Run: 2026-09-23-01M37J2N3WXEQP0TK174BCB6TW

Aurora opened Eva’s door with the third deadbolt still caught in its socket. The door stopped against it, leaving a gap wide enough for one charcoal-clad shoulder and the ivory handle of a cane. “No.” Lucien Moreau lowered his hand from the doorframe. Rain darkened the shoulders of his suit. His platinum hair, usually combed into submission, had slipped across his forehead. “I haven’t asked you anything.” “You came to Brick Lane at midnight. I saved us both time.” Behind Aurora, Ptolemy leapt from a stack of books to the hall table. A folded map slid off the stack and landed against her ankle. She kept her hand on the door. Lucien’s amber eye tracked the sound; his black one stayed on her. “Is Eva here?” “No.” “Then I need to speak to you.” Aurora glanced at the cane. “You could have called.” “You stopped answering.” “That was the point.” His jaw tightened. In the narrow gap, she could see a bruise along his cheekbone, green at its edges. He caught her looking and turned his face towards the stairs. A pan struck a burner in the curry house below. Heat carried cumin up through the floorboards, and rainwater dripped from Lucien’s coat onto the top stair. Aurora had left Eva’s kitchen light on to sort the notes spread across the table. It lit the hall behind her and nothing beyond him. “What happened to your face?” “Nothing you need to fix.” “Good. I wasn’t offering.” Lucien took a folded envelope from inside his coat. Its lower corner had soaked through. “This came to your flat above Silas’s.” Aurora’s fingers pressed into the door edge. “Why were you there?” “Silas found it beneath the door and sent for me.” “He has my number.” “He called it.” Her phone sat on Eva’s kitchen table, beside a dead charger and six open books. She had ignored it since arriving. Lucien held the envelope out. A wax seal covered the flap, though the rain had blurred its stamped design. Across the front, someone had written A. CARTER in block capitals. “Did you open it?” “No.” “Did Silas?” “No.” “Then put it through the gap.” Lucien tilted the envelope. It would not fit past the bolt without bending. Aurora stared at it. She could leave it on the landing. She could close the door and find her phone. Instead, she slid the first deadbolt free, then the second. The third resisted under her thumb before it snapped back. She pulled the door open. Lucien crossed the threshold only when she stepped aside. Ptolemy rushed towards him, tail raised, and halted short of his wet shoes. “You’ve gained an admirer,” Lucien told the cat. “He likes strangers. Eva calls it poor judgement.” Aurora took the envelope. The paper was cold and damp against her palm. Lucien shut the door, then looked at the three bolts. “Lock them.” “You walked in thirty seconds ago.” “And I’d prefer no one followed me.” She checked the landing through the spyhole. Empty stairs. She slid the bolts across. Lucien watched the bottom one catch before he followed her into the living room. Eva’s flat held one narrow passage between the sofa and a wall of books. Notes covered the sofa arms, the windowsill and half the floor; strips of paper marked pages in languages Aurora could not read. Lucien lifted his cane over a cluster of scrolls and stopped beside the kitchen table. Aurora laid the envelope under the light. The handwriting meant nothing to her. She slipped a nail beneath the wax, broke it, and pulled out a single sheet. A date and an address sat beneath a photograph fixed to the page. The photograph showed her outside the Golden Empress, helmet under one arm, her black hair caught beneath its strap. The image had been taken that morning. Someone had drawn a red circle around the crescent scar on her left wrist. Lucien saw it when she turned the page. “Who sent this?” she asked. “I don’t know.” “Is that the answer, or the one you give when you’ve already decided what I can bear?” He took his hand off the back of Eva’s chair. “I don’t know.” Aurora held up the sheet. “There’s an address on Wapping High Street. What’s there?” “A warehouse registered to a shipping firm that closed eight years ago.” “You looked it up on your way here?” “I knew the address.” “Of course you did.” She set the paper down. “Why?” Lucien pulled the chair out but did not sit. “I worked there once.” “For whom?” His fingers closed around the cane handle. “A man named Voss.” Aurora waited. Rain ticked against the window. Ptolemy threaded between the chair legs, then settled on the only clear patch of rug. Lucien looked from the photograph to her wrist. “He buys information. People, debts, places where someone can be found. I stopped taking his work.” “When?” “Three weeks ago.” She let out a short breath. “The night you left my flat.” “I went to see him that night.” “You told me you had a train to catch.” “I did. After.” Aurora pulled the chair from under his hand and sat. She had spent three weeks finding fresh uses for that night: something to think about while scrubbing delivery boxes, while waiting for the kettle, while watching the stairs from her flat above the bar. His last words had been, I won’t bring this to your door. She had taken them for a dismissal. He had let her. “You could have told me.” “I should have.” “No speech about keeping me safe?” “No.” She glanced up at him. His bruised cheek caught the kitchen light. “That’s new.” “I’ve had three weeks to work on it.” “Looks as if someone helped.” He touched the bruise with two fingers and lowered his hand. “Voss didn’t like losing an account.” “Did