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Chapter Text

“Everything is hardest the first time.”

Lestat’s mother told him this when he was very young. He hadn’t understood it at first, but he learned the truth of her words as the years passed. They came back to him as he bathed himself in the little stream just outside Magnus’ tower.

His life was over; his life had ended before. He had practice picking up the pieces.

Twelve years old: the death of his faith. His father and brothers hauling him back from the monastery. Not their blows and their insults—those he was used to—but the hatred in their eyes. How they had despised him for wanting to make himself better! They lived in filth and ignorance and would not tolerate his escape.

Lestat scraped at the dried blood and refuse caked on his skin. The water was icy; October was nearly over and the countryside was covered in a thin blanket of snow. But his body no longer shivered. It had no need to. Cold within cold.

Sixteen years old: the death of his youth. Hiding in the back of the wagon when the traveling troupe of actors passed through his village. Learning the part of Lelio from them, his joy at their friendship and praise, his ecstasy being on the stage for the first time. So many eyes on him, seeing him, adoring him, filling him up with their laughter and smiles. And after the performance, the actress who played Isabella guiding him inside her. The liquid heat of her body and how she shook with laughter at his clumsy eagerness, calling him sweet pup, the shame and joy of it burning on his face as he shuddered and came. Waking up to find her gone, the whole troupe gone, and his father and brothers there in their place. Why had he thought it would be any different that time? All that had changed was the severity of the beatings that followed.

There were no bruises on his skin anymore from where Magnus had gripped him. No puncture marks from his fangs or gouges from his nails. No lingering evidence of the brutality of Magnus’ nightly feedings and rapes. Lestat looked at the unbroken expanse of his skin, mapping out the many places where the wounds had been. All gone now. Why could he still feel them?

Twenty-one years old: the death of his innocence. Blood on the snow. Blood all over him. The snarling of the wolves, the thunder of his rifle, the panicked whines from his beloved mastiffs as they died. Pain and exhaustion and utter desperation, roaring as if he were an animal himself as he swung his flail and sword. The certainty that he would die, the stillness once the last wolf fell. The silence after he put a bullet through the heart of his shrieking mare and ended her suffering. Walking down the mountain for hours with a wolf slung over his shoulders, knowing without understanding why or how that he was different now. No one could howl the way he had howled or snarl the way he’d snarled and be entirely human afterwards.

But he had survived.

None of that had been the real death. The real death had come when he finally reached his father’s castle, when he walked in the door and told his family what had happened. Lestat remembered it with perfect clarity. His oldest brother, Augustin, walking forward, standing toe-to-toe with him. How must he have looked? Half-frozen, shaking with exhaustion, bitten and scratched and drenched in blood—his own and the animals’. Had the hollowness he felt not shown in his eyes?

It must not have, because his own brother—who he had once looked up to so much—had stared at him so coldly and said with dismissive conviction: “You didn’t kill eight wolves.”

Lestat still did not entirely understand why that had been the moment to break him. Surely, he’d known by then not to hope for any scrap of affection or approval from his family. So why had that single sentence alone been so irreparable? His brother, interrupting him as he tried to relate the story, telling him to his face: it did not happen.

Even though the truth of it had been confirmed mere moments later and Augustin had changed course, the flat denial remained lodged in Lestat’s heart. As he lay curled in his bed for days, refusing to speak or remove his torn and bloody clothes, it had not been the howls or the teeth or the carnage that echoed most inside him. It had been the ease with which his brother had erased him. It did not happen.

And what would Nicki say, if Lestat made his way through the snow back to their rooms in the Ile de la Cité and told him everything that had happened? If he somehow managed to translate the unsupportable horror of it into words?

Lestat knew already.

It would be the same as when he’d tried to tell Nicki about the mask-like face he kept seeing in the audience, the eerie voice in his head whispering Wolfkiller. He’d seen Nicki’s patient confusion giving way to dismissal, but he’d kept trying. He had not known how any of it was possible, but he had attempted nonetheless to communicate his certainty that he was being watched, being followed, being stalked like prey.

Nicki had laughed and smiled—fond and condescending—and had teased him for his overactive imagination. “Next you’ll be seeing ghosts,” he’d said. Lestat knew what that meant. The words underneath the words. It did not happen.

Lestat plunged his face into the cold water, wiping away the ash on his cheeks, the streaks of salt where his last tears had fallen. It would be no different. Why keep repeating the same mistake over and over again? Nicki would not believe him. No one would believe him. No one would care.

So he simply would not tell anyone.

He would pick up the pieces, the same way he always had done. It was not the first time; he knew he could do it. Nicki would not ever need to know what had been done to him or what he’d become. Lestat would come up with as many lies as he needed. He would return as if nothing had occurred. Back to his city, his rooms, his lover, his company, his stage. He would hold all the shattered pieces of his life together in his hands so tightly that no one would ever suspect it had broken in the first place.

It proved more difficult than Lestat had imagined.

