"...What?" 

She slides a ribbon into her book to mark the place and then closes it with a soft thump. 

"The very first time we met--to really talk, I mean, not just being in the same place and vaguely aware of each other's existence--you taught me a lot of swear words, and I said none of them sounded very interesting, and you said grownups thought fucking was interesting. So. Is it?" 

He laughs softly, shaking his head. "Your memory."

Someday he's going to have let slip one clue too many and she'll have remembered them all and--

Eyeroll. "That's not an answer to the question I asked, Daeran." 

Smirk. "Oh, it's plenty interesting." 

Lucette is sitting on the side of the bed further from the door; she turns to slip off it, and pads around the bed in her stocking-feet, her shoes lying ignored on the floor. 

She puts her hands on his shoulders and looks him in the eyes. 

"Daeran. I know you hate Prelate Hulrun, and I don't blame you for it one bit. If you've ever passed off an opportunity to upset him that he can't actually prosecute you for, I don't know it. But--this--if you're only doing it for that reason--you could get hurt. If this is something you actually want to do, for yourself, then I won't say another word. But if you're only doing it for spite, that could go badly for you." 

She really, really knows him too well. 

Not in this specific--that is, he is having plenty of fun, and doesn't think her specific concern is warranted, just--

She always manages to say something that pierces right through the insouciant outer layer of him and right into his actual deeper feelings. 

It is deeply inconvenient, both in and of itself and for the fact that his ability to get annoyed with her for it has only eroded since she first started doing it. 

"I'm having fun. It's fine." 

She relaxes a fraction. "Okay. Good. Just--promise me, if it ever does start to feel bad, you'll stop?" 

"I'm hiring much too expensive courtesans for that to be an issue." 

She rolls her eyes and thwacks him gently in the shoulder. "Not what I meant, and you know it." 

"If I ever get bored of it I'll hire them to play card games with me and Hulrun will be none the wiser." 

--She laughs softly. "Alright. As long as you're taking care of yourself." 

"Shouldn't I be saying that to you, Miss Would-Be Crusader?" 

She wrinkles her nose at him. "It's called a work-life balance." 

"Never heard of it. Sounds like some dull Good people thing." 

Yeah Lucette is going to have to kick him lightly in the ankle about that. And then run off before he can retaliate, because she actually does have other things to do today. 

...Okay, she's going to have to come back for her shoes before actually leaving the building. Still. 

It is a little less than a month later that Prelate Hulrun confronts her. 

"You're too close to Count Arendae." 

Once, when doing research on the Abyssal hordes, Lucette came across a book of etiquette written by a succubus, mocking mortal ways. One of the things it contained was the standard array of silverware for high-society dining, in Mendev, with rather different uses for each implement. 

At the time Lucette checked that the book didn't contain anything worthwhile, then set it aside with a disgusted eyeroll. 

Now she's remembering, vividly, several recommendations about delicate locations to which one could apply sharp little forks, in the context of Prelate Hulrun Shappok's person. 

"What do you mean?" she asks, instead of sharing this information, cocking her head innocently. 

Flatly: "He's a bad influence. He whores, he drinks, he's irreverent, he hasn't set foot in the Temple of Iomedae in this city even once, to the best of my knowledge." Grudgingly: "I haven't seen any evidence that the man is actually a demon cultist, but there are other vices." 

Ohhh, she has so much to say about Hulrun needing evidence to decide that people are demon cultists. 

She's not going to say it, though, or let even a hint of her true thoughts cross her face. Daeran is playing one game with the Prelate, and she's playing a different one. 

"Ohhhh...it can't be that bad," she demurs, wringing her hands gently. "He can be sort of mean, but...he's the Queen's cousin!" 

"Your charity does you credit," he bites out as though sucking on a sour lemon. "But in this case, it is misplaced." 

Lucette widens her eyes just a tiny bit, allows her lower lip to slip out as little as she can without doing nothing at all. Overplaying this would be worse than useless. "I understand that he's done a lot of things wrong," she says sorrowfully, "but--he hasn't done anything we," she clasps her hands behind her back so she can cross her fingers at the inclusive pronoun, "can arrest him for, has he? I mean, not that we know of." 

It's a rhetorical question. If Hulrun had the wherewithal to arrest Daeran, he'd've done it by now. 

Deeply grudgingly: "No." 

"Well--we can't leave him alone, can we? If what he's doing isn't alright, and the law can't do anything about it, shouldn't I?"