[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Time seems to slow. 

Lucien feels as if he has a choice here. He could run to Shuni himself, trade the box for the knife, and keep it out of Shuni’s hands—he’s not sure why, but he feels as if it’s dangerous for Shuni to have it right now.

Or he could divert them, and deal with the known threat: Frederik. Frederik is chasing Shuni with openly murderous intent, and is gaining on him.

There isn’t time to dwell over the pros and cons of both options. He shoves the box back into Katarin’s hand. “Give this to Shuni!” he says, and spins, tackling Frederik to the stage with a teeth-clattering impact.

They roll around there, fighting hard and fighting dirty. Frederik’s fist slams into the side of Lucien’s head, ripping his wig off and scattering pins. Lucien tries to get a grip on him and slam him back into the stage, pin him down, but Frederik’s flesh seems to slide around his touch like liquid, oozing out of his grasp, then reforming in time to slam the heel of a palm up under Lucien’s chin.

He tastes blood and slams his knee into the main part of Frederik’s surprisingly-malleable body; there’s enough of him still there that he hears the breath go out of Frederik. Lucien’s skirts tangle around his legs, and he gets an idea. The ties of the skirt can be undone with a quick yank, necessary for quick-change scenes, and he does that now, then rolls, trying to tangle Frederik in the length of cloth.

What a sight they must make, he thinks, almost hysterical. Shuni bleeding everywhere, Frederik’s flesh altering with every attempt to harm him, Katarin and Lucien both dressed as Revelle but with Lucien’s costume completely destroyed; he’s essentially just in his drawers and undershirt now, hair a mess, makeup smeared. The majority of the audience must be gone by now, between the attempted murder and the earthquake, but the Lords are still here and—the director? Where is he? He had originally said, when rehearsals were done, that he’d watch the shows, but Lucien doesn’t remember seeing him anywhere, not in the crowd, not in the wings.

It’s as if thinking about him summons him. “Stop,” the director says, firm.

There’s something in the tone that jerks Lucien away from Frederik, and likewise, makes Frederik jolt to attention. He sees that Katarin and Shuni are both staring too, and Shuni is cradling the box as he does, defensive and hunched.

The director is rising from the stage trap, as if this is a dramatic entry into an ongoing performance. He looks as he always does: dressed in black entirely from booted toe to gloved fingertips, from pant cuff to high collar. He has long black hair under a wide black hat that casts so much of his face in shadow that it is impossible to make out features, let alone color.

“Well, you’ve made a mess of things, haven’t you?” the director tells Frederik, laughter in his voice. “But that’s what I thought would happen, honestly.”

Frederik scrambles back from Lucien, and then takes to his knees, bowing low. “My lord! Let me proceed. There are two other sacrifices here. I dedicate it to you: An end and a beginning! Beauty in nothingness, in indecision! I will rise as your counterpart and suck the rest of the Lords dry to power my ascent! I declared the ritual started, and I will not let it stop now! Give me the means to kill them!”

“In indecision,” the director echoes with a sigh, and something is happening to him. The inky color of his clothing, of his hair, even of his shadow, are bleeding away. They drip down to the stage, sloughing off and leaving an oily, iridescent puddle around his feet. What’s underneath is bright and beautiful and strange.

His skin is a blueish green that glitters with all colors of the rainbow, and his hair is a spray of huge, long feathers that falls down to the floor behind him: hair and a cloak and a train all at once. On each feather is an eye that blinks and stares around the room, watching all of them at once, watching the other three Lords above. His face is human, if something so beautiful can possibly be human. Certainly, it’s more human than the obscured faces of the other Lords, but Lucien thinks that is because the concept of what a human finds beautiful is usually a matter of egocentrism. The director’s face is perfectly balanced, with proportions that every one of Lucien’s instincts are telling him are perfect. He is dressed in a suit made entirely of tiny scintillating feathers, close-cut and perfectly tailored. 

The world seems to throb as Lord Peacock, the Heartbreaker, throws off his disguise.  It hurts to look at him, an erotic ache of desire.