Some parts of the plan went smoothly. Nicki accepted his explanation for his disappearance—Lestat’s imagination was, after all, so very fertile. He concocted a tale about a bat biting him. He said he’d later awoken feverish and broken their window in a frenzy, desperate for fresh air. He told Nicki that he had fled, terrified of infecting Nicki with whatever exotic illness had gripped him. He’d hidden in the countryside in an abandoned barn, he explained, until the fever broke. He had survived but the strange disease had left him changed.

Such a tidy lie.

It justified the coldness of his skin, his sudden lack of appetite, his altered eyes and nails, his avoidance of sunlight. Nicki believed every word. It was so simple.

Simple, too, to show up at Renaud’s all smiles and sweet contrition and resume his performances as Lelio. Simple, to board up the windows of their rooms so not a single beam of light shone through. Simple, to slip away every night once Nicki fell asleep to hunt in the alleys of Paris.

His adjustment to existence as a vampire had gone smoothly, too. Magnus had not prepared him, had taught him nothing, but Lestat was used to that, wasn’t he? It was the same as his mother, nose always buried in her books and letters, unwilling to teach him even the alphabet. He muddled through all on his own. He let his body be his guide, taking note of every instinct and working back from there.

(There were close calls, of course: sickening himself on dead blood, burning his hand in a stray sunbeam, Nicki nearly catching a glimpse of his fangs once as Lestat watched him undressing.)

He cleared all the major hurdles with ease. No, it was the finer details of the performance that gave him trouble.

On his first night back at the theatre, Lestat discovered that he could no longer stand the sight of himself in a mirror. He had tried to put on his paint, as he had countless nights before, only to fall apart. It was not his own face he saw reflected, but the faces of the corpses. Magnus’ former captives. Every glance at the mirror and he was back on the pile of rotting bodies where Magnus had tossed him when he was finished with him for the night. His discarded duplicates, their flesh putrefying, the sound of the maggots moving within them.

One of the actresses had found him shaking and huddled on the floor of his dressing room, his lips half rouged. She did not ask him questions. Maybe it was kindness, or maybe there was simply no time. She painted his face, straightened his coat, and pulled him to his place just offstage to wait for his cue.

Then there was the night that he was accosted during his hunt by a pauper begging for coin. A common enough sight on the Paris streets, but the man’s words undid him. He asked Lestat to show mercy, as Christ would want, promising his prayers in exchange for charity.

Lestat’s temper had always been short, but the rage he felt in that moment was something altogether new. He picked the man up by the throat—hardly a feat of strength, he was little more than bones—and screamed in his face that God was false, Christ was false. It was all a cesspit of lies. There was no mercy or comfort to be had in the world, no heaven or savior. Only savagery and pain.

Lestat’s voice cracked on the words. In his head, the memory of his own broken cries echoed. Let me go, damn you. Please. Don’t, please. Just let me go. God, help me! Oh God, please do not desert me! Save me! Calling out the names of the saints. Weeping like a child, imploring. Knowing his only hope was divine intervention. Knowing it would not come. Knowing that Christ was as deaf to his pleas as the demon holding him and murmuring sweetly you are perfect, my Lelio, my Wolfkiller. Taunting him for his futile prayers. Goading him to fight back.

He snapped the beggar’s neck without even feeding from him and laughed as the corpse spasmed in his grip. He laughed and laughed and could not seem to make himself stop. God had not saved this devout mortal, because there was no God, but what did it matter? Lestat was a fiend who no longer needed saving.

And yet the human in him refused to fully die.

Once, as he was feeding from a woman, draining her in great gulps, a cloud moved from in front of the moon. The sudden light illuminated her face in profile: her brow, the shape of her nose, her chin. It was his mother’s face! His mother’s body going limp in his arms!

Logically, Lestat knew it could not be true. Gabrielle de Lioncourt was too ill to make the long journey from his father’s castle to Paris. He dropped the bleeding woman, searched her face to catalogue every discrepancy. Not his mother, no. Merely one who resembled her.

But the spell had been broken. She was a person, a living person who he had been eating. Revulsion gripped him. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t live one second longer as a monster, an evil thing! It was beyond bearing.

But he bore it. What other choice did he have?

The worst time was mere days after that. Tucked away in their rooms after a particularly successful performance, Nicki pushed him down onto their bed and climbed in his lap. He was warm and heavy, the smell of his sweat intoxicatingly familiar. Lestat had hardly been able to touch Nicki since his return. He told himself it was a practical matter, that he was maintaining distance for Nicki’s safety and for the sake of the ruse.

Lestat’s lies did not work very well on himself.

Nicki gripped his shoulders and ground against his stomach, panting into his mouth. The wine on his breath tasted sour and rotten to Lestat.

“Enough teasing, Lestat. I miss you. And I can feel how much you miss me, too.”

He rolled his hips, pulling a groan from Lestat. Nicki was right. He was hard already, just from the pressure of Nicki on top of him. Lestat settled his hands on Nicki’s hips, kissing him.

“The fever is gone. Let me taste you again.”

