Lup pillowed her head against where her arm was stretched across the table, letting the envelope slip into the fuzziness of her peripheral vision even as her thumb kept worrying at its edge. It was a letter. Of course it was a letter. Lucretia always had been –

Lup shoved herself away from the table, pushing the thought away with equitable vicious force. Lucretia was a lot of things, an absolute multitude of stuff, but she wasn't a coward and Lup had never thought of her as one. Lucretia was…reserved. Removed. Solid. She built walls like masonry was her stock and trade. And maybe Lup was just tired of tearing them down. Maybe Lucretia was tired of Lup tearing them down. Maybe she wasn't supposed to tear them down this time, maybe it was safer to have this thing between them – for both of them.

Lup glared at the envelope. "She could have come to see me," she told it. It stupidly, stubbornly said nothing back. The official looking red seal was still perfect, unbroken.

Lup sighed into the silence and wished that there was someone there to mock her for doing it when she didn't even need to breathe these days. She used to know how to be lonely.

The seneschal steepled his hands in front of him, staring down at his desk rather than making eye contact with anyone else in the room. Lup let her eyes casually slip sideways and Taako met her with an expression of bored despair that was almost certainly mirrored on her own face; no one had warned them that space exploration would involve so much waiting and politics. Between them, a little to the front, Lucretia was a nearly perfect model of poise and respectful attention. Only the thumb and forefinger plucking at the hem of one of her sleeves gave her own impatience away.

"You must understand," the seneschal said, finally, "the discovery of the Glow was foundational to the development of our culture."

"I realize that we're asking a lot – " Lucretia's voice trailed into silence at the harsh scrape of Lup's chair across the floor.

"Look, I need you to level with me here: how long ago did you discover it exactly?" Lup kept her gaze leveled on the seneschal, but from the corner of her eye she could see Taako perk up in renewed interest.

The seneschal drew himself up, puffing up like a peacock ruffling its feathers. "I'm sure that it's easy for you to be dismissive of – "

"I only ask because we saw the 'Glow' – " Lup dragged her fingers through the air quotes " – drop out of the sky like a month ago so either we're talking about two different things and everyone's wasting their time here or you're full of shit." Lucretia pursed her lips, disapproving, but without a hint of disagreement on her face.

"I am only here speaking to you because Our Lady has…romantic notions about visitors from the stars." The seneschal moved to stand, breaking eye contact with Lup. "If it were up to me, we would have refused your request outright."

"Please," Lucretia said, "I realize how important the Light is to you, how much good it can do, but we're trying to help – "

"You realize how boned you are, right? I mean, people are going to die," Taako said. "You're basically dooming your whole world for something you don't even understand – "

"It doesn't belong to you," Lup said.

"Please," Lucretia said.

The seneschal held up his hands. "As I said, if it were up to me, we would have turned you down. As it stands, however, Our Lady believes your story to have merit and has been moved by your plight." His eyes flickered to where hope was cautiously blooming on Lucretia's face and he grimaced. "There will be conditions, of course."

"Whatever's necessary," Lucretia said, "I'll do it."

"You will have to take on the trial – "

"I'll do it," Lucretia repeated, leaning over where her hands were clasped in her lap, unwavering.

"Don't be arrogant," the seneschal said. "This is not something you can do alone."

"Then I'll do it," Lup said.

Taako's eyes slid over to her, assessing. He crossed his arms, rocking back on his heels. "Me too."

The seneschal blustered, red rising in his face. "Two should be sufficient."

Lup brought her hands firmly down upon the desk. "I said I'll do it."

The seneschal's eyes moved quickly between her and Lucretia before he turned away, clearing his throat loudly. "Yes, well. I – that makes sense, I should have realized earlier. You may return to your accommodations, of course; we'll send someone for you later."

x

Lup pulled her robe tighter over her shoulders as the three of them stepped out into the early afternoon chill. Around them, the street bustled with life and energy. A woman stopped to inspect a child's grubby hands. A man leaned casually against a fruit cart, saying something that made its bearded merchant flush to the tips of his ears. None of them had any idea that the fate of their world had been decided by a stuffy little bureaucrat in a stuffy little office.

"That could have gone better," Lucretia said, quiet enough that the comment could only be taken as self-directed. Lup frowned in her direction, but Lucretia didn't look over, journal clutched tightly to her chest like a schoolgirl who had just been reprimanded.