Fuck, Lucien thinks, feverishly. That’s why one of the booths was reserved. One of the Lords has been in this theatre the entire time.

Shuni makes a noise of pain.

“Indecision,” Lord Peacock repeats. “Really, Fred, you’re pathetic. I hope you know that. You don’t know who you are, but you still don’t want to be anyone but yourself. This is why you never even managed to get a starring role. Imagine,” he asides, to the three Lords who appear to be locked in their box seats above, “a shapeshifter ending up as someone’s understudy.”

They do not respond, if they’re even able to.

“My lord?” Frederik sounds devastated.

Lord Peacock smiles, pleased. “I just needed an actor to get things started,” he explains. “But I never wanted it to be you who would ascend. Imagine! The ego of that assumption.”

Frederik gasps for air, clawing at his chest. Lucien is afraid to move. The stage is bucking and rocking now, and he can barely stay upright. The air feels thick. There are four Lords here, and he understands now why that is the so-called legal limit. It feels as if he is coming apart under the force of it.

Still, Frederik is turning purple, seizing, dragging his hands along the ground now. “What are you doing to him?” Katarin demands, and Lucien is impressed she can speak. 

“Him? Oh, heart attack,” Lord Peacock says dismissively. “I don’t need him anymore, and I don’t want to risk him somehow succeeding. Once the ritual’s started, anyone can do it, if they make an appropriate sacrifice. But an eternity with Fred? Yikes. End can have him.”

“But then,” Lucien says, and he’s surprised to hear his own voice come out in this airless space that’s forming around them, “why get this started at all?”

Frederik lies still.

Peacock smiles, and it is beautiful, radiant. “Fred was right about one thing. It’s lonely at the top.” And then he turns, holding out his hands to Shuni, a silent plea. “Take me back, darling? Any man who’d take his own heart out after our love affair turns sour is the man for me. You deserve this. Get rid of that thing for good, and use its power to rise up.”

“But,” Shuni says, soft, emotionless.

“Don’t hesitate, don’t worry,” Peacock pleads. “Those dreams were dreams of the Lord that Fred would have become; whatever Lord you’ll be won’t be the one that he would have been. The Lords will be fine, the world will be fine! And even if it isn’t fine for all of them—who cares? We’ll be fine. We’ll be together again, forever, a perfect duo. Do it for me, my love?”

Lucien looks at Shuni, and Shuni looks back at Lucien. Shuni has the knife, and he has his heart. 

Shuni hesitates.

Lucien abruptly understands that there are several ways this can go, right now. Shuni could ascend, and permanently put on a costume that is more than just a costume, begin to play a role that is more than just a role. Lucien is not so convinced that the end won’t happen if Shuni is the one to do it rather than Frederik. Shuni’s desperate and empty too, just like the world in their dreams. What would the counterpart be for the Heartbreaker? Shuni is already heartless. What kind of Lord would he be? 

There’s Katarin to consider too. She could also ascend, if she gets there first, makes a sacrifice before Shuni has committed himself to it. Yet—she’s already said she’s not interested. She wanted to stop the ritual before it caused destruction, but Frederik is dead now—what will she do? Will she kill Shuni? Will she try to preempt him, despite not wanting to become a Lord? Will she do nothing, and see what Shuni or Lucien does?

Those are two possible outcomes. And seeing which of them happens… all it would take is for Lucien to do nothing. 

But Lucien, too, can act. He can interfere. Can ascend. Can become a Lord. It would just require a sacrifice of his humanity. 

Shuni breaks eye contact. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, guilty. He’s going to betray Lucien and do this, and Lucien thinks that Shuni, too, isn’t sure that he won’t bring about the destruction of the other Lords with it.

Lucien makes a decision.

[Please leave your suggestion for Lucien in the comments. What does he decide?
It can be among the list of things he thought about, or something else YOU think of
(but remember Katarin & Shuni might try their own things, if not addressed)

Turn in lasts until NOON EST on NOV 1 to give everyone a time to weigh in.
The conclusion will go up after that.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

So it’s the finale tonight. So the Lords might be destroyed, so the world might end— 

So what? The show must go on. Better that he focus on doing what he knows, and doing it well, Lucien decides. If he panics, he’ll endanger the performance itself, and perhaps everything will go wrong. 

