Lucette is nine and a half years old when the tragedy at Heaven's Edge occurs. 

She's met Daeran Arendae, before, but he mostly lives at his family's estate, and not in the capital, so it's only been in passing. 

Lucette's Mama is at home, when it happens, and when Lucette finds out that the only survivor is a boy only a little more than three years older than her, she begs her Mama to go see him. 

It's an easy enough request to grant. He's been brought back to Nerosyan, for the moment--his family did have a manor in the capital, among other places, and it was deemed the safest place for him at the moment. 

The poor child. Seeing all that death, including...

Well. 

If Lucette seems to be making anything worse, Lavinia can always remove her and not come back, at least not soon. But...if Lucette understands the word pity, Lavinia hasn't seen the evidence of it yet, and she thinks maybe if she were in his shoes, she would want someone who didn't pity her. 

(Lavinia, herself, cannot say that she doesn't pity him. It's an intensely pitiable situation.) 

Lavinia brings Lucette to the Arendae Manor, solicits the young, new-made Count's location from the servants, and proceeds to release her daughter to do as she wills. 

Probably if she needs to interfere there will be screaming. 

(There is a reason Lavinia Wex is only Neutral Good and not Lawful Good, and it isn't anything Hulrun Shappok can pin on her in a court of law.)

Lucette goes to the door of Daeran's bedroom and knocks on the door. 

"Go away!" 

"No!" 

...What. 

He doesn't recognize that voice. Or, maybe it sounds sort of vaguely familiar, but he can't place it. It sounds like someone else his age, thereabouts; probably one of the fairly dull on-their-best-behavior children he met once at a party Mother (ow) was obligated to drag him to. 

Well, they're not on their best behavior now. If they won't go away on their own he'll just wait for someone to remove them. 

Nope she's going to continue pounding on the door for a while.

Uuuuuuugh. 

He pulls a pillow over his head. 

Eventually the pounding stops. 

Thank you.

It is replaced by a soft clicking sound. 

Yes well he can't hear that on account of he's still got a pillow over his head. 

"Hi," says a very obviously half-dragon girl from beside his bed. 

That, he can hear. He whips the pillow off his head, pushing himself up to stare at her. 

(Oh, now he recognizes her. Terendelev's daughter. Hard to mistake, that.)

"How did you get in?" he demads. 

"Picked the lock!" 

"Does your--" what is the correct word here. Terendelev is a female dragon, but "Mother" (ow) would be an ambiguous word, and presumably one of them turned into a man to make her, but he doesn't know which one, and anyway he's not sure if that matters or not, "--does Terendelev know you can do that?" 

"Probably not, why?" 

"Silver dragons are like paladins, and paladins have to be Lawful, and picking locks isn't very Lawful." 

"It's not? How come?" 

"Well--stuff that's behind locks is stuff you're not supposed to get into." Is he in a position to DEFEND rules. What in the abyss is happening. 

"Only sometimes!" 

"Well..." she's not exactly wrong. Demon cultists lock stuff up too, presumably, and there's, like, shackles, if you get--not thinking about getting captured by demons--if you get, like, kidnapped, by ordinary criminal humans or something. But. "You weren't supposed to unlock my door." He is totally defending the rules, and it makes him feel weird and funny and not in a good way. 

"But Mama said I could see you." 

...Asking whether "Mama" means Terendelev or the other one sounds like more engagement with the concept of motherhood than he's emotionally capable of handling right now. He flops back down. 

"Why'd you want to see me, anyway?" he asks suspiciously. 

In response, Lucette half-climbs, half-flaps onto the bed and hugs him. 

WHAT. 

Nobody behaves this way! 

It's kind of great Sorry, Daeran does not have any positive emotions available right now. 

...He can sort of appreciate that this nonsense is the kind of thing he would usually approve of. He's not at all sure he cares, but he is, like, aware of it. 

He is definitely all out of But Why Aren't You Doing Normal Things Instead Of Not-Normal Things, though. So he sort of...stares at her, bewildered. 

"What?" he manages to say, out loud, after a minute. 

"You need a hug." 

His needs go so far beyond a hug it isn't even funny. 

"Go away," he says after a minute. If he doesn't like her, then he doesn't want to interact with her, and if he does like her, then he wants her far, far away from him so that thehorriblething won't get her. 

"Nuh-uh." 

"Why?"

"'Cause you need a hug." 

"You think a hug can fix me?" 

Oh no that's more emotional honesty than he intended. He definitely needs to end this interaction. 

"No?" 

...

Daeran is in no way equipped to handle this interaction. 

Well, when in doubt, he can always default to being horrible to people until they go away. 

"Fuck off." 

"What does fuck mean?" 

...Well. 

If he teaches her lots of swear words, even if it doesn't drive her away, it will at least mean that whoever brought her here won't do it again, whether it's oh-so-holy Terendelev or not. 

Lucette listens to this vocabulary lesson attentively. 

"None of those words seem to mean anything very interesting," she concludes.

"Grownups think fucking is pretty interesting. Your parents probably fuck all the time." 

(He has not given up on trying to drive her away by being a horrible little shit.) 

"I think they're probably too busy fighting demons." 

"I dunno, we haven't beat the demons yet, have we? I bet if your--" he still doesn't know what parent-related word to use to refer to Terendelev "--parents," it's not like the other one isn't supposed to also be a pretty powerful caster, it's probably fine, "really tried, instead of screwing all the time, the crusade would be over by now." 

That...sounds wrong...but Lucette is not actually sure how to articulate her objection. 

She's not gonna unhug though. 