Lestat’s mind flooded with a thousand memories of a thousand embraces, since they were mere boys. His human soul ached for Nicki, a lust threaded with grief and nostalgia. He wanted to hear his name on Nicki’s tongue, all the familiar gasps and groans, loud enough to drown out the hammering of blood just beneath Nicki’s skin. Nicki always got so flushed whenever he was aroused, his cheeks apple-red and his neck stained an enticing shade of pink. Lestat’s mouth went dry with thirst.

He could control it. He would learn to control it.

Nicki lifted his hands to Lestat’s hair and buried his fingers in it, stroking it back from his face. Sunlight in the hair. The greed in Magnus’ voice. He had petted Lestat’s hair even as he cringed away, tears and snot running down his face. He had touched it covetously, worshipfully, lifting it to let the strands cascade from his fingers with a sigh, even as his other hand pinned Lestat by the throat.

When Lestat opened his eyes he was outside, the night air was cold on his wet cheeks. The tombstones and sepulchers of les Innocents loomed all around him. He was not sure how he’d gotten there. He looked down at his hands, dread writhing in his guts. No blood. He could only hope he had not hurt Nicki or revealed his nature as he fled.

No matter how tightly he held on, the cracks were widening.

The first time he laid eyes on Armand, Lestat understood something he had been unaware of right until that moment: how badly he wanted something new. Every facet of his life—the damp smell of the garret he shared with Nicki, his regular route to the theatre, the laughter and bickering of his fellow actors, his bright Lelio costume, the sweet music from Nicki’s violin—only reminded him of what he had lost. It was all tainted, all stained with a melancholy he had to pretend was not there.

What he needed was something completely unconnected to his life before Magnus laid eyes on him. Lestat was tired of memory and suffering; it was not like him to wallow. He had always before found some way to wrench happiness from the unfeeling world. He was ready to laugh again, to frolic, to rejoice.

The moment he locked eyes with the strange vampire on the balcony, Lestat experienced an electric thrill unlike anything he had felt in weeks. What a strange creature he was! Even from such a distance, even dusty-faced and in grimy rags, a rare beauty. Like a painting had come to life, all serenity and softness, his loveliness making the world around him clumsy and ugly. And that voice of his! Lower than Lestat would have expected with his slight build and boyish good looks, promising:

—I can take care of you. I can teach you.

It scared him, too: the echo of Magnus stalking him before his abduction, the shock of discovering other vampires lived in Paris. How had this stranger known just what to offer him? How had he divined the two things Lestat ached for above all else, in the secret depths of his heart? To be cared for. To be taught.

His decision to taunt the strange vampire was not a rational one; the impulse rose up in him without warning or source, impossible to resist. He mocked the vampire and turned down his offer of mentorship.

The first time Lestat caught sight of the creature outside the theatre, following him, watching him from a distance, he hid a smile behind his hand. So, it was going to be like that, was it? Good.

It was almost certainly foolish, encouraging this, but it was also fun, and Lestat had been starved for that for far too long.

He led the vampire on a merry chase. It became a game, searching for those orange eyes in the shadows wherever he went. Any time he found them, Lestat would meet the vampire’s gaze, tilt up his chin, and turn his back. How exciting it was, to offer these repeated rejections! To spurn the vampire, knowing that he would nonetheless keep following, keep watching, keep desiring.

Lestat recognized the thrill: it was akin to how he had felt on stage for the first time, sixteen years old and starved for attention. The admiration of mortals was not enough for him now, he realized. It still pleased him, of course, but it felt diminished. Dumb affection, like that from a horse or cow.

He thought of the vampire constantly, pouting secretly whenever he did not turn up for a show. Those luminous eyes began to appear in his dreams, watching him in a way that sent hot shivers all over his skin. He felt devoured by them. He dreamt of the vampire’s voice, too, murmuring praise and encouragement. So beautiful, so good for me. Taking me so well. My sweet one. My child. Come to me. Come to me. Lestat awoke from the dreams sweat-damp and near delirious with lust.

Nicki did not notice his distraction. He had been preoccupied lately with his career as a violinist, sick with envy over a new prodigy who had become the talk of the city that autumn. Lestat tried his best to soothe him.

“Come, Nicki. There is always some fashionable genius child. You can’t let it trouble you. The audience loves your music—I see it from the stage every night. You move them. You move me.”

Nicki’s face was pure scorn.

“You don’t understand. You can’t.”

Lestat reached for him, rubbed his thumb against the curve where Nicki’s neck met his shoulder. He was tense with misery. Lestat would have given anything to lift it from his shoulders. Why could Nicki not see himself the way Lestat saw him? His beauty, his talent, his worthiness.

Nicki rolled his shoulders, dislodging Lestat’s hand and moving out of reach. He would not let himself be consoled. His voice, when he spoke, was bitter and malicious.

“Things are easy for you, Lestat. They always have been. It’s not like that for the rest of us.”

Lestat thought of his father’s hands around his neck. He thought of handing his scripts and his mother’s letters to Nicki to read to him. He thought of the steam that came off the unspooling intestines of his precious mastiff as the wolves ripped open its belly. He thought of Magnus undoing the laces of his breeches, tugging them down as he sobbed and struggled to get away.

