Run: 2026-10-08-01M4E0GMTP161ZJ5EV380YRE10

The third deadbolt gave up on the second try. Rory swung the door inward with a mug of cold tea still in her hand, and Ptolemy shot between her ankles and down the stairwell, tail up like a question mark. The smell of cumin and scorched onion rose from the curry house below, thick enough to chew. Lucien stood on the landing. Charcoal wool, no overcoat, rain beading on his slicked-back hair as though it had been told to stay put. The ivory-handled cane hung from his forearm instead of his fist, which meant either he'd climbed the stairs too fast to bother with it, or he didn't want her to see him leaning on it. She didn't step aside. "You've got a nerve," she said. "Eva's out until Sunday. You know that. Which means you either knew I'd be the one answering, or you're thicker than I thought." His eyes moved over her. The amber one settled on her face. The black one tracked the tea mug, then the bare feet on the cracked lino, then back up. He had always looked at her like he was reading a contract for loopholes. "I knocked twice," he said. "Politely. Then I heard you swearing at the bolts, so I waited." "Lucky for you I didn't have a poker handy." "Lucky for you I didn't bring one of mine." She folded her arms, which pushed the mug against her ribs and sloshed the tea over her knuckles. She didn't wipe it off. "Say what you came to say, Luc. Then go back to whatever ledger needs balancing." He glanced past her shoulder into the flat. Books stacked on every chair, research notes pinned to the wall with clothes pegs, a scroll unrolled across the kitchen table and weighted with a teapot. Eva's chaos. Rory had been living inside it for four days, sleeping on the sofa with the cat on her feet, and she'd gotten used to the quiet. "You've been sleeping here," he said. "You've been watching the building." "I've been watching the street. The building happens to be on it." Something moved at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. "Silas says you haven't been upstairs at the bar since Tuesday. Your flat is dark. Your phone is off." "Silas talks too much." "Silas talks exactly as much as he needs to, which is why I pay him." He shifted his weight, and the cane clicked against the doorframe. "I need you to listen to me without throwing that tea." "No promises." "Fair." Rory stepped back. Only a little. Enough that the cold air from the landing could slip in around him and the cat hair could drift out. He came in the way he did everything, measured and unhurried, but he stopped just inside the door and didn't take off his shoes. He looked at the bolts, then the chain, then her. "Three deadbolts," he said. "Eva's idea?" "Eva's paranoia. And a man named Evan, once." "Yes." He said it quietly. "I remember." The silence stretched between them. The fridge hummed. Somewhere below, a delivery scooter whined past the curry house and faded. "You left," she said. "Last time. You walked out of the Golden Empress with your hand on my elbow one second and your back to me the next, and you didn't say one word about where you were going." "I said I'd come back." "You said *it's better this way*. That's not the same thing, and you know it." His jaw worked. He looked at the teapot on the scroll, the chipped mug in her hand, anywhere but at her face. "I thought it was better. I was wrong about the method, not the reason." "The reason was what, exactly?" She heard her own voice sharpen and didn't soften it. "Because I was a liability? Because whatever was in that ledger had your name on it and you didn't want mine next to it?" "Because you would have walked straight into the room," he said, and now he looked at her, both eyes steady. "And you would have been right to do it, and they would have made you pay for it." The mug went onto the sideboard harder than she meant. Tea slopped across the wood. "You don't get to decide what I can handle." "No," he agreed. "I don't. I've spent four months trying to remember that." Ptolemy yowled from the stairwell. Neither of them moved toward the sound. Rory folded her arms again, this time without the mug. The thin crescent scar on her left wrist caught the light from the hall, and she resisted the urge to cover it. He had noticed it on their first night, had traced it with his thumb while she pretended not to feel it. "Why are you here, Lucien?" He reached into his inside breast pocket and paused, hand hovering. "Because someone has been asking about you," he said. "Not the people you're thinking of. Worse ones. And I need you to hear me out before you decide whether to slam that door."