Run: 2026-09-29-01M3P2KA1GP8ETW4W8YTHB8RDF

The third deadbolt stuck, as it always did, and Rory swore at it under her breath while the knock came again, three measured raps, unhurried. Nobody on Brick Lane knocked like that. Eva's friends hammered, and the delivery lads leaned on the buzzer downstairs. She'd told herself it was the curry house's owner about the bins. She had a fork in her left hand, cold noodles from the Golden Empress going stiff in the carton on the desk behind her, and Ptolemy winding around her ankles like a furry alarm system. She had not told herself it might be him. The door opened on the last click. Lucien Moreau stood on the landing with rain beading on the shoulders of his charcoal coat and his ivory-handled cane planted before him like a man arriving at a duel. His platinum hair, always slicked back with military precision, had come loose over his forehead. One amber eye and one black one found her face and stayed there. "Aurora," he said. Not Rory. He had never once called her Rory. "No." She kept her hand on the door. "Absolutely not." "I haven't asked for anything." "You're standing on Eva's landing at eleven at night. You're about to." She glanced past him at the stairwell, the flickering bulb, the smell of cumin and wet stone. "How did you even know I was here?" "I know most things." A ghost of the old smile touched his mouth and didn't take. "It is rather the job." That was when she noticed how he stood. His weight sat too heavily on the cane, and his left arm was held tight against his ribs, the sleeve of the good coat darker than the rest. Rain didn't do that. Her stomach dropped, and she resented it. Two months of building a very sensible wall, and it took him eleven seconds to find the loose brick. "You're bleeding on the mat." "Ah." He looked down as though it were someone else's blood. "So I am. I did consider the hospital, but the people who did this are the sort who check hospitals." He lifted his eyes. "I can go. Say the word and I will be a bad memory on the stairs." He meant it. That was the worst part. He'd stand there and bleed politely until she shut the door, then find some alley to be dignified in. Rory stepped back and held the door open. "Inside. Don't touch anything, Eva will know." "I would not dream of it." He crossed the threshold with the care of a man entering a church. The flat swallowed him the way it swallowed everyone: the towers of books on every surface, the scrolls in their cardboard tubes, the corkboard of research notes with red string looping between photographs of symbols Rory had stopped trying to understand. Ptolemy considered him for a long, judging moment, then hopped onto the arm of the only clear chair and stared. "Sit," Rory said, and began throwing deadbolts. One, two, three. The sounds echoed in the small room like punctuation. "You've been busy," Lucien murmured, looking at the locks. "Eva's paranoid. It's catching." She dragged the first-aid kit out from under the sink, a battered biscuit tin with a faded Union Jack. "Coat off." "Aurora—" "Coat. Off." He obeyed, wincing as he eased it from his shoulders. Underneath, his white shirt was ruined, a long dark stain running from his ribs to his waist. He lowered himself into the chair with the cane across his knees, and Ptolemy, the traitor, promptly climbed into his lap. She knelt in front of him and started on the buttons. Her fingers were steady. She was proud of that. They were steady right up until the shirt fell open and she saw the gash, shallow at one end and vicious at the other, and the smooth skin around it, warm under her knuckles. "It's not deep," he said quietly. "It's deep enough." She wet a cloth from the water bottle on the desk. "What was it?" "A misunderstanding with a man who wanted a name I would not sell." "Whose name?" He was silent a moment too long. She glanced up and found him watching her, his expression open in a way he almost never allowed. The cloth stilled against his side. "Yours," he said. The room got very small. Somewhere below them a tandoor door clanged and a man laughed in Bengali. "Mine." She made herself keep cleaning the wound. "Because of the thing at the warehouse." "Because of the thing at the warehouse. Because someone finally noticed that the woman who walked out of it should not have been able to." "And you didn't sell it." "No." "Why not?" She pressed the gauze down harder than necessary, and he drew a breath through his teeth. "Last time, you were very good at selling things. You sold me a whole story about why you couldn't tell me what you knew." There it was, out on the floor between them, the thing she'd carried up Eva's stairs for eight weeks. He'd known what the symbol on Eva's notes meant. He'd known for days, and he had let her chase it in the dark, and when she'd stood in his townhouse doorway shaking with fury he had said *I was trying to protect you* in that low, cultured voice, and she'd wanted so badly to believe him that she'd walked out just to prove she still could. "I was wrong," Lucien said. She looked up. "Not in wanting to keep you safe." His voice was even, but his hand had tightened in Ptolemy's fur. "I was wrong in deciding for you. It is a family failing. My father's people treat other people's choices as inconveniences." He held her gaze. "I have been trying, for two months, to be less my father's son. I am not doing it well." Rory taped the gauze down. Her hands wanted to keep moving, so she smoothed the last edge flat and let her palm rest there against his ribs, just for a moment. His heart was going hard beneath it. The great composed Lucien Moreau, with a pulse like a frightened bird. "You could have called," she said. "You blocked my number." "You could have written." "You would have burned it." "Probably." Her mouth twitched despite herself. "Unread." "You see? I am a considerate man. I saved you the matches." The laugh escaped her before she could catch it, short and cracked, and something in his face gentled. He lifted his free hand slowly, the way you'd approach a cat that hadn't decided about you, and turned her left wrist over. His thumb found the small crescent scar there and traced it once. Neither of them said anything. She remembered the night in his study, the fire, how close they'd stood when she'd told him about Evan, and how he had listened without a single word of pity. She remembered how she had almost leaned in. How he had let her almost, and hadn't moved, because he'd wanted her to be the one to choose. "I'm still angry with you," she said. "Good. You should be." "I'm not going to forgive you tonight." "I would think less of you if you did." "You can stay until it's light." She drew her wrist back, and it cost her more than it should have. "The couch is that pile of books with a blanket on it. Ptolemy will steal your side of it." "I have been robbed by worse." She stood, knees stiff, and went to put the kettle on because if she didn't do something with her hands she would do something worse with them. Behind her she heard him settle, heard the cat's rumbling purr, and felt his eyes on her back as steady as a touch. "Aurora." She didn't turn. "What?" "Thank you for opening the door." The kettle began to tick as it warmed. Three deadbolts, all thrown, and still she felt the night air coming in. "Don't make me regret it," she said. "I will do my very best," said Lucien softly, "to regret nothing at all."