He did not correct Nicki. He did not say anything at all. He simply walked out the door.

Lestat stalked his way through the city heading nowhere in particular. Waiting. Finally, he felt the familiar prickle at the back of his neck. Twin flashes of deep orange gleamed at him from a shadowed doorway. Lestat grinned, wide and challenging. A delicious burst of heat simmered in his belly, drowning out everything else. Under that unwavering gaze, he felt daring and flirtatious and mysterious—almost as if he were not the youngest son of the Lioncourts, not Nicki’s Lestat, not Magnus’s Wolfkiller. Someone else entirely. Someone new.

He got carried away. In the pleasure of the pursuit, Lestat forgot there was also danger. It was a mistake, arranging a nighttime stroll with Nicki. Lestat wanted to show him off, flaunt his lover where his admirer could see. As they walked, Lestat was all smiles and warmth and whispered endearments, even as his eyes roved the shadows, looking for any sign of his audience.

Lestat did not realize he had pushed the vampire’s patience too far until it was too late. A profound miscalculation.

At first the confrontation was exactly as Lestat had hoped. What a joy it was, to see the vampire clearly for the first time! Lestat could not stop imagining how much more beautiful he would be when unwrapped from his rags, without that curtain of filthy hair hiding his face. And what a treat, to hear his voice aloud for the first time! To learn his name after weeks of their game. Armand. Armand.

And then, all at once, it was no longer a game.

What humiliation, to be defeated so easily. Armand brought him to his knees with a lazy flick of his wrist, tossed him through the air like a doll. Lestat’s arrogant ease curdled into terror. How could he have known that it was possible to freeze time as Armand did? How much more did he not know? The depth of his ignorance hit Lestat with the force of his blow. He was a fool. Still, after all these years, all his mistakes, all his striving: an uneducated, blundering fool.

Armand took Nicki and left Lestat on the ground, screaming, weeping. Discarded him as if he were nothing.

Lestat would not accept that.

He stumbled in the same direction as Armand, towards the graveyard of les Innocents. It was not long before he found a straggler: a weaker vampire out on her own, a slip of a young woman with a long nose and freckles.

Lestat twisted her arm behind her, his grip merciless.

“Who are you people? Where have you taken Nicolas?”

She thrashed against him, spat on the toe of his boot.

“I will never answer a heretic’s questions. I serve Satan faithfully. I will tell you nothing.”

It was easier than he would’ve dreamed, to simply ask himself: what would my father do? He broke her arm, the crack of it bouncing off the tombstones around them. After his utter helplessness against Armand, what a pleasure it was, to hurt her.

She told him everything. The location of the entrance to the catacombs, the name of the coven, the strict laws they lived by. Children of Darkness. What kind of feeble, gullible idiots would choose to call themselves that?

Fine. If they wanted to be children, Lestat would come and correct them like children.

He let the vampiress go, told her to run along home and tell the coven master he was coming. Lestat did not think there was any point trying to surprise Armand: better to be anticipated.

Lestat glided the few blocks to his rooms, buoyed by fury, his feet hardly seeming to touch the ground. Bring your waistcoat to the grubs, won’t you? Lestat would show Armand he was not someone to be toyed with and discarded so easily. He changed into his finest waistcoat, abandoned his cravat, leaving his neck bare in defiance.

On the way to the catacombs, he broke into Notre Dame cathedral and stole a crucifix almost as tall as he was. He didn’t have a plan, didn’t even try to make one. He was probably marching right to his doom. But even if he was making a colossal fucking mistake, he was going to make it with style.

Lestat took Nicki to Magnus’ tower. He could not think where else to go. What if one of those lost, deluded vampires came looking for revenge? They must know where Lestat and Nicki lived by this point, where they worked. It wasn’t safe.

He drained a coachman a few blocks from les Innocents and laid Nicki gently on the floor of the carriage. Lestat removed the manacles at Nicki’s wrists and ankles, careful not to hurt him. His clothes were torn and filthy; his skin was paler than Lestat had ever seen it. A constellation of puncture marks spanned his neck and shoulders, mottled bluish purple bruises just starting to show around them. Lestat took off his cloak, tucked it gently around Nicki.

He is unharmed.

How many of them had fed from him? Had they done it all at once? Had they taken turns? Had Nicki been awake for it? Had he fought?

Lestat closed the door and drove the coach out of the city as quickly as he dared, afraid to jostle Nicki and cause him pain. Who knew if any of his bones were broken, if there were other injuries Lestat had not been able to see.

He is unharmed.

A ridiculous lie to tell, with Nicki lying right there, chained and bloody. Armand had sounded so earnest, as if he truly believed the words. Lestat wanted to be furious with him. He wanted the clean purity of rage and the simplicity of a villain to blame. But it would not come. All he felt, as the lights and noise of the city faded behind them, was nauseating guilt.