Daeran more or less resigns himself to grumpily experiencing hugs until she goes away. 

If being hugged actually does feel really good once he stops overthinking it, well--if he doesn't say so out loud then it doesn't count. 

Eventually Lucette's Mama does come to collect her ebullient spawn. 

She can't help but smile when she comes into the room and observes her daughter snuggling the young and cranky Count. 

"Lucette, love, time to go." 

Awww. On the other hand: Mama! 

Lucette reluctantly unhugs from Daeran and then launches herself flappily at her mother. 

Oof. Lucette is objectively too big for Lavinia to be doing this, but--she didn't get to hold her enough when she was smaller. So. Objectivity be damned. 

Daeran's response to all of this is to close his eyes and roll over. He does not perceive it. He cannot perceive it. He does not, remotely, have the cope to perceive it. He just does not have the energy to deal with the screaming abyss in his heart where his own mother is supposed to be, right now. 

This whole thing was exhausting, but now it's over, and it definitely isn't going to happen again. 

Well, this is sort of correct, in the sense that she doesn't show up again until a week later, when he has, reluctantly, actually left his bed. 

Yeah he sort of regrets that decision when he sees her. 

"What are you doing here again?" 

Did she just not tell her parents about what a horrible little shit he was? ...Because that's actually a really reasonable course of action, if you learn a lot of naughty words, is to not tell your parents about it, drat. 

"Everyone I asked said they went away when you told them to. So I thought you were probably lonely." 

"I'm not lonely!" he immediately lies. 

Instead of in any way engaging with this extremely dubious pronouncement, Lucette hugs him again. This time she can use her wings properly. It's difficult to properly winghug someone who isn't cooperating when they're already lying down. 

"Why are you like this." 

"Like what?"

He gestures vaguely as best he can with his arm mostly hug-pinned. "Normal people don't do the things you're doing." Not that being normal is desirable, but--he's so confused by her.

"...I'm not normal," she says, in the confused tone of someone explaining that the sky is blue to a five-year-old who has proclaimed that it is green because it is made of broccoli, "I'm a half-dragon. Practically nobody is half dragon. People are either dragons or they're not dragons, almost all the time." 

"You're half silver dragon. Silver dragons are the paladins of dragons, and paladins are no fun at all, so that doesn't explain anything." 

She perks up. "You think I'm fun?"

HE HAS MADE A TACTICAL ERROR. 

"I mean--I guess," he flounders. "You're not--I mean, you don't behave differently from a normal person in boring, paladiny ways." 

"I don't think my mummy is boring. Or paladins."

FINALLY he knows which one is Terendelev. 

"What paladins have you met?"

"Well...I've seen some paladins that were working with Mummy and Mama at the time...they weren't very interesting I guess but that's because they were very busy crusading and didn't have time. And I met Irabeth Tirabade of the Eagle Watch one time when she was talking with Mummy about cultists. She was nice! She gave me a piece of candy. And I saw the Queen one time! I don't know if that counts as meeting her, though, she was pretty far away." 

"The Queen is my cousin." And the only family he has left. He's pretty sure he's the only family she has left, too. 

Why hasn't she come to see him?

"She's your cousin and you think she's boring?" 

"She doesn't count. She's special." Maybe she can save him from thehorriblething. 

"That makes sense! I bet you've met her lots of times, if you're family." 

Awkward shrug. "I don't know about lots of times. But--that was before. She's--the only adult relative I have left--" ow ow ow "--that means she has to come see me, right?" 

"I think so. ...I'm really really sorry about your mom." 

He had expected that if she said it it would feel like it had when everyone else said it. 

It doesn't. It feels--different, somehow, and he doesn't understand why--her being sorry still isn't going to bring her back--it's not like she understands, even, she still has two mothers who are still alive--

But it feels different. 

He crumples, slowly, and starts to cry. 

She follows him down to the floor, still hugging him. She rocks slightly, and strokes his hair, because that is what Mama does when Lucette starts crying when Mama is home. 

...He appears to be hugging her back and actively crying on her. That's probably not great, but, like, also a problem for Future Daeran. 

Cuddle cuddle cuddle. 

Eventually he runs out of tears, and a little while after that he runs out of emotions intense enough to stop him from thinking clearly, at which point he is Future Daeran whose Problem this is. 

...Probably the safe smart thing to do is to tell her to go away again, but she didn't listen to him about that even before he broke down on her crying, so...maybe not? 

He's so tired. He's been so tired ever since it happened. 

He can't take down all his walls around her. That's fucking terrifying She would immediately get killed by thehorriblething. But...maybe they can be on hugging terms, for now. 

Maybe he can admit, to himself, that he likes her she's fun. 

Maybe he should feel a little bit guilty about trying to get her in trouble with her parents Nope, nope, absolutely not, stuffing that thought back in the repression drawer before he has to notice he had it. 

"Infernal doesn't have naughty words," Lucette says after Daeran has stopped crying for several minutes, "because devils are very strange, but it has words that mortals mostly only use if they would want to say naughty words if they were speaking a normal language, do you want to know what they are?" 

"...What?"

(He has, apparently, still not calibrated his expectations for weird enough when it comes to her.)

"I told Mama what you told me about naughty words, and she said you were wrong about how much sex she and Mummy have but you were probably saying it because you were mad that the demons hadn't been beat back before they could" she waves a hand, cognizant that explicitly describing the events at Heaven's Edge would be a bad idea, "and that that was pretty reasonable of you to be mad about. And she said if you liked naughty words I should bring some back to share, so she told me about Infernal." 

