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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.

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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.”

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Lucien can’t quite keep himself from giving Katarin an incredulous look. It’s not that the idea bothers him—Revelle is a fascinating character and he always wants to try the parts in a show he didn’t get—but it doesn’t make sense. “Wait, you want me to… pretend to be you pretending to be Revelle so you can sneak around? Since nobody knows I’m here? But then, if nobody knows I’m here, why don’t I sneak around and get into the office instead while you do your normal performance? You… you can just tell me where the keys are.”

“Two reasons,” Katarin says calmly—even smugly, Lucien thinks. She throws up a finger. “First, if anyone does see you, they’ll just know you’re back. No plausible deniability about your absence if you’re right in front of them, and no excuse. But anyone who sees Revelle backstage is not currently watching the play and doesn’t know what scenes she’s in, so they won’t realize there’s a double.” A second finger, flicked up as if she can drive the point home with gesture alone. “Second? I don’t trust anyone here, not fully. It’s fine if you want to keep some things private, but I’m trying to save the world here. If you see something that I need to know, can I trust that you’d actually tell me? What if you thought it wasn’t relevant? No, I need to see what’s there with my own eyes instead of having it filtered through some kind of unreliable narrator.“

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Lucien considers, trying to imagine where in the theatre someone could hide a still-beating human heart.  “I’ll check the box seats,” he says finally. “I was up in one just earlier so I might as well be the one to go back there. There’s a number of places someone might tuck something, and they’re unoccupied except for the Lords usually, so it seems like a likely place.”

“I’ll take the remaining offices,” Katarin says, grinning, her bearing confident. “I’ve got a trick up my sleeve for the office locks.”

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“If Shuni were home, he’d let me in,” Lucien says. Even as he says it, despite Katarin’s dubious look, he feels utter confidence. “So he’s not home right now, or is too deeply asleep to hear me.”

After all, Shuni had been concerned for him when he got back from Lord Crow. And Shuni had understood when he’d needed to go see the Moonlit Lord. Even if Shuni’s feeling sore about it, Lucien doesn’t think Shuni would just ignore him. Be sarcastic, acerbic, whatever—but he’d do it to Lucien’s face.