Lestat did not often dwell on his own poor choices. He did what he believed was best in the moment—often without a great deal of forethought—and dealt with the consequences, whatever they might be. An easy philosophy to champion when the punishment landed on him alone. But this time it had fallen on Nicki.

And it had all happened because of him. Try as he might, Lestat could not avoid acknowledging it. He had paraded Nicki in front of Armand, a deliberate provocation to a deadly predator. He had encouraged Armand’s obsession as if it were a harmless human flirtation, without a single thought for where it might lead. He had returned to Nicki after his turning and lied to his face day after day, simply so he could pretend it had not happened. He had been too weak to fight Magnus off, too weak to prevent himself from being made into a monster.

(He remembered—as the tower loomed against the night sky ahead, outlined by the snowy drifts on the battlements—the thought that had come into his head the first time Magnus laughed and shoved him to the floor. I am being punished for my life.)

Intolerable, to go on feeling that guilt. To wonder if Nicki had felt the same thing when Armand laid him out on that stone slab like a sacrifice or a feast. Lestat pushed it from his mind.

He still could not believe how easy it had been, storming beneath les Innocents and scattering the coven like autumn leaves. Too easy. Why had Armand not fought back? Lestat would have stood little chance against him, even without help from the other coven members. Why had he sat there, unquestioning and calm, and watched Lestat destroy his entire life?

Then again, from what Lestat could see, it hadn’t been much of a life at all. Lestat’s thoughts drifted back to that chamber in the catacombs. Cold stone, flickering firelight, soot, refuse, tradition, despair. It reminded him, inescapably, of his father’s castle. Some places had a malice to them, an evil seeping from the very stones. How long had Armand lived down there, chained to the coven by faith or duty or fear? Was that why he had hunted Lestat with such stamina, the same way Lestat used to go off hunting in the mountains to avoid being at home?

Lestat knew it was only luck that saved him from a similar captivity. He could have been monk cloistered in the mountains praying to a God that did not exist. Could have been a youngest son, growing more silent with each passing year, playing chess with his father. Could have been another corpse on Magnus’ floor, cast aside for some tiny flaw, rotting meat.

During their chase, he had assumed Armand was the master of his own fate. Someone ancient and wise, dominant and deliberate, in possession of the answers to all the questions in the world. Now, though…

Lestat had seen his face, staring down at the broken figure of Jesus. It was as if a mask had slipped, and underneath the façade of the stoic coven master was a lost child, baffled and hurt.

The tower looked just as he remembered it. Lestat carried Nicki up to the room where Magnus had brought him every night. He laid him gently on the straw bed, not letting himself look around the room, not letting himself remember. Nicki was shivering, tiny tremors wracking his limbs. Instinctually, Lestat clutched him to his chest. It was only when Nicki’s shivering worsened that he realized his mistake. He had no warmth to give any longer. Lestat let him go, covering him with his cloak again and focusing on building a fire in the hearth.

There were only a few hours left before dawn. Lestat kept himself busy during them, finding what comforts for Nicki he could. There was food and wine in a storeroom—kept no doubt for Magnus’ victims. He laid it out, remembering how hungry he had been after he was fed on. There were chests full of old clothes, extravagant velvet tunics and embroidered capes. Lestat picked the softest items, bundling them up as a pillow, heaping the rest onto Nicki for warmth.

A fragment of memory bubbled up, unwanted, unbidden. Magnus, biting his own thumb, using his blood to close Lestat’s wounds. Hand shaking, Lestat mirrored the gesture, pressed the bloody pad of his thumb against one of the punctures in Nicki’s skin. It closed before his very eyes. Lestat repeated the process on the rest, then forced himself to examine Nicki for any other injuries. He found none, caught himself just before he murmured a prayer of thanks.

Lestat remained alert for any sign of pursuit, listening for footfalls on the little lane leading up to the tower. None came.

Eventually, he could no longer deny the lightening of the sky near the horizon, the torpor that was creeping into his limbs as sunrise approached. Lestat pulled the door to the tower chamber closed and, after a moment’s hesitation, locked it from the outside.

The look in Nicki’s eyes when Lestat returned the next night was hell. It was worse than anything had ever been: worse than the wolves; worse than Magnus’ scream as he burned; worse than Lestat’s first victim going still in his arms; worse than the times he woke up and, just for a split second, thought he was still human.

Nicki was wild, mad, waving his arms, flecks of spittle on his chin.

“You’re one of them! You’ve been one all this time! You lied to me! Traitor! How could you keep it from me! How could you deny me!”

Lestat had braced himself for fear when he awoke in Magnus’ coffin and heard Nicki shouting and beating his fists against the locked door. He had prepared a dozen soft reassurances that he would never, ever hurt Nicki the way the coven had. He had blinked back tears, playing it out in his mind. He would not beg. He would simply ask if it were possible for Nicki to still love him like this. To love him as a monster.

But Nicki wasn’t afraid of him—at least, not primarily. He was jealous.

Lestat had been able to keep the memories at bay the night before, his guilt and fear for Nicki’s life drowning everything else out. No longer. Even as Nicki raged, Lestat saw Magnus in the corners of his vision, heard the rasp of his cruel laughter, felt the crushing cold weight of him.