How the fuck did Lucette's Mama get a silver dragon to marry her. 

Yeah Lucette comes by being a Complete Weirdo honestly <3

"...So, what are the words?" 

Lucette tells him the words! And their definitions. 

Wow what the fuck normal languages do not have single words for this shit. No wonder they tend to be used as swear words. Amazing. 

Now that Daeran has proven himself not to be an immovable object against the unstoppable force of Lucette's affectionate gregariousness, she visits more often. Not every day--not that she wouldn't be tempted, but she has lessons and so on--but certainly more often than once a week. 

A few months later, she finds him hiding in his room again. 

...Hm. 

Lucette has to pick the lock to get into his room again. That hasn't happened since her first visit. 

He isn't lying under the blankets, this time. He's sat up against the head of the bed, hugging his knees to his chest, looking more anxious than depressed. 

Well, that'll make it easier to hug him properly. 

"What's wrong?" 

"Nothing." 

...She pulls back just far enough that he can see the deeply skeptical look she's giving him.

Huff. "Nothing important." 

"You can lie to me if you wanna but if you want me to believe you you'll have to get better at it." 

...Soft snort. 

Sigh. 

"It's been four months and my cousin hasn't come to see me." 

"Oh." 

Snuggle. 

Lucette's parents have never gone as long as a month without seeing her, but...there have been months where the only time she saw them was when one or the other one had a couple of spell slots going spare before going to sleep, and stayed just long enough to tuck her in and tell her a bedtime story. 

Queen Galfrey is a very, very impressive paladin, but: paladins don't get teleports. 

"I'll ask Mama about it." Probably Mama isn't usually fighting in the same place as Queen Galfrey, but she might ever be, and she can certainly take a passenger when she teleports. Lucette is okay with seeing her Mama just a little bit less, if it means Daeran gets to see the only family he has left, ever. 

(She's asking specifically Mama and not Mummy because Terendelev repeatedly being off the battlefield at the same time as Queen Galfrey is proooobably a worse idea than Lavinia Wex being off the battlefield at the same time as Queen Galfrey.)

"I don't want my cousin to think I'm a whiny baby!" 

"But you do want her to come see you." 

"...Yeah." 

"Mama will know what to do. She's smart." 

...Well, he's now shifted from feeling bad because he wants his only living relative to care about him enough to show up to feeling bad because he really really misses his mom. Does that help? 

Well help is a pretty subjective thing, here, but it turns it from a problem to maybe try to solve to a problem to just be hugged about. So. You know. 

"Mama, the Queen hasn't come to see Daeran at all," she says, the next time her Mama is home. 

"...Sorry, what?" 

"They're cousins, and he doesn't have any other family left, and I don't think she does either, and she hasn't come visit him like you do with me! At all!" 

Lavinia's heart twinges, as it always does, at the reminder that the time she spends with her much-beloved child can only be considered a visit and not her life. 

"Sweetheart," she murmurs, "it took--time, for your Mummy and I to figure out how we were, going to balance fighting the war against having you. And we had that time--we had as much time as we needed, before we went ahead and made you. Queen Galfrey hasn't had that time--Daeran lost everything with no warning--she...didn't make the decision, to bring him into her life. It's not the same thing at all." 

"It's been months! Maybe she hasn't had as much time as you did, but she's had time, and he's hurting, and he needs her!" 

"The world needs her, dearest." 

"I'm not saying she should quit crusading. And I know paladins don't get teleports. But--" she swallows. "You're stationed where she is, sometimes, right? And you can take passengers when you teleport. You... you don't have to come home every time you can. You could bring her to visit him. It would just be a few minutes." 

Oh. 

Oh, her poor, brave, compassionate girl. 

Lavinia scoops her up into a tight snuggle. 

"We'll see. I'll talk to her." She is not going to make any promises for soooooo many reasons.

"Don't tell her I said he was lonely and hurting. He doesn't want her to think he's a crybaby." 

"Anyone would be lonely and hurting after what happened to him." 

"Well, don't tell her he's lonely and hurting about her." 

"Very well." 

...Lavinia isn't going to admit to how relieved she is that she doesn't have the opportunity to speak to Queen Galfrey immediately. If she were relieved, that would be like shirking, and she doesn't want to shirk something her daughter asked her to do. 

It's just--

--the Queen has so much on her plate already. Lavinia hates to add something more to it, even the delightful task of caring for a child. And it might not be so delightful, when not freely chosen... 

...But the opportunity does, ultimately, come. 

"Your Majesty," she says, bowing. 

"Lavinia Wex," the Queen smiles at her. "You know, I don't think we've really had the opportunity to speak privately before. Your record on the battlefield is quite impressive." 

Haha Lavinia is the worst. :)))

"I'm flattered that you have any idea how I've been doing," she says honestly. 

"Nonsense. How could I possibly fail to notice the woman who so impressed Terendelev?" 

"Right. Speaking of that--" Lavinia's own Splendor is not nearly up to the standard set by the Queen's, or by her own Cunning; it's probably best to just rip off the bandage. "After that horrible tragedy at Heaven's Edge, our daughter decided to take it upon herself to befriend the young Count, and she mentioned that--that he was the only relative you had left. I--hadn't been aware that you were related to Countess Arendae, when the event occurred; you have my condolences. Anyway. I--sometimes, when I have the spell slots going spare at the end of the day, which doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I Teleport home to my daughter to see her for a little while, and then Teleport back before sleeping to regain spells. If--that was something you wanted to do. I know how much of yourself you pour into the war," she adds hurriedly, "you deserve--something for yourself." 

