Run: 2026-09-29-01M3P2FZNRMRDF2KGDCBC15SQ7

The knock came three times, evenly spaced, the way no one in the pub downstairs ever knocked. Rory set her tea on the counter and crossed the room in her socks. The bass from Silas' jukebox rattled up through the floorboards and hummed in her heels. She checked the peephole, then leaned her forehead against the wood. She unlatched the chain and opened the door. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing with one hand braced on the frame and the other wrapped around the ivory handle of his cane. His charcoal jacket hung open. A dark stain had soaked through the left side of his shirt and spread beneath his ribs. Rain beaded in his platinum hair, and the slick style he wore like armour had collapsed into damp strands across his forehead. "Bonsoir, Laila." "That's not my name. You know that's not my name." "It was the one you gave me." The amber eye held hers. The black one drifted past her shoulder and swept the room behind her, a habit he never dropped. "I confess I lack a better one that you would allow me to use." "Try Rory. Or try *goodbye*, since you were so good at it last time." He winced, and it looked real, which annoyed her. A drop of rain slid down his temple and hung on his jaw. "You're bleeding on Silas' landing," she said. "He'll charge me for the carpet." "Then I will pay for the carpet." "You can't afford the carpet, you're standing up like a coat rack." She caught the sway in him a second before it took him. "Christ. Fine. Move." She slid under his good arm before he could protest. He weighed less than his tailoring suggested and more than she wanted to carry. His cane clacked against the doorframe. She kicked the door shut behind them and shot the bolt. "Sofa," she said. "I will ruin it." "It's from a charity shop. Sit." He lowered himself onto the cushions with the care of a man who counted every inch. Rory flicked on the lamp. The light turned the blood on his shirt from black to a raw, bright red, and her stomach dropped. She stripped the tea towel off the oven handle and dropped to her knees in front of him. "Jacket off." "You are very forceful this evening." "You're very *dripping* this evening." She peeled the wool from his shoulder. He hissed through his teeth. "Who did this?" "A man with a knife." "Wow. Thank you. Fascinating." She popped the buttons of his shirt one by one, and her fingers stayed steady, which surprised her. "Was it a man with a name?" "Several men. One with a knife." He tipped his head back against the cushion and shut his eyes. "The others preferred their fists." The shirt came away. A gash ran along his side, long and ugly but shallow at the far end, deeper where it started. Skin the colour of cream stretched over lean muscle, and a bruise bloomed purple along the lower ribs. She pressed the towel to the wound. His hand shot out and closed around her wrist. His thumb landed on the crescent scar. Neither of them moved. Downstairs, someone whooped at the football. The jukebox switched songs. "You kept it," he said, quiet. "It's a scar, Luc. It's not a souvenir." "I meant that you kept the sleeve rolled." His thumb traced the pale curve, once. "You used to hide it." She pulled her arm free. "Hold the towel. Press hard." He obeyed. She went to the bathroom, and the mirror caught her face: flushed, jaw tight, black hair tucked behind one ear as if she'd dressed for an audience. She dug out the first aid kit from under the sink and a bottle of the whisky Silas had given her at Christmas. She stared at her reflection for two breaths, then walked back out. Lucien had not moved. Blood crept between his fingers. "Why here?" She knelt again and cracked the whisky. "You've got a dozen bolt-holes. You've got a whole city of people who owe you favours." "And every one of them would sell me for less than they owe." "That's not an answer." "It is the truest one I have." He watched her soak a cloth. "You told me not to come back." "I did." "And yet here I am. On your sofa. Bleeding." "Don't be smug about it." She pushed the cloth against the gash, and he swore in French, low and fluent and inventive. "I've heard worse. Marseille, was it?" "That one was Provençal." His laugh broke into a cough. "My mother's, when the demon side of my father's family called." "Charming woman." "She would have liked you. She hated everyone who was not afraid of me." Rory kept her eyes on the wound. She swabbed, blotted, swabbed again. A tremor crept into her hand and she clamped it down. "I wasn't afraid of you." "No." The word came out soft. "That was the problem." She dropped the cloth in the bowl. Pink water swirled. "Say it, then. You walked out of that warehouse in Deptford with my taste still on your mouth and told me you'd only get me killed. Then nothing. Three weeks. Not a call, not a note, not a sodding pigeon." "I wrote you four letters." "I never got any letters." "I burned them." He opened his eyes. Amber and black, both bright with fever or something worse. "Each time I thought, she will read this and forgive me, and each time I thought, she should not." "That's not your call." Heat climbed her throat. She threaded the curved needle from the kit, and her hands shook now, no matter how hard she clamped them. "You don't get to decide what I can survive. I ran from one man who did that. I *left* him, Luc. I crossed a country to get out from under someone who thought he knew what was best for me." The silence stretched taut. Lucien's throat worked. "I am not Evan." The name landed like a slap. She had never said it to him. "Who told you that?" "You did. Asleep. In the back room at the Merchant's Rest, the night we hid from the Vantoux brothers." He kept his voice gentle, the way he might speak to a spooked horse. "You said it three times. I did not ask, afterward. I thought you would tell me when you wished." "So you decided to be noble instead." "I decided to be *afraid*, Aurora." He used her full name like a key. "Not of you. For you. There is a difference, though it does not make me less of a coward." She stared at the needle in her fingers. The light gleamed on the curve of it. "You're going to need stitches," she said, because it was the only sentence she trusted. "I have had them before." "By someone who liked you?" "Never." A ghost of the old smirk crossed his face and died. "That is why I came to you." She let out a breath that shook at the edges. Then she braced her free hand flat against his stomach, hot skin under her palm, and felt him go still as stone. "This will hurt." "I expect nothing less from you." "Stop being charming. I'm holding a needle." "Then hold it, *chérie*." His fingers found hers on his abdomen and covered them. He didn't pull them away. He didn't press either. He just held on. "And whatever you decide to do with me afterward, I will accept it." "Afterward." She snorted, but her thumb curled against his palm anyway. "You're assuming there is one." "I am assuming nothing. I am hoping." His gaze dropped to her mouth, then lifted, careful, like a man setting down something fragile. "It is a new sensation. I find I dislike it." Rory pushed the needle through the edge of the wound.