you give him my name?” “No.” “Someone did.” “Yes.” Lucien moved to the window and drew the curtain across a gap no wider than his hand. He did not look outside. Aurora watched him struggle with the rings on the bent curtain rail, one small task his careful hands could not make smooth. “You came because of the photograph,” she asked, “or because Silas sent for you?” “Both.” “Which one got you up the stairs?” Lucien turned. His eyes held hers across the table. “I wanted to see you. The envelope gave me a reason to knock.” She pressed the edge of the paper flat with her thumb. “You had reasons before.” “I know.” “You stood in my kitchen, told me the evening meant something, then vanished before breakfast.” “I left before you woke. That wasn’t the same as vanishing.” “You’re right. You left your cufflink on the sink. I had proof you existed.” He looked at the sleeve of his coat. One cuff carried a plain silver link; the other held a button that did not match. “You still have it?” “In a drawer.” “I thought you’d thrown it into the street.” “I considered the drain. Better aim.” A smile reached his mouth and stopped. Aurora hated that she noticed it. She remembered the cufflink beneath her toothbrush, his shirt hanging over the back of her chair, the way he had stood close enough in her kitchen that she had had to tilt her head to meet his eyes. Then the quiet after she woke. Lucien set his cane against the wall. “I told Voss I was finished with him because he asked about you.” Aurora lifted her gaze. “Before that night?” “Three days before.” “And you still came over.” “Yes.” “You kissed me knowing he’d asked?” “I wanted to warn you. You opened the door with flour on your cheek and spent ten minutes telling me the Golden Empress had sent you out with the wrong order.” He looked down at his hands. “I should have interrupted.” “Instead you stayed.” “Yes.” “You stayed until morning.” “Not quite.” “No. Not quite.” Ptolemy woke, stretched, and jumped onto the table. Aurora moved the photograph before the cat could settle on it. The image caught Lucien’s attention once more. “What does the date mean?” she asked. “Tomorrow.” “It’s past midnight.” “Then today.” Aurora checked the time on the dead phone. Its black screen reflected her face. She reached across the table for Eva’s charger and fitted the cable into its port. “Voss wants me at the warehouse?” “The sheet doesn’t say.” “It has my photograph and an address. He isn’t inviting me to tea.” “No.” “Does Eva know him?” “I doubt it. I came here because Silas told me you were with her.” “She went to her sister’s for the weekend.” Aurora picked at a loose edge of the photograph. “I came to look through her notes. I thought she might have something on the seal.” Lucien leaned towards the broken wax. “May I?” She nudged the envelope across. He turned the seal under the lamp. Ink stained one side of his thumb, and a shallow cut crossed the knuckle. He had arrived with more damage than the bruise. “It’s Voss’s,” he told her. “He uses a press with a flaw at the top of the V.” “Useful flaw.” “He refuses to replace it.” Aurora took the envelope back. “That sounds like a man who’s grown fond of being recognised.” “He has.” Her phone lit up. Four missed calls from Silas. One message from Eva asking whether Ptolemy had eaten. Aurora sent a reply about the cat, then opened Silas’s last message: Moreau has it. Call me when you’re safe. She rang him. He picked up before the second tone. “I’m at Eva’s. Lucien’s here.” Silas’s breath crackled through the speaker. “Door locked?” “Three times.” “Good. Don’t go back to your place tonight. Someone came in after Moreau left.” Aurora sat straighter. “My flat?” “The bar. Asked for you. I told him you weren’t in. He waited outside till I shut.” “What did he look like?” “Shorter than me. Green coat. Didn’t touch his drink.” Lucien held out his hand for the phone. Aurora shook her head. “Did he give a name?” “No. Rory, where’s Eva?” “At her sister’s. She’s fine. I’ll call you back.” She ended the call. Lucien had heard enough from the speaker. He picked up his cane. “Silas can identify him?” “Green coat, bad taste in pubs. Go on, tell me you know the man.” “I don’t.” He looked at her phone. “Will you stay here?” “For tonight, yes.” “I’ll ask someone to watch the building.” “No.” She rose, and the chair scraped over the bare boards. “You don’t get to arrange my life while I’m sitting in the room.” “I meant to ask.” “You didn’t.” Lucien put the cane down again. “Would you like me to call someone to watch the building?” “No. I’d like to know what Voss wants before you make a call.” “I can find out.” “Without telling him where I am?” “Yes.” Aurora folded her arms. “And then you’ll tell me what you learn. All of it.” “Yes.” He did not move towards the door. She looked at the photograph, then at his wet coat. Water had gathered beneath it in a shallow pool on Eva’s floor. Lucien followed her gaze and stepped away from the books. “There’s a towel in the bathroom,” she told him. “Left of the sink.” “Thank you.” “Don’t mistake it for an invitation to disappear before breakfast.” He paused at the mouth of the hall. “I won’t.” Aurora heard him open the bathroom door. She gathered the photograph and envelope, cleared a place for them beneath Eva’s lamp, and plugged her phone into the charger. When Lucien returned with the towel around his shoulders, she had opened a blank page in Eva’s notebook. “Start with Voss,” she told him. “Tell me what he paid you to find.” Lucien drew out the chair opposite her and sat.