“I would have shared anything with you, anything I possessed! Why didn’t you give the power to me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Nicki’s hair had fallen free of its ribbon, hanging loose over his shoulders. His face, more familiar to Lestat than his own, was twisted into a mask of fury. His shoulders heaved with every breath as he waited for Lestat’s answer.

How Lestat loved him. He loved the callouses on his fingers, the shape of his ears, the patch of hair leading down from his belly to his cock, the birthmark behind his right knee, his wiry muscle and the places he was soft. Every part of his body was known to Lestat. He had learned to love with that body, learned how to touch it, learned how his own body liked being touched. He had fallen asleep with his head resting on top of that narrow chest, listening to the beat of Nicki’s heart, imagining their entire lives together.

He could not conceive of a world without Nicki in it.

“Answer me, Lestat!”

The truth, too awful to utter: Because it is not a bauble to be shared. Because he took me and raped me and murdered me and made me a monster and I did not think you would believe me if I told you.

He had not been able to say it. Now, looking back, Lestat wondered if it had been cowardice. Should he have trusted Nicki? He had not given him a chance to believe it.

Could he have prevented this, if he had just been honest?

Nicki knew that vampires were real now. No excuse left to justify his silence. He had to share some part of it and make Nicki understand. At first, the words would not come. He felt the ghost of Magnus’ hand around his throat, choking him. Lestat closed his eyes, breathing through the ache.

“I didn’t want this.”

He crossed his arms over his chest tightly, as if he could keep himself from breaking apart with the strength of them alone. There was a hot pressure behind his eyes, tears aching to be shed. He held them back.

“I thought if I kept it from you, I could go on as if it had not happened. I—I tried. I said no. I fought. Right until the very end. With my last breath, I told him no.”

Nicki laughed.

“You’re such a fool, Lestat. You always were.”

Lestat felt the fracture in his chest. It was just as it had been with Augustin: an irreparable rupture. He felt the moment his love for Nicki guttered out like a candle. A puff of air, a laugh and two simple sentences, and it was gone.

Nicki was speaking again. Lestat caught only phrases—sublime evil and you failed to see and the power you possess—but meaning evaded him. He was distracted by the fact that he had stopped being Lestat. He didn’t know what he was. Some cold creature, impenetrable, wrapped in a carapace.

What did it matter? What did any of it matter, really?

The creature spoke. “Fine. If you truly want it, come here.”

Chapter Text

Lestat didn’t know what brought him back to the catacombs. His business there was done, and there were so many other tasks requiring his attention. He should be at the theatre, explaining his and Nicki’s absence, helping to find temporary replacements. He should visit that attorney he’d hired, Roget, and figure out what to do with the fortune Magnus had left him. He should write to his mother and ask after her health. He should be at the tower tending to Nicki.

Nicki.

He had been near catatonic ever since Lestat turned him four days ago. He would hardly move and had not spoken a single word; Lestat was forced to drag in victims for him. The first time he pricked a man’s throat and guided the wound to Nicki’s lips, he’d feared Nicki would refuse the blood. It was a relief when he heard the wet sucking sound of Nicki feeding. After he’d drunk his fill, Nicki merely rolled over to face the wall and lay still.

Lestat kept waiting for the guilt to come; all he felt was cold, brittle resentment. Nicki had asked—demanded—as if the Dark Gift were his by right. He had had a choice. Was Lestat supposed to sympathize, now that he regretted his decision? Where was Nicki’s sympathy when Lestat had needed it?

He almost wished he’d let Armand kill him before all the lies came tumbling down around them—before Nicki learned that he was a vampire and Lestat learned that Nicki had hated him all along.

He’d seen Nicki’s memories as he drained him, watched their entire life together through Nicki’s eyes. Hundreds of missed details and misread moments. At first, Nicki’s flirtation with Lestat had been a mere tactic to disappoint his family—one of his many spiteful little rebellions. Then, after their escape to Paris, Nicki had sought only ruin and annihilation. All Lestat’s cheerful attempts to wring joy and safety out of squalor infuriated him. Lestat watched Nicki endure his presence as if it were a singular martyrdom to be near him, smiled at by him, touched by him. He saw Nicki feign contentment as his heart grew harder and harder with each passing year.

He discovered, with shock, Nicki’s habitual infidelity—affairs with other actors at Renaud’s, anonymous encounters with strangers, money from their small earnings spent on whores who would listen to his mocking impressions of Lestat as they fucked, forcing a laugh or two. It was not simply that Nicki was unhappy. His dissatisfaction increased proportionally to Lestat’s sense of hope and well-being. As if Nicki felt moral outrage that Lestat would dare enjoy a world he found so intolerable. He watched memories in which Nicki tossed letters from Gabrielle into the fire before Lestat ever saw them—just on a whim, out of pique.

Nicki despised Lestat—who he was and what he believed—down to the very core. It was all ruined, now. No memory of the two of them above suspicion. A spreading stain stretching over nearly half his mortal life.

