Run: 2026-09-23-01M37HNWZMR4H6A6JFAW365ZZN

The third deadbolt stuck. Rory had to lift the door by its handle before it gave, and when it swung inward, Lucien Moreau stood on the landing with blood on his shirt cuff. For a moment, neither of them moved. Curry fumes rose through the floorboards. Somewhere below, a cook struck a pan with a ladle, three sharp knocks that carried up the stairwell. Lucien’s charcoal suit had a tear at the shoulder. He held his ivory-handled cane beneath his arm, though he put no weight on it. His platinum hair, combed back as usual, had come loose across his forehead. One amber eye met hers; the black one made his face look as if it held two different answers. Rory kept her hand on the door. “You’ve got the wrong flat.” “I checked.” “You should have checked whether you were welcome.” His gaze dropped to the three locks, then returned to her face. “Someone followed me from Whitechapel.” “Then keep walking.” “Rory.” She hated what her name did in his voice. Six weeks since he had spoken it. Six weeks since he had left her outside Silas’s bar with rain sliding down the back of her collar and his last words lodged beneath her ribs: You’ll be safer if you stay away from me. She stepped out onto the landing and pulled the door nearly shut behind her. Through the gap, Ptolemy wound around a stack of books and gave Lucien a stare of grave contempt. “This is Eva’s place. She has nothing to do with you.” “I know whose flat it is.” “Then you know I can wake her.” “You should.” He looked towards the stairs. “And you should let me past the door before whoever followed me reaches this floor.” Rory caught his sleeve. Blood had soaked through the cuff and marked the seam beneath his wrist. “Is that yours?” “Yes.” “Who followed you?” “I didn’t see a face.” “Convenient.” “A coat. Dark green, long enough to cover the hands. The person kept to the other side of the road until Brick Lane.” The stairwell fell quiet. Rory listened past him: the extractor fan downstairs, tyres brushing wet tarmac outside, a burst of laughter from the street. No footsteps on the stairs. She opened the door. “You get five minutes. Then you leave.” Lucien entered without brushing against her. She shut the door, pushed it up with her hip and drove each deadbolt home. By the second, Ptolemy had retreated beneath Eva’s desk. By the third, Rory could hear Lucien’s breathing in the cramped room. He stopped beside a tower of books and looked at the notes that covered the walls. His hand went to his cuff. “Don’t touch anything,” Rory told him. “Eva knows where every scrap of paper goes.” “I remember.” “You were here once.” “You made tea. Eva asked me twelve questions about Avaros before I’d taken a sip.” “She was being polite.” “She called my father a liar.” “He is, from what you told her.” Lucien drew a breath through his nose. Rory went to the kitchen sink, found a clean tea towel and ran it under cold water. When she turned, he had taken off his jacket. Blood spread from the inside of his left forearm towards his elbow. “That needs more than five minutes.” “I can manage it.” “Your cuff says otherwise. Sit.” He glanced at the narrow chair wedged between the table and Eva’s research shelf. “Is that an instruction?” “It’s a chair.” He sat. Rory pulled a lamp closer and laid his arm on the table. Beneath the split fabric, a cut ran along his forearm. The edges had begun to knit, but when he flexed his fingers, fresh blood welled through. “What did that?” “A blade.” “I’d got that far.” “Someone found me at my office.” “Who?” “I don’t know.” She pressed the damp towel against the cut. Lucien’s jaw tightened, though his arm remained still. Up close she saw a bruise along the edge of his collar and a small tear in the lining of his shirt. Whoever had struck him had come near enough to land more than one blow. “You came here instead of a doctor.” “I came here because of you.” Rory held the towel in place. “You’re going to need to do better than that.” From the bedroom, Eva’s voice came rough with sleep. “Rory?” “We have a visitor.” There was a thump, a rustle, then Eva appeared in the doorway in an old university sweatshirt. She took in Lucien, his blood on her table, and Rory’s hand around his wrist. “Moreau. My floor had better survive this.” “I’ll pay for cleaning.” “People who say that tend to make a mess.” Eva crossed to a cupboard and took out a first-aid tin. “Who’s outside?” “Someone followed him. Green coat. He didn’t see a face.” Eva looked at Lucien. “You brought them to my door?” “I lost them before I crossed the street.” “You’re confident of that?” “No.” Eva set the tin beside Rory. “There’s a peephole. Use it before you open the door again.” She picked up her phone. “I’ll check the street.” “Eva—” “I live here.” Eva gave Rory a look that left no room for argument and went back into the bedroom with her phone. Rory lifted the towel. The cut had begun to bleed less. She found antiseptic, gauze and a roll of bandage in the tin. Lucien watched her work until she pushed his torn sleeve out of the way. Her left wrist turned beneath the lamp; the small crescent scar there showed white against her skin. “You still have that,” he murmured. “It’s a scar, Lucien.” “I know what it is.” She tipped antiseptic onto a pad. “Then don’t sound surprised.” He flinched when she touched the cut. He’d once held that wrist between his fingers outside Golden Empress, turning it towards the light while he asked how she’d acquired the mark. She had told him about the broken greenhouse pane, about her mother driving her to hospital with a dish towel wrapped around her arm. He had remembered it. She had forgotten that he knew. She fixed the gauze over his forearm and wound the bandage through his fingers to keep it in place. “You could have gone to Silas,” she told him. “He’d have called you.” “You don’t know that.” “He called you when I asked after you.” Her grip tightened on the roll. “You asked after me?” “Twice.” “And when he offered to pass