"It could have gone worse," Lup said. "We could have brought Magnus."

Taako snorted. "We could have brought Merle."

Lucretia glanced at them, wide-eyed and startled, before her lips quirked into something that was almost a smile. "True enough." Her eyes slid down and away again, fingers tight enough around the cover of her book that Lup could see the stark impression of the bones under her knuckles.

Lup sidled up to her, close enough to casually bump shoulders. "That was pretty cool back there – 'Whatever's necessary. I'll do it.' Hell yeah, Bruce Willis, I'm glad I get to play sidekick."

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this."

"Lucretia, darling, let me stop you right there. Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to."

"We didn't even find out what this trial is."

"What's the worst that could happen?" Lup shrugged. "We die and then 'okay, see you in a year'?"

"If the Starblaster makes it out," Lucretia said, but the tension in her shoulders had eased.

"Davenport is not about to let that ship get eaten by a pillar of living darkness this or any year. It's a date." On her other side, Taako unsubtly waggled his eyebrows at her. Lup rolled her eyes back, but she could feel a smile tugging at her lips.

"So, uh, just to be clear, Lup – we were definitely going to steal it if he told us 'no', right?"

"Oh, absolutely."

"You, uh, doing okay there, Lup?"

Lup blinked and then had to take a moment to physically, literally shake her head. Kravitz was watching her, scythe gripped loosely in one hand and a box containing sealed souls of the damned in the other, and she was reasonably sure that that was concern being expressed on that Skeletor face. "Oh, yeah. I'm. Good," she said, letting a grin materialize from within the dark confines of her hood. "I mean, we've been hanging out in the basement of a spooky mansion all day, so that's pretty much my scene."

"Oh, mine too," Kravitz said brightly. He pocketed the box somewhere within the black expanse of his robes. "I guess it comes with, you know, the gig."

"Yeah." Lup forced little bits of sensation into her feet, forced her body to be solid enough to touch the ground beneath her. It didn't happen that often, not nearly so much that it was a danger or anything – she would have mentioned it if it did. But sometimes, when she wasn't thinking about it – when she wasn't thinking about anything – the blackness came creeping over her and around her and through her until she forgot where she was. She'd lived with it for so long that she almost never realized when it was coming on until it was already there. It wasn't enough to drown her out completely, especially not now when, with the Raven Queen's blessing and assistance, she was more powerfully herself than she'd been in a long time and the threat of unpersonhood that most liches lived their unlives with was a distant concern. But it dulled the senses and that made it hard to be here.

"You know…you don't have to be all right, right? It's fine if you're not."

"Kravitz," Lup said, taking a breath she didn't need, "I like you and everything and I know we're pretty much family now, but we in no way know each other well enough to be having this conversation yet."

"Okay," he said and he sounded like he meant it. Like it really was 'okay'.

"So, is that all that we were after? Did we get them all?"

There was a crash from the next room and a yelp that was distinctly Barry. Lup and Kravitz looked at each other for a moment. "He's probably fine," Kravitz said, but he hiked his robes up a bit when he ran.

The hours spent waiting for the escort to arrive and usher Lup and Lucretia to their trial were tense, which was touching in a weird way. The realization that she had people who worried about her now – people besides just Taako, though he was painfully cheerful in a way that meant that he was not half as all right with the plan as he'd claimed to be – always felt brand new to Lup. It almost felt unfair to still be surprised that that was the case, like she was doing a disservice to her friends by not being able to take their concern for granted

Magnus stood with them as they watched the lantern light flickering down the road. Someone was coming and when that got someone got here, two of them would leave. "You're, like, the smart ones," Magnus said, "so I'm not going to bother telling you that, you know – agreeing to do some trial thing without asking what it is? Shitty plan."

"Coming from you," Lup said and let the thought trail off. Next to them, Lucretia was quiet. She only had one journal with her, so new the spine didn't have creases in it yet. Lucretia was usually wary of wasting their less easily renewed resources, but she hadn't wanted to bring any of the journals she'd already written in. If they didn't come back, no one else would be coming to retrieve it.