I know how much of yourself you pour into the war,

No You Bloody Well Don't. 

You have a wife and child. You have living loved ones. You have a life. You're not even forty. You cannot begin to imagine what I have put into this war. Not just the Fourth Crusade, every moment since the fucking Arch-Traitor of Humanity split the world asunder. 

You don't know anything. 

...But the offer was kindly intended. Galfrey smiles gently at the song-sorceress. "Thank you for the offer. But I have my own resources. Don't let me keep you from your daughter." 

"--Alright. Sorry to bother you." 

"Not at all. Give Terendelev my regards." 

"Will do," she says, and leaves. 

...She probably should go see the kid, at least once. He is her only living relative, at least as far as anybody knows, and while she certainly has no expectation of being allowed to intention of dying, for it to be relevant that that makes him her heir presumptive, it will give him political clout when he's older, beside his own title, already come into. If Terendelev's daughter has decided to befriend him, that won't lessen his influence. She's good at making people like her, not just feel the kind of awe that keeps soldiers from routing on a battlefield. Usually she uses that when the politics of the nation have become tangled enough that she needs to personally detangle them, but she can use it on a grieving child. 

She has never, not since the Fourth Crusade started, had spare charges on her Boots of Teleportation left unused at the end of the day. It will wait until she's in Nerosyan on other business. 

The young Count Arendae receives notice, a week in advance, that his cousin is going to visit. He's--nervous. He's nervous. He wanted this, and it's not that he's stopped wanting this, or anything, but--

He wants her to like him. What does he do about that? He'll be clean and dressed nicely, obviously, but that's just what's expected, he doesn't know--

"I promise not to tell her how many naughty words you know." 

"You're not even going to be there." 

"So it's an easy promise!" 

Snort. 

"I don't know anything about her except--what everybody knows. That she's--amazing, powerful, Iomedae's favored, that Mendev would have fallen ages ago without her--we weren't close before, I don't know anything about what she likes--" 

"You're not gonna get to know her by magic." There might be magic for that but Daeran doesn't have it and neither does Lucette. "If you don't know, then ask her!" 

"But if I don't know before I meet her then I can't plan on how to meet her based on it." 

"I think she ought to like you for who you are." 

"That's easy for you to say, you already do." 

"So be nice and don't make her pick any locks if she wants to like you. I'm not mad about that or anything but if you want to make it easier for her to like you than you made it for me, it doesn't seem hard." 

Snort. "I can be much worse than that when I have time to be creative." 

"Well, don't," Lucette says, and picks up a pillow and bops him with it. 

Having a pillow fight sounds like an excellent way to distract himself from the stress of anticipating a deeply important social interaction. 

Lucette is much much stronger than him but that matters much less in a pillow fight than it would in any kind of real fight where the object is to "win" and not to just make sure lots of pillow impacts happen. 

The day of, Daeran is VERY VERY NERVOUS. He's dressed as nicely as possible--not in the clothes he likes best, but in the ones that are the most Socially Appropriate, everything neatened and smoothed as far as possible. He has a box of candies to give her. He has no idea what candy she likes best but everyone likes candy, right, so it's an assortment box. 

He isn't fidgeting. Fidgeting might mess something up or just look unimpressive on its own or something. 

It's obvious that the child is nervous. Galfrey's Sense Motive is nowhere near as superhuman as her Splendor, but she's not blind. 

She approaches him slowly enough not to spook him, but not so slowly that it will wind his anxiety up further, and smiles gently at him and puts her hand on his head. 

"Hello, Daeran." 

Gulp. “Hi. —I mean, hello.”

"I'm sorry it took so long for me to come." That one is just straight-up a lie but Galfrey has not, actually, sworn any oaths not to lie; it's something Iomedae is supposed to have done, but Iomedae as a mortal was better than Queen Galfrey is now in many, many ways. "You have lost much to the demonic forces of our enemies." That one is true, but it rings hollow against everything else lost in the war. 

He nods, looking down. 

(When most people offered their condolences on his mother's death, he felt--angry, scornful; he knew they didn't mean it, not in the way it needed to be meant. When Lucette told him that, it felt--not like she felt his pain, maybe, but like she was a safe shoulder to cry on. 

When Queen Galfrey says it, it feels like a third thing, and he doesn't know what it is yet.)

Galfrey kneels, to bring herself down to his eye level (this also often works with halflings) and places her still-gauntleted hands on his shoulders. 

"Listen to me," she says gently. "I know you must miss your mother very much. I know it hurts. But your mother was very brave. Sacrificing her own life, to prevent the plague from spreading, I can only hope that everyone in Mendev would make that choice, in her place." Of course she's seen enough to know that most people wouldn't, in Mendev or elsewhere, but pointing that out except in the most clinical terms in closed-door strategy sessions has never improved any situation ever. 

Daeran goes still. 

Goes blank. 

Of course. Of fucking course. Because it's always about the crusade, always about everyone else--

If Mother had called for help he would have her, and he's supposed to--he thought--

Queen Galfrey is a paladin but she's his cousin, his mother's cousin, how can she not have valued Mother enough to not just go, oh well, at least other people are alive--

She was supposed to be special. She was supposed to understand. She was supposed to love him. 

Part of him wants to rip himself away from her and scream. He doesn't. He just stands still. 

The kid is...having too many emotions? Galfrey thinks? People usually don't freeze up in front of her but sometimes when they do it's because there's something they don't want to do in front of her, like break down crying or swear or something. 