If he performs well, if he has his wits about him, perhaps everything will go right.

And doing this will be a challenge, since he’s playing a new role. He makes himself a coffee and pours a generous amount of whiskey in it, sipping the beverage and feeling the sear warm his chest as he runs through Revelle’s scenes. He’s always seen them before from Arcane’s point of view, and then, at least briefly, from Logos’s—but he has to be Revelle as Revelle. What would it be like to love one man, be sought after by his brother, be striving to be her own being and not some sort of signifier to both of them?

That is what he needs to think about. He runs through the hundreds of possible scenes in his head, shifting his position. He feels sympathetic for all three of them, now that he thinks about it, even Logos. Revelle is unseen by them as who she is, Logos is struggling with his own jealousy and sense of lack compared to his brother who has everything, and Arcane simply wants everything to work out without being willing to stand for anything, because he loves everyone involved.

But the play doesn’t need to be a tragedy, not necessarily. It’s all depending on what scenes play out, how and why. So he practices them all, as best as he can in the limited time, drinking and reminding himself of all the options, and which actions would kick off each.

And then he dresses in the padding and clothing to build out Revelle, puts the wig on, and does a first pass at her makeup with a practiced hand. He doesn’t look like Katarin, he thinks, but he does look like Revelle when he’s done, and that’s enough.

There is nothing to do from there but go to the theatre, and so he does that. He cut it close enough with his preparations that there isn’t any time to talk to his costars before the show—which is just as well. Katarin isn’t present—hiding somewhere, he assumes, to step out and check the director’s office while the play’s going on. Shuni and Frederik are both there, but he doesn’t know Frederik, has spent no time bothering to really get acquainted with his spare, and he wouldn’t be able to tell Shuni that today is the finale without telling Frederik as well. And besides, it would only introduce additional anxiety to tell anyone that he’d learned it in a dream.

They’ll find out at the same time that Lucien would under normal circumstances: when the play feels ready to proceed. 

The costuming is finished, the final touches put on him to give him the last elements of resemblance to Revelle. Looking at himself in the mirror, he hardly recognizes himself, and he enjoys that, too.

And then it is time for the play to begin. Revelle doesn’t start onstage, and he spends the first part of the first scene in the wings, anxious. When he steps out, he sees the same situation as always: a living audience, with three Lords and one empty box seat above. It is Lord Crow, Lord the Endless, and the Moonlit Lord present today; they are all watching intently, with a focus that almost makes Lucien forget his lines, but he launches in anyway, going up to take Frederik-as-Arcane’s hands and gaze into his eyes as they swear their love to each other. Arcane will not fight his brother; Revelle will duel him in her own name. She does; she defeats Logos, he slinks off to plan his next move.

Act One finishes; he hopes that Katarin’s explorations are going well. Act Two proceeds through dramatic and comedic turns—he agrees with the earlier assessment; Frederik’s Arcane is not as good as his own—then moves on to Act Three. All three characters have lived so far, death avoided, the potential murder turned aside, deferred, and the pressures of their demands on each other are becoming stifling. Revelle’s love is turning to disdain. Why can she not better herself, and leave them both behind? The intermission happens, a break as they all change quickly. Lucien is grateful for the privacy of Katarin’s dressing room, but for the costumers; he’s not sure how he’s pulling this off so far.

He hopes to run into Katarin then, but—still nothing. They are running out of time, and his palms are sweating, but he hasn’t seen anything amiss either, so he can only hope she’s doing this well and that the finale goes off with no ritual. Act 4 happens, and things come to a head with the death of their father and instructions that the household should go to the first son to marry and get an heir. Revelle is betrayed, of course, by their inevitable need to put their inheritance on her. The already-high tension is running even higher.