Lestat had not stopped looking after him, but neither could he stand the sight of him.

He wanted to be rid of his responsibilities, his burdens, for just a little while. To feel something other than obligation or dread.

Without consulting his mind, Lestat’s feet carried him along the path to Les Innocents, down the stairs and into the flickering orange light of the catacombs. Abandoned now—but not entirely.

Lestat saw him, a pitiful creature, swaying and chanting to himself. It was a dismal view; Armand was barefoot, ashes and blood caked all the way up his calves. His shirt was ludicrously large, hanging off his thin frame. Stolen from a victim, no doubt. It made him look sickly, frail, small. A child wearing his father’s clothes.

Lestat watched Armand dispassionately flick a cut into his own wrist and bring it up to his mouth to drink. The sight shocked him—not in its violence, but in the intense shudder of arousal it sent down his spine. He was sure the act would have stirred nothing but disgust in him if he were still a mortal man. But he was not human, and his vampiric body had its own ideas about how to react. Lestat watched him from the shadows, entranced. He could smell Armand’s blood, unlike any human’s he’d ever tasted. His mouth was dry, his fangs descending without permission.

He must have made some sound to betray his presence. Armand turned, and Lestat wondered for a moment if he should run. Armand had not stopped him from taking back Nicki and dispersing his followers—but would he punish him for it, after the fact?

Armand merely stared at him, bleak and lost. How beautiful he looked in the wavering torchlight, with his rich brown skin and the long column of his throat bare.

“Are there others down here, still?”

“The coven is no more. My followers are gone.”

His voice was hollow and dry; he gestured with a lazy sweep of his hand. In the center of the chamber lay the remains of a pyre. Lestat had not noticed it there before. He squinted at it, not understanding Armand’s meaning until the firelight glinted off something buried in the ashes. He took a few steps closer to see.

There were multiple small points reflecting the light. After a moment, Lestat understood in an awful rush what they were—buttons, buckles, a few half-melted hairpins.

Throat too tight for speech, he turned to face Armand again. Magnus had built his pyre in advance; not ten minutes passed between the monster forcing his blood down Lestat’s throat and hurling himself into the roaring flames. Lestat hadn’t even understood what was happening. He had watched it all, lying on his back, paralyzed with shock after the final, irrevocable violation. He had listened to Magnus screaming as his petrified body died around him.

Had these former acolytes gone the same way? Thrown themselves into the fire in despair over the truth Lestat revealed to them? Or had they been the ones that Armand punished—for daring to leave, or else for staying all those years, trapped alongside him?

Lestat found that he didn’t care.

“Will others come?”

Armand shrugged listlessly, “There’s been no word from the Roman Coven in decades. The Old Ways are finished. You were right.”

“Of course I was.”

Blood still oozed from Armand’s wrist, running down the palm of his hand, dripping from his fingertips into the dust. The sight of it made Lestat’s fangs ache. He took a step closer. He wasn’t sure what his face must look like in that moment, but he saw the change come over Armand as he approached. Watched his little mouth part softly, his eerie eyes go heavy-lidded with lust.

Lestat didn’t know what he was doing. He shouldn’t be here. But Armand’s words rang in his head, clear as the day he’d heard them from the stage. I can teach you.

How he longed to learn.

What would it be like, to drink from another of his own kind? Armand offered no resistance when Lestat lifted his still-bleeding wrist. A kiss to the back of his hand and then Lestat brought the wound to his mouth. He sank his teeth in deep, felt Armand’s blood flooding over his tongue. It was exquisite. Lestat could not hold back his panting breaths or restrain the jolts and shivers that seized his body.

And the sound that Armand made—all the more delicious for how clearly he tried to swallow it back!

In the flickering torchlight, Armand’s irises were the exact same color as the carnelian brooch his mother sold to pay for his escape to Paris. When he was much younger, Lestat used to sneak into his mother’s empty room and look at her jewels. It was not their value that fascinated him, or their history. It was their beauty alone: the bright hues of the stones, their polished facets reflecting the light, the intricate golden filigrees. All that delicacy and finery. He would stare at them in their box, reaching in and stroking them with one careful fingertip.

He knew it was wrong to love them. How many times had his father taught him, with his eyes and with his fists? Lestat should not delight in pretty things. He should not love music or perfume. He should not feel tender attachment to animals. He should not weep like a woman. He should not let his eyes linger on the other boys in the village.

When Armand brought a hand up to Lestat’s face, he leaned into the touch. He felt as if he could stand there for hours, just drinking in Armand’s beauty. How he longed to polish him like one of those stones, to wipe away grime and grit, to touch him until he shone. He felt drunk on Armand’s blood, the taste of it lingering in the back of his mouth.

Then Armand gripped Lestat by the chin and tilted his face to one side, for better access to his neck. A simple gesture, casually possessive in a way that made Lestat’s heart stutter and his cock twitch. Armand’s fangs slid in, a sharp sweet pinch; then the heat and warmth of that mouth against his skin. Drinking from him.