"Yeah," Magnus said, "I know." The lantern light grew brighter.

x

"And these will be your quarters for the evening," the attendant said. She was a large, brawny woman, but she was wearing some sort of ceremonial robe that billowed out around her to the degree that she still seemed to be drowning it. The room was nice – far nicer than the limited accommodations aboard the Starblaster allowed for; it was all open space and plush carpet and draping silks. Lup and Lucretia might have been staring a little too much because the attendant seemed to grow alarmingly self-conscious. "We assumed that a single bed would be sufficient, but if – I mean, if you would prefer –"

"It's fine," Lucretia said, sounding oddly faint. She cleared her throat lightly and her voice seemed to rally some of its strength when she spoke again. "I'm sorry, we had assumed that we would be undergoing the trial right away."

"Oh," said the attendant, seeming almost relieved to have the topic broached. "Yes, of course. I apologize for the delay, but we need some time to finish preparing the Hall of Ceremonies. Normally you would have to wait until the solstice to undergo the trial, but Our Lady was quite insistent that we expedite matters for you."

"That was nice of her," Lup said, not entirely certain that it was. "Er. So about this trial – "

"You must be very excited," the attendant said. "I won't be eligible to take mine until next year, but I understand that it's a very fulfilling experience. You're very lucky to have each other."

"Yes, we are," Lucretia said. Lup wasn't entirely sure which statement she was answering.

"You'll be fine," the attendant said, smiling in a way that was trying to be reassuring. She paused, looked at them both. Her smile shrank, but grew more genuine. "Yes, very lucky. I have a sense for these things."

Lup was a very proud person. At times, maybe even edging into the neighbourhood of conceited, she could admit that. That pride, though, had served a very essential purpose. For most of her life, Lup couldn't have afforded the luxury of shame. As far as Lup could tell, in order to have shame, you had to believe that you had been given more than you deserved. You also had to know that if you allowed yourself to fall down that you'd be able to get up again – that you had the things you needed in order to allow you to get back up again. Without these things, you had to have your pride or you had…nothing.

She wore her pride around her like a cloak as she stood outside of Lucretia's office inside the newly renovated Bureau of Benevolence. She didn't pace because that would have shown impatience and being impatient would have meant that…well, that there was something at stake. She half wondered if Lucretia was standing on the other side of the door, counting the seconds and fighting the same impulses. She hated that it even occurred to her to think about visiting a friend like it was some stupid power play and hated even more that there was a rift between them as large as a decade that meant that she didn't know for sure that it wasn't.

There was a click as a handle was turned on the other side of the big, oak door. Lup took an involuntary half-step forward and had to stop herself. The door moved to reveal a woman who looked just as solid. She smiled, a small reserved quirk of her lips, and for a moment it was as if time had wound back on itself. And then the smile faded, but the careworn lines in the woman's face stayed and it was like being doused in cold water. Lup forced a smile back and had to fight for every inch of it because the Lucretia she had known had always been so young.

"It's good to see you, Lup," Lucretia said. "You look…" Lucretia frowned and Lup almost echoed the expression. It was strange to see her lost for words.

"Red?" Lup offered.

"Substantial," Lucretia said. "But red too, I suppose."

"And rad."

"Oh, absolutely. Hella rad." Lucretia looked down, her hands twitching as if at the memory of something they expected to be holding before folding over each other. When she looked up, she was smiling again. "Would you like to come in?"

Lup bounced lightly on the bed, enjoying the spring of the mattress as Lucretia stiffly sat down on the other side. "I mean, they could have let us wait on the Starblaster, but I have to admit that these are some pretty sweet digs."

"Um, Lup." Lucretia fiddled awkwardly with her own thumbs. "Did you realize…I think that they think that we're…together."

Lup stopped bouncing, tilting her head as she took in Lucretia's serious expression. "Oh. Sure. Does that, like…bother you?"

Lucretia looked faintly alarmed. "Of course not!"

"All right, so no big deal. I mean, you're super hot, I'm super hot. Can't blame them for thinking about it." Lup burst into sudden, delighted laughter. "Oh my god. That's why she was so weird about the bed sharing thing. They totally think we're making the beast with two backs in here right now." Lucretia made a little, strangled noise. "Sorry, bad euphemism? I've got more. Having a bit of slap and tickle. Having a pants-off dance-off. Enjoying horizontal refreshments. Entangling the lower beards. Having a bit of how's your father."

Lucretia gaped. "That's not one."

"Why not?"

"It's weird."

"It's no fun if it's not weird. Otherwise, we might as well just say sex." Lup waggled her eyebrows. "And, come on, you've definitely heard weirder."