Act 5, the final act, begins with Revelle offstage while the two brothers finally enter into an argument that will determine all their fates. Here is the moment that Lucien feels the play shift toward a finale. He is sure the others feel it as well. There is an inevitability to it. The show normally ends after the first scene of Act 5. Not this time. The audience, the Lords, the actors: all those will see who can walk away from this final confrontation

There are only a few scenes left. Lucien has barely stepped into the green room when Katarin runs in, dressed as Revelle and nearly Lucien’s double. She is in a panic, carrying a box. “Lucien,” she whispers to him. “Lucien, it’s him. It’s the Director. He set this up—he has this box, it’s got a beating human heart in it—”

Lucien’s hands go cold. He reaches for the box. “This is it. Shuni’s heart.”

“His heart? What?” Katarin lets Lucien take it. “But… the Director isn’t an actor—setting up the ritual should do nothing for him! Yet you said that the item that was stolen was done to lure Shuni to the theatre, so what else could this mean? And I’ve been trying to find where the Director is, but I can’t find him anywhere, and I don’t know what he’s doing, what he’s planning, why he’d set this up if it is him—” 

They are interrupted by screaming coming from the theatre, the audience’s building reaction to realizing something has gone wrong, is not in the play, and Katarin goes white. 

“It’s beginning,” she says, and tears out the door.

Lucien is hot on her heels, chasing after her as they run onto the stage, where they see Frederik sitting on Shuni, choking him with one hand, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest with a real knife—no stage prop here. Blood is dripping out weakly—not spraying, not without a heart to push it through him forcefully—and Shuni’s lungs don’t sound too good. But his heart isn’t in his chest, and stabbing him here at least isn’t an instant kill, though his flesh bleeds like it would anywhere else.

“Why won’t you die?!” Frederik is shouting. “He promised me I could sacrifice you in the end! A real sacrifice! I’ll undo it all, I’ll take it all away—” 

Shuni spits blood in Frederik’s face and slams a fist up after it, rocking Frederik’s face back with a solid crack of his nose. Frederik’s grip on the knife loosens, and Shuni grabs hold of it himself, pulling it out of the empty spot in his chest where his heart should be. “What the fuck,” Shuni spits. “I just want my property back.”

Shuni’s still using Logos’s voice; the effort of switching out of character requires too much focus. The audience is stampeding now that they’ve realized this isn’t part of the play, are a mass of flesh crushing each other as they flee to the exit—but the Lords are still there, or so Lucien thinks. He can hardly spare them much attention, but Lord Crow’s booth is full of an entire murder of crows flapping around in it like they’re in a hurricane; the Moonlit Lord’s booth is too brightly illuminated to see within, and Lord the Endless’ seat is just a solid, impenetrable void.

The ground has started to shake.

Lucien draws a breath. “Shuni!” he yells, holding the box up.

Shuni turns, holding the knife, clutching his bleeding chest, and he sees Lucien. His eyes go huge. “Is that—” He doesn’t finish the sentence, running across the shaking stage, stumbling, reaching to grab the box. Frederik is up a moment later, scrambling after him.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Lucien stares into the pool, trying to see something, anything, even his own reflection, but there’s nothing there, just the blackness of the pool and the lock he sees within it. The surface ripples like water, but he cannot see anything reflected in it. 

He tries again to access the lock, thrusting his hand in again, this time holding the key—holding on tight, afraid of losing it—but again, it passes through it with no sensation whatsoever, the ripple parting and then forming again, distorted.

It can never be simple, can it? He frowns down at the pool.

Then again, perhaps he’s going about this all wrong. He was able to alter things in this dream once before—by doing a performance, and dedicating it to a Lord. Lucien tries to caution himself against disappointment. Last time, it was a direct dedication to the Lord he was trying to empower, one who was right there. 

But can’t he do it again? Can’t he at least try?

He’s an actor. This is the part of him that’s the most powerful. It has to mean something.

So, what scene to do, and who to dedicate to?