on a message?” “I didn’t leave one.” “Right.” She tucked the end of the bandage beneath a fold. Lucien pulled his arm back, but he didn’t stand. “I had no right to ask Silas for news and no courage to ask you,” he told her. Rory shut the first-aid tin. “You managed to tell me to stay away. You found the words for that.” “I did.” “You walked off before I could answer.” “Yes.” “Did you think I was going to chase you down the street?” “No. I thought if I stayed, I would ask you not to go.” The noise from downstairs reached them through the floor: pans, voices, the low churn of the extractor. Rory moved to the sink to rinse the towel. Pink water swirled around the plug. “You could have asked,” she told him. “I had people watching my office. One of them knew where you worked.” “You didn’t tell me.” “I’d already found a watcher outside the Golden Empress. I thought I could draw them away.” “You thought.” She wrung out the towel. “And what did I get to do?” His chair scraped back. “I should have told you.” “You should have let me choose whether I wanted to see you.” “You’re right.” Rory turned off the tap. He had stopped beside the table, one hand resting on the cane. She remembered that hand at the small of her back as they squeezed through a crowded market, the care he took not to steer her, and how it had felt to have him drop it when someone called his name. Six weeks had not stripped those memories of their edges. “What happened at your office?” she asked. Lucien reached into his jacket pocket. Rory stiffened. He drew out a folded sheet and set it on the table between two stacks of Eva’s notes. A dark smear marked one corner. “They were looking for this. They asked about the night I took you to the river.” Rory stared at the paper. That night had ended on the steps above the Thames. Lucien had kissed her there, his hand cold from the cane and warm where it touched her cheek. The next morning, he had come to Silas’s bar to tell her to stay away. “What’s on it?” “A name. A place. I found it after I spoke to you that morning.” “So this is why you’ve come.” “It’s part of it.” Rory looked up. “You could have sent the paper to Eva.” “I could have.” “You could have knocked on Silas’s door and handed it to him.” “Yes.” “Instead you came up three flights of stairs, bleeding on her landing.” His mouth pressed into a line. “I wanted to see you.” She could hear Eva moving in the bedroom, speaking into her phone too quietly for the words to carry. Rory picked up the folded paper but did not open it. A line of Lucien’s handwriting showed through the thin stock. “I spent weeks making sense of what you’d said,” she told him. “I thought I’d read everything else wrong.” “You hadn’t.” “You took my hand that night.” “I did.” “You kissed me.” “I remember.” “And the next day you looked at me as though I’d made it up.” Lucien’s fingers closed around the handle of his cane. He looked down at his bandaged arm, then at her. “I saw the man outside the restaurant that morning. I knew he had seen us by the river. I should have come to you with that. Instead I made you think I regretted kissing you.” Rory set the paper down. “Did you?” “No.” “Look at me.” He did. The lamp caught the amber eye; the black one held the shape of her face. “I wanted to kiss you before we reached the river,” he told her. “I wanted to stay after you went upstairs that night. None of that changed in the morning.” A knock struck the flat door. Lucien turned. Rory crossed the room before he could move towards it. Eva came out of the bedroom, phone in hand. “Curry house,” she told them. “They’re closing the front shutters. Cook heard someone on the stairs.” Rory looked through the peephole. A boy in an apron stood on the landing with a paper bag pressed to his chest. He glanced down the staircase, then raised a fist to knock again. “It’s Imran,” she told Eva. She opened the top deadbolt. Lucien stayed back by the table while she worked the other two. Imran held out the bag. “Your order. Someone left it downstairs.” “We didn’t order.” “It’s got your flat number on it.” Rory took the bag by its twisted handles. Grease had darkened the bottom. No name appeared on the receipt stapled to the fold, only the flat number and the time, printed ten minutes earlier. “Who left it?” “Didn’t see. I came back from the bins and it was on the counter.” Imran leaned to see past her. “Everything all right?” “Yeah. Thanks.” He nodded and hurried downstairs. Rory shut the door and slid the bolts across. Eva took the bag from her and put it on the clear end of the table. She peeled the receipt free, opened the fold and looked inside. “Rice,” she told them. “And a note.” Lucien came to her side. Eva tipped the bag, letting the carton settle against the paper, and handed Rory a folded square torn from a notebook. Rory opened it. Two words sat in block capitals above a phone number. CALL ME. She held it under the lamp. “No name.” Eva took a photograph of the note with her phone. “I’ll ask Imran to keep the shutters down. The back door opens onto the yard if we need it.” Lucien reached for his jacket. “I should leave.” “No,” Rory told him. He paused with the jacket in his hand. She set the note beside his folded sheet. “Someone knows this flat number. You can tell Eva what happened at your office, and we can work out what these are. You don’t walk out while there’s someone on the stairs.” Eva picked up the rice carton. “I’ll put this in the kitchen. Neither of you touch it.” She carried the bag away. Rory heard the cupboard open, then the clink of a plate as Eva cleared a space. Lucien remained where he stood, his jacket held against his good arm. “You don’t owe me this.” “I know.” “I meant what I said about the kiss.” “I heard you.” Rory drew the chair out from the table with her foot. “Sit down. Tell me who cut your arm.” He set his jacket over the chair back and sat. Rory took the other chair, close enough to see the blood beginning to spot the fresh bandage, and opened the folded sheet.