"How would I – I mean, I've never – " Lucretia brought her hands over her mouth, eyes widening and then squeezing shut.

Lup felt her eyebrows float to the top of her face without permission. "What, like, never?" Lucretia shook her head miserably. "Did you…want to?"

Lucretia's eyes shot open. "What?"

"Don't get me wrong, it's a tragedy that nobody has, as of yet, engaged you in the forbidden polka regardless. But you, uh, might die tomorrow?" Lup shrugged. "No pressure. It's just, if you wanted to…I'm offering."

x

Lup's wrist ached in a way that she associated with deep satisfaction. Normally, she would have switched things up by now, but she was finding it difficult to make an argument for giving up the perfect vantage point to watch Lucretia's face. Lucretia kept doing this thing where she'd try to bite her lip and then kind of…miss or not be able to catch it as she gasped through her breaths. It occurred to Lup that unless Lucretia had been lying – and Lucretia was not, she suspected, a particularly great liar – nobody else had ever seen this face make this expression. It was like looking at a shooting star or a butterfly hatching from its cocoon or some shit. Lup moved her free hand to adjust one of Lucretia's legs, stroking long and slow under her knee half by accident. Lucretia did a squirmy kind of kick in response and, oh, that was too cute.

"Are you – should I –" Lucretia made a move as if to grab Lup's wrist before retreating, looking half guilty.

Lup laughed. She gently, but firmly guided Lucretia's hand out of her way. "Oh, honey, no. I'm good. Watching you is plenty hot for now." Lucretia did that not-quite-biting-her-lip thing again and Lup's mouth went dry. Definitely best seats in the house. "Really, I'm cool where I am. We'll have time for other stuff later."

"I'm not so sure about that. I didn't expect – it's so much more than when I –" Lucretia looked almost like she wanted to be mortified by what she was admitting, but didn't quite know how when Lup's hand was still between her thighs. "Anyway, I, um, might not last much longer."

Oh. Oh no. This was Lucretia's first time, which meant that Lup had a responsibility. If she didn't make the run from third to home soon, Lucretia might think that finger banging was all there was. She couldn't abide by that.

Lup pulled her hand back, grinning at Lucretia's unrestrained groan of disappointment. She made a real show of licking her fingers before scooting down between Lucretia's knees and pushing her hair behind her ear. "Relax," she said, "I'm gonna show you a good time."

And then neither of them said very much at all. Lucretia because speech was a little beyond her for the time being. Lup because she had dedicated her mouth to a lower purpose.

Lup had never been great at small talk. Oh, she knew how to fill space with words and she didn't much care if any of them were important or meaningful – the talk was not the part of small talk that was a problem. What she didn't know how to do, what she had never had anybody to teach her how to do, was keep a conversation on an even keel of politeness. She didn't know how to tiptoe around the things that she wanted to say without actually saying them.

The only consolation was that Lucretia had never been much good at small talk either. It used to be the talk for her, but with the way she carried herself, Lup wondered if Lucretia had just as much trouble with the small these days.

"There are…so many things that I need to say," Lucretia said, crossing one leg over the other with a controlled grace. "I don't know where to start."

"That's why you sent the letter."

"Yes. It was easier to write it down." Lucretia cleared her throat lightly. "I suppose that I should start by apologizing. I am so sorry for what you went through and for the part that I played in you…not being found, for you being missing for as long as you were. I can't even imagine –"

"Lucretia." Lup sighed. "I know that the world was ending so it might have slipped your mind, but I already forgave you, all right? And really, I – I don't need you to be sorry. Not for that."

"I feel as though I should be."

"Whatever makes you feel better." And Lup didn't really mean anything by the words, but Lucretia still recoiled as if she had been struck.

"I'm not looking to make myself feel better. I don't want to feel better," Lucretia said and then froze. She didn't look like she'd meant to say it.

"Well, shit, Lucretia. Maybe that's the problem." Lup sighed and pushed her hands through her hair even though it never fell out of place. Or grew. Or changed style. "Did you ask me here so you could – what? Punish yourself?"

"I guess I just wanted to know if you were angry with me."

"Well. I'm not."

Lucretia nodded and Lup thought that that would be it – Lucretia would smoothly redirect the conversation and they'd spend the rest of the visit talking without saying anything and maybe in a few years she'd get another letter. But then Lucretia's face did this…horrible thing where it sort of crumpled. The lines of her face deepened and the skin around her jaw shook. She was fisting her hands in her lap so hard that they trembled with the force of it. "Well, why not?"