She's going to pat him gently on the head and leave. She will ask someone to assign a junior clerk to keep a close enough track of him that if showing up again seems advised she can do that. 

(A small flicker of sympathy stirs in her heart; he's only a kid, and he's just lost his entire world for the first time. He's much younger than she was, the first time it happened to her.)

(This small flicker is all her heart can afford to spare for him, after as many times as it's happened to her by now.) 

Lucette wasn't going to be there, obviously, when Daeran met with his cousin the queen. 

But she's excited for him, and he might want to talk about it, so when she's confirmed that the Queen has been and gone and is doing other things now, she shows up. 

He's in his room with the door locked again. This time there are noises from the other side. 

Con...cer...ning? 

He hasn't had his locks changed or anything, any of the times she's done this; by now she knows how to open his lock pretty efficiently. 

Fortunately for her, the probably-expensive breakable object that Daeran is currently in the process of flinging while screaming was aimed against one of the side walls, and not at the door. 

He stops when he sees her, his eyes red-rimmed, his face twisted into a scowl. 

"What," he bites out. 

Oh no. 

"What happened?" 

He snarls, picks up a pillow and tears it in half. 

Okay. 

Well. 

Lucette is going to hug him from behind. 

"What are you doing." 

"I am hugging you. But you can still throw stuff or whatever." 

"...Why do you want me to still be able to throw stuff?" 

"Well, I'm not making it so you can throw stuff, I'm just not stopping you from throwing stuff. Why would I stop you from doing something when I don't even know why?" 

"I'm breaking all this stuff." 

"Well, it's your stuff. I figure you probably have a good reason." 

"Why would you figure that?"

"Well, it's your stuff? So you probably don't want it broken? So you must want something else more than you want your stuff not to be broken." 

"I want my mother back." 

"...I...don't...think breaking your stuff is going to achieve that." 

"No. It's not." 

He hugs himself, hands coming down on her wrists. 

"So why're you doing it?" 

"Because my cousin is the worst." 

"That's...surprising?" 

"She was supposed to care about me! But she doesn't care about anything except her stupid crusades!" 

"My parents leave to go on crusade all the time. But they still care about me." 

"They come back, on purpose, they don't show up once after being nagged into it and immediately tell you that the worst thing that ever happened to you was a good thing." 

"Huh?" 

"She said--she said my mother was right not to call for help." 

"I don't understand, why didn't she call for help?" 

"The--the demons brought a disease. A magic disease. Mother said--that if she called for help, for a more powerful cleric, then--the disease might get out, and, and other people could get infected. So she wouldn't, even though she was dying--" 

Oh no he's crying too hard to talk. 

"And the Queen...said it was good, that your mother...chose protecting other people over her own life." 

Nod nod. 

...Well on the one hand Lucette can see why Queen Galfrey would feel that way. She's the queen of everyone in Mendev, not just Daeran and his family. 

On the other hand...

Lucette...if one of Lucette's mothers just never came home again, because they had fallen against the demons...

It wouldn't be totally out of nowhere. It's not like she's not aware that what they do is dangerous; it's not like she never tosses and turns at night because she's scared for them.

But if she did lose one of them, and someone told her how noble it was that she had laid down her life for the crusade...she would know it was true. 

But it would still hurt. 

(I don't want my mother to be a hero, I want her to be here was a thought that Lucette had had while crying herself to sleep more than once, and her mothers aren't dead.)

And Daeran's mother wasn't a crusader, hadn't made that choice when not pushed to extremis, and hadn't spent his whole life preparing himself for that blow that would hopefully never come. 

Lucette remembers something her Mama had said to her, once. Just because it's true doesn't mean you should say it. 

And, actually, it sort of isn't true? Like--yes, lots of people dying is worse than one person dying. But one person dying is still bad, especially when it's your mother; saying it like it's a good thing is--it isn't right; the words might technically be true but if you looked at a beautiful statue and said "it's very pretty" with your voice dripping with derision, it would be true that the statue was pretty but that didn't mean the thing you said was right, and this isn't right in the same way that wouldn't be right. 

"I'm sorry," she says. "You deserved better." 

"I don't deserve anything." 

...Whoops. Shouldn't have let that slip out. Like, it's not wrong, but it's not wrong because of thehorriblething, and he can't let on about that. 

"...What does that even mean?" Lucette asks, totally distracted from any deep dark secrets Daeran might be hiding by sheer confusion over what it would even mean for people not to deserve good things. 

"I don't know," Daeran lies, "just--it doesn't have anything to do with who I am, that she should have loved me. She just--should have." 

"What does who you are have to do with deserving anything?" 

...Well now they're even, they've both totally confused each other once this conversation. "What does deserving mean, if it doesn't have anything to do with who you are?" 

"Well there's...there's two parts of it. The first one is, is the thing where people should have nice things? Like--it's bad if your mom dies, and it'd be bad if my moms died, and it'd be bad if, if, you were at the thing for Ascension Day in Arodus, right?" 

It takes him a minute to remember. "Yeah?" 

"You remember that kid who kicked three kids littler'n us and then spilled a whole thing of wine all over himself?" 

"...Yeah?" The wine thing had been hilarious. 

"Well it'd be bad if his mom was dead, too, it's not just 'cause we're better than him that we don't deserve dead moms, nobody does." 

"You think we're better than him?" 

"Would you kick someone that size?" 

"Maybe a halfling or gnome our age, if I had a reason to. Oh, or quasits are supposed to be really small, I'd kick a quasit." 

Snort. "You know what I mean." 

"Okay, so what's the other part of deserving things?" 

