Run: 2026-09-29-01M3P2H47G6R2ANPHCCSX8YP9Y

The chain rattled against the door plate, and Rory pulled it open the width of her forearm. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing with rain beading in his platinum hair. The stairwell bulb buzzed above him and turned his charcoal suit the colour of wet slate. He leaned on the ivory-handled cane with more weight than a man leaned on an accessory. "Bonsoir, Aurora." "No." She started to close the door. His cane slid into the gap. "Give me sixty seconds before you slam it." "You get five." She looked at the cane, then at him. "And that's my door frame you're scratching." "Then I'll be careful with your frame." The amber eye held her. The black one gave nothing back, as usual. "You've cut your hair." "Four seconds." "It suits you." Below them, Silas' bar thumped through the floorboards, a bass line and a burst of laughter as someone lost a game of darts. Rory's fingers tightened on the chain. Three weeks ago she had stood in a rain like this one, in a doorway like this one, and told him she never wanted to see his face again. She had meant it. She still meant it. Her pulse hadn't received the message. "What do you want, Lucien?" "A chair. A drink, if you're feeling generous. Twenty minutes." He shifted his weight, and something in his jaw pulled tight. "I wouldn't ask." "You've never asked for anything. You just take it and send a bill." She peered past him down the dark stairwell. "Who's following you?" "Nobody who climbed the stairs." "That's not an answer." "It's the one I have." His left hand came off the cane and pressed against his ribs. When he lifted it away, the charcoal wool showed darker at the seam, and the smell of copper reached her through the gap. Rory shut her eyes for a second. "You absolute bastard." She slid the chain free and pulled the door wide. He came in slowly, the cane tapping once on the lino, twice on the rug. The flat had never felt small until he stood in it. Her sofa sagged under a pile of unfolded laundry, and the takeaway bag from the Golden Empress still sat on the counter, grease spotting the paper. He looked at all of it, the mismatched mugs, the paperbacks stacked on the radiator, and his face softened in a way she hated. "Sit," she said. "Not on the laundry." "I'd never." He lowered himself onto the arm of the sofa and let out a breath through his teeth. "On the cushion, Lucien. If you bleed on the armrest, I'll bill *you*." "Such tenderness." "Jacket off." He raised an eyebrow. "You used to ask more nicely." "I used to be an idiot." She pointed at the buttons. "Off." He shrugged out of the jacket one arm at a time, and she caught it before it hit the floor. The lining was silk and the wool was heavy with rain. She hung it on the back of a chair, then dropped to a crouch in front of him as he peeled the shirt away from his side. The gash ran along his ribs, long and shallow at one end, deep at the other. Whoever had made it had used something curved. "It's not as bad as it looks," he said. "It looks terrible." "Then it's exactly as bad." She stood, pulled the first aid box from the shelf above the fridge, and slammed it on the coffee table hard enough to make the mugs jump. Her hands didn't shake. She checked. They were steady, which was worse, because it meant she'd fallen back into the old rhythm without asking her permission. "Hold still." She soaked a cloth under the hot tap, wrung it out, and knelt again. When she pressed it to the wound he hissed and caught her wrist. His thumb landed on the small crescent scar on the inside of her left wrist. It lay there for half a heartbeat, then stroked across it once. Neither of them spoke. "Let go," she said. "Of course." He didn't move. "Lucien." "I remember when you told me about this." His voice dropped and the French edge sharpened in it. "You were on the fire escape at Belleville, and you'd stolen my cigarettes and didn't smoke a single one. You said you fell off a garden wall when you were seven." "I was eight." She pulled her arm free. "And you were supposed to forget everything I told you." "I forget nothing. It's the trouble with my profession." He gave a small, crooked smile that faded quickly. "And with my heart, apparently." She dabbed at the wound harder than she needed to. He didn't flinch. "Don't," she said. "I haven't said anything." "You were about to. You had that look. The one you get before you say something clever enough to make me forget I'm angry." "Is it working?" "No." She rinsed the cloth in the bowl and the water turned pink. "Why here? You know a dozen people who stitch wounds for a living. You have a doctor on retainer in Mayfair." "Dr. Amsel sells my address to the highest bidder. I learned that tonight." He watched her tear open a sterile pad. "You, I trust." "You shouldn't." "I know." He said it plainly. "I gave you every reason not to." She stopped with the pad in her hand. The bar's music rose and fell beneath them. Somebody dropped a glass, and a cheer followed. "You sold my name to Renard," she said. "I traded it." "That's the same thing." "It isn't. But I understand why it looks that way." He leaned his head back against the wall. "He already had your name. He had your street, and your job, and the colour of your bike. What he didn't have was a reason to stop looking. I gave him one. It cost me something I'd have preferred to keep." "You could have told me." "You'd have gone to him yourself." "That was my choice to make!" "Yes." His eyes opened, both of them, amber and black, and the plain misery in them stopped her breath. "And I took it from you. I have been sorry every hour since, and I'd do it again, and that is the part I can't fix." Rory stared at him. Her throat ached. She wanted to shout, and she wanted to throw the antiseptic at his perfect hair. She also wanted to sit next to him and put her forehead against his shoulder, which infuriated her more than anything else. "You are the most exhausting man I have ever met," she said. "I've been told." "By who?" "Everyone. Repeatedly." The smile came back, smaller. "You were the only one who said it as though you meant to stay anyway." She pressed the pad to his side, and this time she used her whole palm and held it there. His skin burned under her hand. His breath hitched, then evened out, and she felt each rise of his ribs against her fingers. "Tape," she said. "In the box. Left of your knee." He found it and passed it to her, and their hands overlapped on the roll. Neither of them let go right away. "I'm still angry," she said. "Good. I'd worry if you weren't." "I'm going to be angry for a long time." "I've got nowhere else to be." He glanced at the window, where the rain traced silver lines down the glass. "Tonight, at least." She tore the tape with her teeth and smoothed the first strip across the pad. Her knuckles brushed his skin, and he closed his eyes again.