Lup tried to reach for anger, looked for it because clearly Lucretia thought it was there or needed it to be there or something, but she found…nothing. Lup was no stranger to anger – or to rage or fury or wrath – but it didn't answer her this time. There was a cold, empty…nothing. "Lucretia," she said, "I'm not angry. I'm just – I don't know, I guess I'm tired? It sounds weird to say because liches don't really need to, you know, nap. But...yeah, I guess tired is about right. It's been a lot."

Lucretia looked away and was silent for a moment, hands still quavering where they sat. She didn't seem comforted by anything Lup had said - maybe she hadn't even heard it, not really. "I didn't look for you," she said. It hurt to hear, even knowing that it was meant to. Lucretia never gave up on anything. "In the first couple of weeks after we realized you were missing, sure. We all did. But after I erased everyone's memories – after I made sure that Taako and the others couldn't look for you anymore – I didn't look for you at all. I abandoned you, Lup. And I didn't think that I'd ever have the chance to sit here and admit that to you because I was never going to see you again and I had accepted that."

"Lucretia…are you angry with me?" She wouldn't have ever wished for it, not consciously and certainly not out loud, but Lup wondered if maybe there was a part of Lucretia that hadn't wanted to see Lup again – that regretted seeing her now.

"No." Lucretia scrubbed one hand over face and exhaled shakily. "I just want things to go back to the way that they were, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to be that person anymore. I don't even think that that person exists."

Lup wanted to reach for Lucretia's hand, but couldn't begin to process how to do it. "Lucretia, maybe we can't go back to that. Maybe we just have to accept that this is us now."

"And what is that? What are we? What is 'us'?"

Lup shrugged. "Fuck if I know."

It was a wedding. Obviously and undeniably a wedding. There were way too many cheap flowers and something that tasted vaguely reminiscent of champagne (which Lucretia had drunk enough of that she had started to giggle) and lots of long, long boring speeches. As a man in a truly extravagant hat tied her hand to Lucretia's and made them dip the dangling ends of the rope in a pool of water, it occurred to Lup to wonder if weddings were legally binding across planes and realities.

"We will now begin the Trial of the Spirit," Hat-man said, booming and officious, "which has been a part of our binding ceremony since before time immemorial. Are both of you, Lup and Lucretia of the Starblaster, prepared to undergo this trial as you stand here before us today?"

"Hell yeah," Lup said.

"Yes," Lucretia said. She squeezed minutely at Lup's hand and Lup didn't hesitate a second before squeezing back.

"Then let us begin." Hat-man sat back and said nothing more, gracing them with an impressive blink-to-stare ratio in favour of the staring. Lup opened her mouth to ask when precisely they were getting their trial on when everything went black. It was like someone had thrown a bag over her head. She whipped around, but she couldn't see anything, couldn't hear the other people in the hall. She couldn't feel Lucretia's hand.

"Lucretia?" She stumbled forward, hands held out questingly in front of her. Hat-man had only been a few feet away. Lucretia had been right beside her. They'd been standing over a pool of water. She felt nothing. "Haha, very funny. What is this – illusion magic?" Illusion magic didn't work if you realized you were in an illusion. Nothing changed.

She wandered the empty space at a sort of stilted shuffle, but never found any indication that she'd gone anywhere new. How long had she been there? It felt like hours. Was this what was supposed to happen? Was she doing the trial?

She started to wonder if something had gone wrong. None of them had been poisoned by the food or the air or had trouble moving because of unusual gravity, so they'd kind of been working under the assumption that the humanoid inhabitants of this world were close enough physiologically speaking, but what if they were just a little bit off? And maybe it had been the champagne or the water or whatever magic they'd used as the backbone of their ceremony, but something had not…reacted well. Or maybe it was whatever the bond engine had done to them that meant that they didn't follow the rules of life and death anymore. Hat-man had called it the Trial of the Spirit.

Lup had assumed that dying was her worst case scenario. Looking around at the endless dark, she wondered if she was wrong.

"Lucretia?" Lup's shuffle turned into a run as she flew forward. If she went fast enough, far enough, surely there would be something. She felt a tug on her wrist, small and easy to ignore in her desperate scramble. And then black was no longer the only thing she saw.