"The other part is consequences! Like--if someone digs a big hole in the ground, and someone is going to fall into it, then the person who dug it deserves to be the one who falls in, because it's his fault there's a hole there. Or if you decide to be a demon cultist you deserve to get killed by crusaders. Like, it would be better if nobody fell in the hole or the cultist realized he was being dumb and bad and quit, 'cause of point one, but like, if someone is going to fall in the hole or meet Prelate Hulrun, it should be the person who actually did the thing." 

Snort. "Not a fan of the Prelate?" Daeran doesn't know that much about the man, but what little he does know suggests that this is a positive quality of Lucette's. 

Lucette wrinkles her nose. "One time Mama accidentally left out some documents about the Third Crusade long enough that I could find and read them." 

"...What happened?" 

"Hulrun burned a lot of people to death for being demon cultists, and a lot of them weren't demon cultists, plus even if he had to kill people he should've done it in a way that hurts less than burning." 

"...Huh." 

Daeran feels slightly unsettled by this answer. He had been expecting something more--dry, boring, paladin-y, something that was just a natural consequence of wanting to fight demons instead of having dessert every night, not something--like that. 

"So he's bad and demon cultists who are going to get killed should throw themselves on Mummy's claws instead but if he's going to burn someone, it's still better if the person is actually a demon cultist."

"I guess."

Daeran contemplates this.

"My cousin is still the worst." 

"I'm sorry that happened." Hug hug hug. 

Daeran isn't sure what to say to that. Isn't sure that it's the kind of thing that needs a response. 

But one thing that sticks with him is...

He isn't alone. Not totally. His cousin doesn't care about him, but--Lucette does. It's not the same thing, it doesn't make it okay, Lucette is for one thing not a grownup capable of taking care of him, but--

He is not without anyone in the world who actually cares about him. Which is not nothing. 

(And if Lucette is definitely not going to be able to deal with thehorriblething, well, it was a long shot that even the Queen would be able to.)

Lucette is thirteen, when the Fourth Crusade ends. 

It's...sort of a victory. It's certainly more of a victory than the end of the Third Crusade was. But everyone* is so worn down, so exhausted, that it...doesn't feel entirely like a victory. Certainly there are no parades or grand speeches--not in Kenabres, anyway, and it's...safe to live there, now. 

There is something distinctly uncomfortable, about living with your parents full-time, for the first time, at the age of thirteen. There is a part of Lucette that resents it, but--the resentment isn't aimed anywhere. Where would she put it? Her parents didn't choose when the Crusade would end. She could say that at this point they may as well just not bother, but--she can't, quite; she does love them, and she knows they wouldn't have put this off so long if they had any other choice. It's not just a theoretical knowledge; Mama tries to hide the hurt, the flinch reaction every time Lucette's ever casually referred to how much time they spend apart--if she told Mama not to bother being around for her teenagerhood more than she had been when she was a child, she thinks it would just about break Mama, and that would be--worse. Than lots of things, not just the very slight smothered feeling she has right now. 

She could try to point that resentment at the demons, but it just gets...lost, in all the other things there are to be angry with them about. At least she still has them. At least they're both strong enough to have made it through all their battles physically unscathed, or rather anti-scathed--repaired, where uninjured wasn't an option. It isn't only her best friend's grief that she has to compare to; Kenabres has a lot of veterans, and a lot of people who have lost someone who'd count as a veteran if they'd come back, which they never did. 

*who is still alive

Daeran is sixteen, and Lucette fourteen, when he starts openly consorting with prostitutes. 

It's not as if he's ever been all that interested in keeping his public image clean; not since returning to living in Kenabres most of the time, anyway. What he does when outside the city is less available to the gossip mills. But he's been butting heads with Hulrun ever since meeting the man, and there are any number of deeply disreputable ways to piss off the Prelate. 

This one, however, is new. To him, anyway; it's often called the oldest profession in the world. 

And one afternoon, staggering home after a night of debauchery, he finds Lucette in his bed. 

This isn't particularly suggestive; she's been showing up in his room, here or in Nerosyan, since she was nine. She's fully clothed, only her shoes kicked off, and absorbed in a book until the door creaks open to let him in. 

She looks up at him calmly. 

...Well. 

This was always going to happen eventually. 

He's not actually sure how she's going to respond. For all their years of friendship, there are ways she could react that would be--not good. Definitely on her part and not his. 

"Is it interesting?" 

"...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?" 

Skeptically: "And what do you propose to do about it?" 

"Well--you said he's not a good influence. But I can be." 

Flatly: "He's older than you, and involved with things it's not a good idea for a girl like you to witness, let alone be a part of." 

She feigns mild shock. "I don't hang around while he's doing things, Prelate!" 

Grimly: "Even so." 

Hhhhhhhhh what does he even think he's going to accomplish with this conversation. 

"I understand, Prelate. I'll heed your wisdom." 

"See that you do." 

What a deeply unpleasant man. 

It's so tempting to let her face drop into the derisive expression she wants to make and stick her tongue out at him as soon as his back is turned, but they are in public and Hulrun is not a complete incompetent in terms of gathering information; he would absolutely find out about it. 

Obviously, she does not, in fact, heed his "wisdom." She does complain about it to Daeran, a few days later. 

That's hilarious. Like, Daeran is also sympathetic, but that's hilarious. 

That's fair but also she is going to stick her tongue out at him about it. 

"By the way, I heard tell of a boar in the forest that was causing some trouble..." 

"Your sense of humor hasn't improved since you were twelve. Let's do it."