Lucien makes a face at himself, because the latter question is much easier to answer than the former. He probably should do the Moonlit Lord again, since this is a dream, and he’s looking for guidance in it, but… 

Well, Lord Crow just visited him. Lord Crow gave him information, and Lucien has given very little back except a tease and a promise. Lord Crow sent him into this dream. Besides, Lord Crow’s portfolio includes thieves, and he’s already helped Lucien undo a lock. Why not this one too?

With that decided, the scene is easier to decide on as well. It’s a pool, so he should perform a scene of reflection. And the very first scene that he ever dedicated to Crow was one of those. It just seems fitting. He lost the last scene he dedicated while in the empty dream, was unable to remember it again but… the show will be over soon. He won’t be playing Arcane tonight, and cannot imagine wanting to end the play with Arcane dead regardless. So it’s fine if the scene leaves his memory after this.

He is already kneeling in front of the pool, the pose he’d need for this scene anyway. He takes a moment to focus on Arcane rather than Lucien, and draws a deep lungful of nothingness, then begins: “I cannot kill! No jealousy could lead me to harm Revelle, nor my brother Logos. I will try to make amends with them both, and if I succeed, all will be well. But if I fail, and if it means that crows will peck my flesh, then so must it be, and at least my body will do at least some good, though my heart could not.”

And here is normally where Revelle declares Arcane weak and kills him. Instead, Lucien plunges his hand, with the key in it, into the pool.

He feels coldness around his hand, something like water but not water, and then—the pool exploded outwards in spikes of black feathers. The key hits the lock, and dissolves, and he feels fear grip his heart as the metal slips through his fingers, but the lock is opening. A sacrifice, a trade. He tries to let it go and not mourn.

And then the feathers rush back in, fall into the pool with a splash, and he sees a reflection in it:

He sees himself, as Revelle, beautiful and mournful and angry. He sees Shuni as Logos as well, prideful and standing alone. And he sees… he thinks he sees Frederik as Arcane, but he has no face, just a mass of flesh in its place. Lucien almost recoils from the vision, but it pulls back to a wide shot, and he sees that the stage they are on is the face of a clock.

Twelve figures stand around them, and some are easy to identify: the glow of Sol and the Moonlit Lord, the mass of plants that is Lord Vine. Others are difficult for him to make out from above like this, and the figure at the twelve o’clock position is completely obscured, simply a shadow, as if something is blocking it from being possible to identify.

The hands are moving toward twelve. Revelle stands on the hour hand, waiting for the others to act and force her to move. Logos stands on the minute hand, jerked irrevocably closer. And Arcane stands on the second hand, hurriedly rushing towards midnight, and pulling the other hands along with it. 

It is the finale, Lucien realizes with a shock. He felt like he had more time, he was sure he had more time, but no, this performance is the finale, and they are out of time.

The camera pans up from the stage and he sees strings above it that run to both Arcane and Logos, puppeteering them. The strings loop up over a beam and down again to the hand of the obscured figure at twelve o’clock, and Lucien is staring so hard to try to figure them out that he looks back to the performers only in time to see a knife fall. He does not see who is wielding it or who it hit—only that there is so much blood. It rises to the surface of the pool, coats it in red, bubbles out of it and pours over him and— 

He wakes up gasping, alone in his own bed. The sun has set; the moon is rising, and it is evening outside. His heart is pounding, and with every pulse of blood through his veins he knows without a doubt that tonight is the last show. That they will reach the finale tonight and with it, the ritual is coming to an end.

Staring up at his ceiling, the blankets wound up in his fests, he wonders if there is anything he can do to prepare in the short time before the last performance will begin.

The play must go on.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Lucien has a key, so the logical thing to do is to use it to unlock… something. What was it that the Moonlit Lord had said? That he needed to use it to open his… inner eye? He wishes he could remember the exact words she’d said to him, but he’d been so tired at the time, so foggy.

He knows it has something to do with altering the dream, though. He takes the key and presses it first to his forehead and then, when that does nothing, to his heart. Again, nothing happens, and he feels a moment of frustration. He can understand why Shuni would rip out his heart; Lucien would do the same, if he could unlock it directly.