Red poured out of the black above her and flooded up from the black below her and swirled around her, rising over her body like a heavy blanket. She tried to run away from it, but already there was nowhere to run to.

And then the tug came again, more insistent, almost enough to yank her off her feet. She put one hand to her wrist, feeling the texture of the rope wrapped around it. She hesitated. And then she tugged back.

White light cut through the red and the black behind hit. Just a small bubble, but free and different and almost familiar in a way that she couldn't immediately place. She tried to flee into it and found her advance rebuffed. She gritted her teeth and tried again, pushing her palms against the bubble's surface. "Come on, come on."

She reared back the hand with the rope before pounding it against the bubble and she –

fell in –

and straight into Lucretia's arms.

Lucretia smiled, squeezing against her shoulders. "I found you."

Lup and Lucretia were on their fifth lap around the quad and, if Lup had to guess, Lucretia probably wasn't any closer to sorting her thoughts out than she was. Walking Lup out had been a flimsy excuse in the first place; working for the Raven Queen didn't offer much in the way of health care (it was not, generally, necessary), but being able tear a hole in the fabric of reality and bamph from one plane to the next was a pretty decent side benefit. She didn't get quite as much mileage as Kravitz, but she was getting there.

"I suppose," Lucretia said, coming to a stop, "that this is goodbye."

"Okay, whoa." Lup tried to grasp at Lucretia's arm, to physically turn her, forgetting for a moment about her own immateriality. "Points for drama, but let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Oh. No, that's not what I meant." Lucretia had the good grace to turn herself.

"Oh. Okay good. Because the trip up here was pretty much me standing outside your window with a boombox. So ball's in your court."

Lucretia smiled, a little weakly. "I'll send a letter."

"I know for a fact that you own a Stone of Farspeech, Lucretia, so let's cut Mr. Postman a break."

"I – yes, okay. You're right, that's a good point." They stood staring at each other for a moment, awkwardly. Lup understood that it was on her to open up the go-go portal and leave, but she felt like something was slipping through her fingers and if she didn't catch it now, she never would. Lucretia's smile grew more strained. "We do, of course, have a standing appointment." It was a bad joke, a really damn dark joke, and in a strange Lucretia way, that made it kind of a pretty good joke? As long as you graded on a bell curve? But it was, genuinely, awful and it felt like the thing was slipping away faster because, dammit, they used to have time.

Lup didn't really think about it when she surged forward to kiss Lucretia, so her face wasn't quite as tangible as her usual standard. Physically, it didn't feel like much. Emotionally, it was…kind of everything. "We're gonna be okay," Lup said, resting her forehead against Lucretia's like she had the last time they'd stood on the moonbase together. "You and me? We're gonna be fine."

Hat-man had been speaking for some time, but Lup was finding it hard to focus. Everything was so bright and colourful and solid around her; she was glad that she'd apparently already sat down or the vertigo would have been liable to make her puke. Lucretia had not yet unwrapped her arms from around her, but, to be fair, Lup was not doing much to discourage the hugging.

"The strength of your resolve has been tested," Hat-man said, "and you have been found –"

"Worthy," what sounded like half a dozen voices from around the hall answered.

"May this strength serve you just as well in the trials of your future," Hat-man said. "The integrity of your souls has been tested. You have been found –"

"Worthy," said the chorus.

"May they guide you true for the rest of your lives. The fealty of your bond has been tested. You have been found –"

"Worthy," Lup said, knocking her head gently against Lucretia's shoulder. "We're worthy, you assholes."

Lucretia looked up, chin straight and defiant – supported by an inner thread of steel that was usually hidden. "We…appreciate the hospitality that you have shown us, but it's been a long day. And I believe that you have something that belongs to us."

"What she said," Lup said.

Hat-man floundered for a moment, taken aback. There were murmurings from around the hall. "Yes, I am aware of the bargain you have struck," he said with careful diplomacy, "but surely such dire matters can wait until –"

"Now, please," Lucretia said.

Hat-man stammered something out, but it sounded like he was going to comply, so Lup let her eyes rest for a moment. "This is a good look for you."

Lucretia's arms squeezed, a minute change in pressure. "It seemed prudent to wrap things up."

"Mm. I'm definitely gonna kiss you later, okay?"

"Okay." Lucretia laughed, soft and private. "It's a date."