Run: 2026-10-08-01M4DA2CPA1YFJ9Q5JKNTPT83C

The knock came twice, unhurried, the way a man knocks when he already knows someone is standing on the other side. Rory set her chopsticks down beside the carton of dumplings and glanced at the cooker clock. Ten past eleven. Nobody with her number would climb the stairs above Silas' bar this late without texting first. Nobody except one. She let the silence stretch until she heard weight shift against the wood, then she turned the lock and pulled the door open. Lucien stood under the bare bulb on the landing, one hand resting on the ivory handle of his cane. The charcoal suit looked pressed by someone who had been paid to hate creases. His platinum hair was slicked back from his face, and his mismatched eyes, one amber and one black, found her immediately, as though he had been counting the seconds until she showed. "You could have rung," she said. "I did. Four times." His voice carried that low, dry amusement that had always made her want to argue with him. "You have a habit of letting things go to voicemail." "I have a habit of not wanting to talk to you." "Yes. I noticed." She didn't step aside. He didn't ask her to. Instead, his gaze moved past her shoulder and catalogued the room the way he catalogued everything: the stacked cardboard boxes she had never unpacked, the single lamp, the mug of tea gone cold on the windowsill, the takeaway bag crumpled beside the sink. "Golden Empress," he said. "Staff perks. Dumplings are the only thing Yu-Fei lets me take home." She folded her arms, and the thin crescent scar on her left wrist pulled pale against her skin. "Four weeks, Lucien. Four weeks of nothing, and now you're on my landing like you popped out for milk and forgot the way back." Something tightened at the corner of his mouth. "I left you a note." "You left a note that said *don't touch the Ashworth job.* Then you vanished. I had to hear from Silas that the man I'd spent three nights with was on a retainer from a court in Avaros." "I didn't vanish. I left before they could make you pay for knowing me." He shifted his weight, and the cane tapped once against the floorboards. "There's a difference you refuse to acknowledge." "Is that what you're calling it now? Protection?" "I'm calling it the truth, which you've never had much patience for." She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of his truth, and then she saw it. His left cuff was dark at the edge, the wool stiff and stained a shade she didn't want to name. He had pressed his arm close to his side the whole time, and she had been too busy being angry to notice how carefully he moved. Her anger didn't disappear. It just shifted, rearranged itself into something sharper. "You're bleeding," she said. "Am I?" He glanced down as if the stain belonged to someone else. "Barely. It's nothing that won't close by morning." "That's not what I asked." For a moment, he simply looked at her, and she remembered that look too well. It was the one he wore when a chessboard had gone exactly the way he predicted and he hated that he'd enjoyed it. Then it was gone, replaced by something quieter, almost careful. "Let me in, Aurora," he said. "Five minutes. Then you can throw me down the stairs and I'll let you have the satisfaction." "Don't say my name like that." "Like what?" "Like it still belongs to you." He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The hallway light buzzed overhead, and somewhere below, the bar's jukebox started up a song she half recognised from a night she wished she could forget. Rory stepped back from the doorway, just far enough. Lucien crossed the threshold without hurrying, his cane finding the floor with precise little taps. He paused beside the sofa, glanced at the blood on his cuff, then at her. "Four weeks ago," he said, "I told you I would come back when it mattered. I'm here because it does."