Prelate Hulrun decides to confront her about it, because of course he does. 

"You went out to kill a boar with Count Arendae." 

Oh boy.

"...Yes? The boar was causing problems. He offered to help deal with it. I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth..." 

Hulrun grimaces. "I don't think his motives for doing so were particularly pure." 

"Well--that's possible, but impure motives cause fewer problems than boars that wander too close to human settlements." 

Hulrun hmphs skeptically. "It's still not a good idea for you to spend so much time with him." 

She is seriously considering suggesting to Daeran that he find some non-magical itching powder and spiriting it into Hulrun's clothes. Not, like, very seriously, but some. 

"I don't know if I can avoid it, Prelate, if the alternative is letting his spells go entirely to waste instead of only mostly," she murmurs with faked regret, spreading her hands helplessly. 

"If you can't," he says flatly, "then I may have to ask your mother to assist you." 

Flames flare up Lucette's face, overtaking her ears and eyes, leaving her unable to process any audiovisual input over the crackling of her own rage. 

How dare he. How dare this terrible burning-people-alive man involve her parents in this--threatening to twist them against her best friend--

She wants to make a list of every person he's ever needlessly killed, every cultist who was burned over the course of minutes instead of quickly and cleanly done in with a sword, and rub his nose in it like a misbehaving little puppy. 

Hulrun Shappok is the greatest counter-argument to Iomedae being a goddess worth worshipping that Lucette has ever encountered. 

"Prelate, I appreciate your concern." This is a bigger lie than she usually tells him, but whatever, it's Hulrun, being honest with Hulrun is just asking for trouble. "But I don't mean that I think I should avoid him and can't seem to manage it. I mean that turning Count Arendae to even small acts of Good is important, actually, and I can do it, and I don't, in fact, think it best to stop." 

"Your intentions are commendable, but you are in over your head. Consorting with evil is rarely as good an idea as it looks, when it manages to look like a good idea at all, and if it ever needs to happen," which he is not convinced of, "it is better left to adults. I will speak with your parents if you continue to insist on shaming them with your associations." 

"I understand, Prelate, thank you for your guidance." 

And then she goes home. She had had plans, for that outing, but now she is not capable of fulfilling them right now. 

Lucette is not a member of a class that has berserking abilities. You would not necessarily be able to infer this from the state of the straw dummy she was using, after she was through with it. 

"What's wrong?" 

...Lucette hadn't actually noticed her Mama approaching. This practice courtyard isn't visible from the street, but it wouldn't have been hard for someone else in the house to realize what was happening. 

She sighs. 

"Prelate Hulrun disapproves of my friendship with Daeran." 

"...And?"

"And he threatened to have words, with Mum and possibly also you, if I don't cut him off." 

Sigh. 

"I'll talk to your Mum before he does, if it comes to that." 

"I...don't think it will. But..." shrug. "He's just. So." 

"Haven't the two of you been provoking him on purpose?"

"He doesn't know I'm in on it!" 

"Of course not. But you can't expect him to not do anything at all, even just anything you personally object to, after Daeran leaves a severed monster penis on his desk. Again." 

...Okay that will get some giggles out of Lucette. 

"If he were sensible, he would care more about the dead monster than about the obnoxious aftermath. It's not like it was still bloody and messed up his papers." 

"If you're making plans based on Hulrun being sensible, may I suggest that you stop?"

Lucette wrinkles her face up. "Uuuuuuuuuugh." 

"Yes, dear. That's not surprising." 

"If I gain the magical ability to turn into a cat I will leave rotting mackerel in his shoes." 

"If I hear that he found rotting mackerel in his shoes I will suspect that you and a cat were involved, but that's not really relevant." 

Eyeroll. "Yes, Mama." 

The next day there is a pretty brunette making herself at home in Count Arendae's bedroom, reading a book. 

...This gives Daeran pause for only a moment. It's not as though he were unaware that Lucette had Disguise Self. 

"Dressed up for anyone in particular?"

She looks up from her book and rolls her eyes. 

"The Prelate threatened to involve my Mum if I didn't quit hanging out with you. Which I don't think would go the way he wants, but I'm not quite ready yet to give up the advantage of not being openly in conflict with him yet." 

"How mildly irritating of him." 

"Mhm. Just think, though, if we're not publicly friends anymore, we could get into the most amazing fights in public."

"And what fights do you want to get into, exactly?" 

She twists a lock of hair around her finger. "Well, we'll have to script them in advance, because I very much don't want to risk accidentally saying something genuinely hurtful to one another, but I was thinking..." 

It doesn't take Lucette long to discover additional benefits to Hulrun's ultimatum than an additional opportunity to cause mischief for him. 

When Lucette walks the streets with her own face, everyone notices her. When she does something in public, everyone sees Terendelev's Daughter doing it, and while that isn't necessarily important, if it's something nobody cares if she does, there's still a weight to being watched all the time. 

Lucette didn't think much of it. She was unique and highly visible, and had been all her life. 

But walking the streets in a variety of strange faces, she's anonymous. Kenabres is large enough, and--possibly more importantly--sufficiently filled with people passing through on the way to fight at the Worldwound, that nobody looks twice at a strange face. She can go anywhere or do anything, and not only will people not find her actions worth mentioning to anyone who'll find them worth mentioning to the Prelate, they won't even notice unless she does something especially odd or makes her false face too pretty. 

...The latter caveat is relevant, sometimes. Lucette is, if she has to admit it, a vainer creature than she endorses. 