But he cannot, and just pressing it to his flesh is doing nothing.

It’s as if the key refuses to be used.

He tries not to let it get to him, tries not to get angry—and realizes that, even if it hasn’t unlocked anything for him, the key is serving its standard purpose of calming him. It’s always done that. When his parents had died, when he had spent those three days shut in, too young to know how to use the key, not knowing how to leave, he had still held it in his hand. He kept it in his hand when he was found while the investigators crawled all over the scene of his only family’s dead bodies like scavengers over carrion. The weight of it in his hand, the imprint of it in his tightly-clenched fist, every part of it had become his connection to a world that had suddenly lost all of its meaning, and it calmed him.

It calms him now, too, a steady weight that keeps him from falling to the usual panic of the dream, and he keeps it clutched tightly in his fist as he gets up and wanders.

Perhaps he’ll find a Lord here again. Perhaps he’ll find the culprit. Perhaps there is at least something to find, even if he cannot yet control the dream.

So he wanders. He travels the cracked and broken landscape with its empty sky, with its unbreathable air, and it seems like he’s taking an eternity to travel until—

—There. Something different, in the distance.

He starts to run, his key clenched in his hand, and almost stumbles when the thing he spotted turns out to be nearer than expected; distance is difficult to understand in a dream, and more difficult to understand in an utterly empty world like this where space doesn’t even really exist. But it’s there at his feet and he falls to his knees, staring into it:

A pool, black and deep, with a bit of gold glittering on its surface. It looks like a lock, and he feels hope for a second, as if he willed this into being. He thrusts his hand into the pool, but he feels no water there, no lock there. Nothing to interact with, nothing really here.

At a loss, he sits back on his heels and tries to decide what to do.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

[Next Day]

[Previous Day]

[Please read the Instructions before jumping in]

Impossible not to be flustered at so blatant an invitation. It’s impossible not to want him, the Carrion-Eater.  Lucien tries to breathe evenly. “If you have questions, I can try to answer—”

“I just asked them,” Lord Crow says, with another laugh.

He goes red. “Oh, I thought—that you meant you had more to ask me other than… that…”

Lord Crow beckons, fingers hooked like talons. “Come here, at least. You ask me your questions, and then let’s see if you’re willing to answer mine with your body and your desires.”

Flushed, breathing roughly, Lucien obliges. He sinks down onto the bed, then back into Crow’s arms, so he is cradled against what feels, for now, like a normal torso. It is easier if he’s not looking at Lord Crow; easier to mistakenly think of Crow as human. 

“I’ve learned there’s a ritual at play here,” he begins. “Do you know about it?”

“Oh, yes,” Lord Crow murmurs in his rough, raw voice. “We all do. We’re not able to intervene directly unless something goes wrong with it, so we’re all circling around, waiting to dart in and rend out what we can. If a single slip-up happens, if whoever is doing this exposes themselves the wrong way once, we’ll all descend on them at once. It’ll be a murder.”

“That’s why so many of you have shown up?”

Crow nods and shrugs. “I mean, it’s why I did. I can’t entirely speak for the others. Most of us don’t really talk to each other at length, you know, except if we have a counterpart. I mean, we do socialize somewhat, but it’s not as if most of us are friends.”

“A counterpart?” Lucien echoes.

“How to explain,” Crow sighs. He seems to shift somehow, lowering Lucien into his bed. Despite being on his back now, he can’t see Crow’s face in the form leaning over him, and he feels as if he’s covered in birds, circling over him, crawling, their beaks and feathers and clawed feet hopping all around him. “We’re a lonely sort of existence by nature, I suppose, and loneliness craves company. I mean, I don’t have a counterpart myself; not all of us do. But some of them ascended together, like the siblings End and Endless. Others were brought into a partnership later by one of the existent Lords, hungry for something to play off of. It’s not that a counterpart is an opposite, it’s that they share some parts and play off each other. Like, the Moonlit Lord and Lord Sol! Night and day aren’t opposites; they are different meanings for two celestial bodies that play off each other. I guess, you can say, counterparts are Lords who get more meaning by having the other around. Some are obvious. Some less so, like… oh, Lord Vine of the New Growth and Lord Angler of the Deep Blue Sea are counterparts. They’re both the places that one gets lost, full of teeming life that people can’t see or understand, teeth and poison and all that.”

