Run: 2026-10-08-01M4D9ZPW3012X2PQRN4WD5A6D

The knock came at a quarter past eleven. Three raps, evenly spaced, like someone counting out seconds. Rory knew the rhythm before she reached the door, and that irritated her more than the hour did. Only one man in London knocked like he was keeping time, and he hadn't stood on her landing in eight months. She slid the chain free but left the door on its latch, then pulled it open the width of her shoulder. Through the gap came a sliver of charcoal wool, the gleam of an ivory-handled cane, and above it the face she had spent most of a year failing to forget. Lucien Moreau looked exactly as he always had, which felt deliberately unfair. Platinum hair combed back without a single strand out of place, though the drizzle had darkened the shoulders of his coat. One amber eye, one black, both fixed on her with an expression she refused to name. "You're letting the damp in," she said. "Am I?" He glanced past her at the narrow hallway, the bare bulb, the peeling skirting board Silas had promised to fix since March. "Then you'd better let me in before it finds us both." "You didn't call." "You changed your number." "Yes. That's generally what people do when they don't want a visit." "I'm aware." His mouth moved, not quite a smile. "I didn't come for a visit." She folded her arms and leaned one shoulder against the frame. The stairwell behind him smelled of stale beer rising up from Silas' bar, and somewhere below, a jukebox was murdering a Fleetwood Mac song. "Then what did you come for? Because the last thing I remember is you walking out of here with your coat over your arm and your mind already made up." "I remember it differently." "I'm sure you do." "You told me to go to hell, Aurora." He said her full name the way he always did, each syllable deliberate, as though he'd turned it over in his mouth before letting it out. "Politely, I'll grant you. But you did say it." "I also told you to stop lying to me." "And I stopped lying to you the moment you stopped asking me questions I couldn't answer." He shifted his weight onto the cane. Only then did she notice the stiffness in his left leg, the careful way he held his right hand against his coat. "Which is why I'm here. I need you to hear something before you close that door." Her gaze dropped to the hand. A dark stain bloomed through the fabric at his cuff, and it wasn't rain. "Who did that?" "Someone who wanted a conversation I was unwilling to have." He lifted his chin. "Someone who knows where Eva lives." The name hit her harder than she wanted. Her chest tightened, cold and fast. She straightened off the frame. "Eva's fine. I spoke to her this morning. She was complaining about Ptolemy knocking a stack of scrolls off the table." "Then she's fine for now." He drew a breath through his nose, and for the first time since she'd opened the door, he looked tired. Not wounded, not smug. Simply tired, the way a man looked after carrying something heavy for too long. "Let me in, Rory. Please. I won't say a word you don't need to hear." She stared at him, at the blood he was pretending wasn't there, at the bright ache of old history sitting between them like a third person in the hallway. Every sensible instinct she owned told her to shut the door, bolt it, and go back to bed. Her hand tightened on the latch. "You've got five minutes," she said, and stepped aside.