien remained standing. “I came to apologise.” Rory folded her arms. “All right.” He glanced at her, then at the window above the sink, where the rain blurred the lights on Brick Lane. Traffic hissed below. From the curry house downstairs came the warm, insistent smell of frying onions. “I should have done it sooner,” he said. “Yes.” “I thought you would prefer not to hear from me.” “I would have preferred to hear from you before you decided what I preferred.” His mouth tightened. She had watched that mouth form lies for men who frightened everyone else in a room. He had always been worse at lying to her. “You’re right,” he said. Rory had prepared arguments for a hundred versions of this conversation, usually while carrying takeaway bags through London traffic. His agreement left her with nowhere to put them. “Why tonight?” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. Rory stiffened before she could help it. Lucien stopped. “An envelope,” he said. “Nothing more.” “I didn’t ask what it was.” “I know.” He took it out slowly and laid it on the table between two open books. The paper was cream, its corner bent and rain-softened. “This came to me this morning. It should have gone to you.” Rory looked at her name written across the front in Eva’s quick, sloping hand. “She posted it three weeks ago,” Lucien said. “To my office. By mistake, she claims.” Eva did not make that kind of mistake. Rory picked up the envelope. It had been opened cleanly along one edge. “You read it.” “Yes.” “What’s in it?” “A photograph. And a note asking me to tell you what happened.” Rory stared at him. “She’s been asking me the same thing.” “I know.” She tipped the contents onto the table. A photograph slid out: grainy, taken at night, showing the entrance to Silas’s bar. Rory stood near the door, blurred in motion. A few feet behind her was a man she knew too well. Evan. Her skin went cold. She had left him in Cardiff. She had told herself he could not know where she lived now, though every unfamiliar footstep on the stairs above the bar had made her pause. “When was this taken?” “The night I came to see you,” Lucien said. “Six weeks ago.” Rory looked again. Evan’s face was turned toward her, clear enough to recognise. He was smiling. She had no memory of seeing him there. “Who took it?” “A man I pay to watch the bar when I have reason to worry.” “You had reason?” “Someone had been asking after you. I didn’t know it was him until I saw this.” Rory held the photograph by its edges. “And you didn’t tell me.” “No.” “Did Eva know?” “Not then. I sent her the photograph afterward because I thought she should know. She’s been trying to get me to speak to you since.” A horn sounded below, long and impatient. Ptolemy jumped onto the sofa and tucked himself against the only clear cushion. Rory sat down before her knees could decide for her. “Is Evan still in London?” “No. He went back to Cardiff four days later. I have someone keeping an eye out in case he returns.” “You should have told me he was here.” “Yes.” “You should have let me decide what to do.” “Yes.” Each answer landed without excuse. It did nothing to quiet the anger rising in her chest. “Did you threaten him?” Lucien looked at his hands. “I spoke to him.” “What did you say?” “That you didn’t want to see him. That if he approached you, I would know.” “And?” “He wanted to know who I was to you.” Rory’s grip tightened on the photograph. “What did you tell him?” “I told him it was none of his business.” She put the photograph facedown. Lucien had not come here to offer comfort; he had come with proof that he had hidden something from her. Yet he stood with rain dripping onto Eva’s floor, allowing her to ask every question. She hated how much that mattered. “That night at the Golden Empress,” she said, “was this why?” “Part of it.” “Tell me the other part.” Lucien drew a breath. “I was angry. At him, at myself. When you came outside, you asked why I’d missed dinner. I could have told you what I’d found. Instead I thought about how many people know where I live, where I work, who I see. I thought he might come back, and that there are others who could find you just as easily.” “So you decided not seeing me would make me safe.” “I decided it might.” His voice roughened. “I also thought you might choose to leave if I told you all that. I wanted to make the choice first.” There it was. She remembered that evening sharply: the steam rolling out of the restaurant when someone opened the door, the cardboard handles of her delivery bag cutting into her fingers, Lucien saying they had been careless. She had spent weeks wondering what she’d done to deserve the sudden distance in his face. “You let me think you didn’t want me,” she said. “I know.” “Was that true?” “No.” The word came at once. Lucien crossed the small room, then stopped a pace from the sofa. “I wanted to see you the next morning,” he said. “I wanted to come back every morning after that. But I’d hurt you, and I had no right to ask you to listen to my reasons.” Rory looked up at him. The wet collar of his suit had begun to wrinkle. He seemed not to have noticed. In all the time she’d known him, Lucien had rarely let anyone see him disordered. “Eva asked me to send that photograph,” he said. “I kept putting it off. She finally sent it back with that note.” Rory unfolded the small sheet of paper. Eva had written only two lines. You don’t get to make Rory’s choices for her. Take this to her yourself. Rory almost smiled. Eva had apparently found a way to scold him by post. “Why did you come tonight?” she asked. “I saw you go into the building this afternoon. I waited until I was sure Eva had left. Then I waited longer.” He gave a brief, humourless laugh. “I was going to leave the envelope downstairs.” “You could have.” “I know.” Ptolemy stretched and leapt from the sofa to the table, planting a paw on the photograph. Rory moved it away from him and set it beside Eva’s note. “I’m angry with you,” she said. “You should be.” “Stop agreeing with me as if that fixes anything.” “It doesn’t.” Lucien took a step back. “I’m sorry.” He had said it before, when he first came in. Now she could hear the cost of it. Rory rubbed her thumb over the small crescent scar on her left wrist, a habit she thought she had outgrown. “Do you know what I did after you left?” she asked. “I went upstairs and called Eva. I asked her if I’d misread everything. Every look, every conversation. She told me to call you and ask. I couldn’t bear to.” Lucien’s gaze dropped to her wrist. “Rory.” “No. You need to hear this.” She stood. “I know you didn’t cause what Evan did. But you knew some of it. You knew how hard it was for me to trust what I felt about someone. And then you walked away without telling me why.” “I did.” He swallowed. “I wish I could undo that evening.” “You can’t.” “I know.” This time she let his answer stand. The rain had eased. Beneath their feet, someone in the curry house called an order across the kitchen, and a burst of laughter followed. Rory stepped closer. “If Evan comes back, you tell me. Not Eva. Not Silas. Me.” “Immediately.” “And if being with you puts me in danger, tell me what you know. I get to decide what I do with it.” “Yes.” She searched his face. “Can you do that?” “I can try. I understand if trying isn’t enough for you.” For a long moment she said nothing. She could feel the hurt plainly; she could also feel how badly she wanted to touch him. Neither feeling cancelled the other. “Your ten minutes are up,” she said. Lucien nodded and reached for his cane. Ptolemy caught the hem of his trouser leg with one claw. “He likes you,” Rory said. “He has poor judgment.” “Possibly.” She went to the kitchen and poured the cold tea into the sink. “I’m putting the kettle on.” Behind her, Lucien stayed still. “Would you like me to stay?” Rory filled the kettle and set it on its base. At last she turned. “For tea. And for a conversation that’s going to take longer than ten minutes.” Relief passed over his face, brief and unguarded. He set the cane back beside the door. “I can do that,” he said. “Good.” She took two mugs from Eva’s crowded shelf and cleared a space for them on the table. When she glanced up, Lucien was beside the sofa, waiting for her to sit first. Rory touched his hand as she passed. His fingers closed gently around hers, warm despite the rain, and he let go when she reached for the mugs.