She uses these faces to visit Daeran, of course; that was the original point of them. But she also uses them for other things. Walking the streets of Kenabres as an anonymous stranger is different from walking them as Terendelev's Daughter. 

There's a homeless elf girl she stops and talks to sometimes. Calls herself Ember, probably relatedly has some really concerning burn scars. 

...Lucette hopes that those scars came from, like, a brimorak or a burning building, and not the obvious. She would really prefer it if Hulrun weren't prepared to sink so low as to hurt children. But--she's seen the records. She's not optimistic. 

Lucette sees a lot, walking around as an ordinary person. An ordinary, curious person, fond of poking her nose where it doesn't belong and confident that she can evade social consequences for nosiness by discarding the guise she's currently wearing and adopting another. 

Sometimes she finds crime, that way. She doesn't usually report it--she does not want the criminals of the city to have a vested interest in finding out about her Disguise Self habits--but she often rectifies it, when possible, intervening in fights and catching pickpockets. It doesn't happen often enough that she thinks anybody is going to see a pattern and object to it, not like they would if she had these people sent to the Condemned. 

Sometimes she finds demon cultists. They're less common than the criminals, and better at hiding it on average. But any average is going to have outliers, and Lucette is very nosy. 

If she becomes very, very sure someone is a cultist, she reports them anonymously to Hulrun. She doesn't like him, and nobody deserves to be subjected to him, but demon cultists are a very real and very bad problem. 

(And maybe if people give him enough real ones to chew on he's less likely to gnaw on the bones of the innocent.)

...Unfortunately, trailing cultists is just a liiiiiittle bit more dangerous than stopping a few petty criminals. 

The situation could be a lot worse. The--she thinks cleric, of Baphomet, is strong enough that the harmless civilian she was pretending to be would have been completely fucked, but not strong enough to prepare True Seeing, which means he has no idea who she actually is. 

It could also be better! She isn't carrying any actual weapons. Which--she does have her claws--but she would prefer a nice sword. Preferably a cold iron one. Probably her claws and her strength will be enough to dispatch the cultist once she actually gets to him, but through a series of mishaps, they've ended up in a more-or-less stalemate where the cultist is barricaded behind an overturned table and Lucette can't go deal with him because she is surrounded by summoned quasits. 

This is probably not going to kill her but it is deeply annoying. 

She has clawed two of them to--well, not death, actually, but desummoning--already, but it's taking too long and all the others are still getting in hits. 

In frustration, she grabs a knife off the floor and stabs one of the quasits with it. This is not really efficient but oh well. 

...Well, it shouldn't be very efficient, but she gets a lucky hit, and it passes through the quasit's flesh like butter. Or, well, not butter, but like normal flesh and not demon. As though the knife were cold iron. 

It's not. She wastes a move action staring at the knife. It's silver, shining with the exact color of her own hair and scales. 

Well. That's interesting. 

She experiments with additional fallen tableware. The silver stuff consistently works better on the quasits than non-silver objects of the same type, albeit not, generally, as well as her own hands; she knows how to use her claws, whereas awkwardly attempting to fork a quasit in the wing is just never the most efficient way to dispatch it, no matter what the substance of the fork is. 

When she's finally gotten rid of all the Fucking Quasits, breathing hard and streaked with her own blood from the various bites, she turns to the cultist, who is staring at her with fully deserved confusion. 

Well. That's fair. 

He's been surprisingly useful to her, actually, so she's going to do the kindness of breaking his neck with her own two hands instead of involving Hulrun in the affair at all. 

And then, because she would really like to investigate this silver thing, she dismisses her Disguise Self, makes up a story about how she got into this situation that involves her having looked like herself the whole time and hopefully doesn't raise too many questions about why a lot of bystanders didn't see her along the way, and presents the situation to the relevant authorities as a fait accompli. 

Lavinia would really like it if Lucette would have a SWORD on her if she is going to get into cultist-related situations!!! 

Yyyyyyeah, that's fair. 

But also, yes, science. Lavinia procures a selection of daggers in a variety of materials and she can do science with them the next time she finds a demon (which hopefully won't be very soon). 

Unfortunately, Mama is seriously underestimating Lucette's capacity to get in trouble on purpose. 

Look, hope springs eternal, okay???

Lucette has Detect Fiendish Presence and she's not afraid to use it. And, unlike the Inquisition, is capable of sneaking around places looking totally innocuous. 

...There actually aren't a whole lot of demons in Kenabres. Which is a good thing! Despite it being personally inconvenient for her! But, you know, the inquisition does do enough work weeding them out that it's nice that that's effective at its actual goal as well as the part where not everyone who dies over it was guilty. 

The next actual demon she finds is in the sewers, which she is never, ever telling Daeran she went into voluntarily, but look, she already TRIED all the places she was less than grossed out by being. Or, not all of them exactly, but enough of them that trying a more thorough search was liable to get noticed, and also she only has so much total duration of Disguise Self per day, and it's not like she's using none of them on visiting him, and she can prowl around the sewers with her own face on. 

She thinks she's under the area vaguely around the Grey Garrison when she finds the quasit. It tries to flee as soon as it sees her, which is extremely fair of it, since she is in fact planning to do some less than decent things to it. 

She does have more scruples than to pin it down and cut into it until she's satisfied with her results. She just attacks it with one cold iron dagger and one silver dagger and sees if they feel at all different. 

They don't. 

She switches the silver dagger for a different silver dagger and that one feels just the same too. 

It isn't the most scientifically rigorous testing in the world but it works, basically. 

The quasit dies and Lucette brings her results to her parents. 

Well, at least it was only one quasit, this time.