Lucien has never heard of this before. He starts trying to pair off the Lords in his head. The Endless and the End, of course. Vine and Angler, apparently. Sol and Moonlit, that’s half of them. “…Lord Wolf the Hunter, and Lord Bounty of the Feast?”

“You’re getting it now,” Crow encourages, with a laugh that only sounds mocking because of what his voice is like. A beak pecks at Lucien’s throat and he tilts his head back for that. “Lord Mask the Silent Liar and Lord Shield the Defender are the last two counterparts.”

There are two lords remaining. “You and Lord Peacock are not counterparts of each other?” 

“We don’t really have anything to do with each other. The Carrion-Eater and the Heartbreaker? Sure, you could probably spin an explanation for any pair of us if you tried, but our portfolios don’t have much play off with each other. No, neither of us has a counterpart yet. We run solo. Perhaps by the time there’s fourteen of us, we’ll all be neatly paired off. Or perhaps a new Lord will break up an established pair and spread things out more. Cause a ruckus. We’ll see.”

Lucien feels like this must be important somehow, but then, it’s cosmology; of course it’s important. He shakes his head. “Or there’ll be none of you but this one new Lord.”

“Or that.”

“How can I prevent it?”

“Disrupt the ritual. Co-opt it, or kill the perpetrator, or throw them off their lines, I don’t know. If I knew, it’d be easier, right?” The next sound is either a sigh or just the rustle of feathers. “I’m not omniscient.”

More’s the shame. He hesitates on his next question, then pushes forward. “Shuni says you refused to help him. But I don’t know why. I’m trying to find his heart. Can you help me with that?”

Lord Crow makes a disgruntled noise, and the blinding sense of feathers everywhere withdraws. Lucien draws a deep breath in their absence, and sees the rough shape of a man leaning over him, a raven’s head where a man’s face should be. “Honestly, I find his situation sort of boring. Anyone who responds to problems by taking his own heart out just isn’t my jam, you know? It’s nice and all that you’re trying to help him, but if he didn’t want to risk losing it entirely, he should have kept it in his chest. That’s where it’s supposed to be.”

It’s clear that he won’t get any farther here. He draws a deep slow breath. “One more question.”

“What is it?” Crow seems almost sulky now.

“Did you see how nicely I dressed up for you? For the role switch? I wanted to make myself a night sky for you to fly under. I wanted to tell you I was yours, even when pretending to be another.”

Crow blinks, then laughs. He throws his head back and it dissolves again, a flock flying around what looks to be an obscured human face on the other side. “Is that your dirty talk? I like it.”

“I want you to want me,” Lucien says, blunt—maybe too earnest. “But I need—with the end coming up, I need to be able to focus on the play tonight, and I haven’t had any sleep. I need to get at least a little rest for the show. I can’t risk messing up tonight, so…. I need you to not utterly wreck me. Perhaps we can wait?”

“Hm,” Crow says. “You expect me to wait for you?”

“Yes,” Lucien says. “At least until after tonight’s show. Unless you can’t?”

It’s a daring thing to say, and for a moment he thinks he’s crossed a line and offended Crow. But Crow laughs again and says, “Then sleep,” and throws a hand in front of Lucien’s face.

Madness descends, a dark sky of crows, heavy wings settling all over him, and somehow, although he wasn’t tired a moment before, he sleeps.

He finds himself in that airless, cracked land again, trapped inside that horrible premonition of a dream, panicking, unable to breathe, to live, to die. He remembers the key, an incoherent thought of how it must help somehow, the Moonlit Lord said it could, and he sticks a hand in his pocket, curling it around the key, and tries to think of what to do with it.

[Please leave suggestions for Lucien in the comments.]

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