Armand did not drink from him the way Magnus had—hard, relentless pulls, drawing the blood from him with force. He was gentle, almost prim. He let Lestat’s heart do the work of moving the blood, taking it only at the pace that it came to him. Dainty little suck, then a series of quick licks over the wound, keeping it clean, soothing the sting, before another small sip.

It felt good.

Lestat swayed, clutching at Armand’s too-large shirt for balance. He might have groaned—he wasn’t entirely sure. Armand drank and Lestat panted, dazed and overwhelmed, drifting on wave after wave of pleasure. It went all the way through him, from his toes to the crown of his head. Armand could kill him like this, drain him dry like some inconsequential mortal, and Lestat would not even care.

A small wet pop as Armand unlatched his mouth from Lestat’s neck. His breath was hot against the sensitive torn skin, “You would not die. Did Magnus truly teach you nothing at all?”

Amusement in Armand’s voice: the ghost of a laugh. It was the first time Lestat had heard him sound remotely happy. He would have been glad, were it not at his expense.

Lestat took a step back, his pride stinging. “Everything I know, I have taught myself.” He meant to say it neutrally, but the bitterness leached through.

What was he even doing here? Why had he thought this would be any different? He should leave.

Then, the strangest sensation. A pressure in his mind, like fingers sifting through his memories, handling them gently, pulling this or that moment forward.

His delight when he arrived at the monastery, knowing that he could belong here, that he would matter enough to warrant shaping and instruction. His despair when his father hauled him onto the horse, abducting him back home. His unspeakable loneliness seeing his mother read, her head bent, her back towards him—as unreachable to him as the meaning of the marks on the pages. His emptiness, watching Magnus’ skin blacken and curl in the fire, the senselessness of it, the unthinkable cruelty. To make him this thing and then abandon him.

Armand cupped Lestat’s face again, those long elegant fingers wiping a tear from his cheek.

“How are you doing that? Stop it!”

The pressure in his mind lifted, but Armand did not stop touching him. Lestat could not help leaning into it, nuzzling his cheek against Armand’s palm.

“I’m sorry I laughed. I see now. No one has cared to teach you anything, have they, my child?”

The words were so simple, yet they flayed him open. It was true, after all. No one had cared enough to do it. No one had loved him enough. What was the point in trying to argue? He had no refuge left in vanity or denial. Armand had looked into his mind and seen for himself what Lestat was. Unloved. Unlovable.

Shuddering, Lestat closed his eyes and shook his head.

Armand shushed him as if he really were a child, wiping away the fresh tears that spilled from the corners of his eyes. The tenderness of it only twisted the knot of agony in Lestat’s chest tighter. Why was Armand being so gentle? Why wasn’t he laughing all the louder, now that he knew the truth?

Nicki would have.

The first brush of Armand’s lips against his startled Lestat. His eyes were still shut; he did not see Armand lean in. But it was a moment’s shock only. Then he was kissing back, lips parting on a sigh. He could taste his own blood in Armand’s mouth.

The kiss did not last long. Armand pulled back just far enough to whisper:

“I will instruct you.”

They would begin right away—the Mind Gift, first.

“It will be easier to practice on mortals.” Armand dug around in a pile of tattered clothing on the floor. He pulled on a muddy pair of workman’s boots, donned a threadbare vest that was 80 years out of fashion. Lestat watched him, wondering what it would take to coax him to a tailor. He waited while Armand tied his cravat, haphazard and uneven. Lestat’s hands itched to correct it—or better still, to strip everything off him.

Once he was dressed, Armand stared at the steps leading out of the catacombs as if he were afraid, making no move towards it.

“What is it?” Lestat asked, his impatience ill-concealed. He could not tolerate further delay, nor understand Armand’s trepidation. Was the prospect of teaching him really so daunting? When he had offered, Armand had seemed confident. Eager.

Armand’s words came slowly, something distant about them. “If I leave now…I don’t think I’ll ever come back.”

Lestat shrugged. “So don’t come back. Who would want to? You said yourself the coven has ended. Why are you still down here in this stinking crypt?”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

How could he be so powerful, Lestat wondered, and at the same time so very like a child? He spoke of finding a new place to live as if it were a foreign and insurmountable task. (But then, perhaps it was to him. What had his mortal life looked like? Just how long had he been entombed there, beneath Les Innocents?)

“You know where my rooms are. Use them for a while, until you find somewhere of your own.”

Lestat pulled the key from the inner pocket of his frock coat, tossing it down to Armand as he began to climb the stairs. He did not have to look over his shoulder to know Armand was following.

“We can walk there while you teach me. I need to collect a few things, anyway.”

Well, one thing, really: Nicki’s violin. Perhaps Lestat could coax him out of his trance with it. Had Nicki even noticed his absence yet? Lestat pushed the thought from his mind.

He led Armand out of the crypt and back into the world.

Despite his ignorance, Lestat caught on quickly. After just a few tries, he could easily single out a particular mortal on the street and read their surface thoughts. A few more blocks and he could dig deeper, looking through their memories and reading their emotions.

“You’re a fast learner.” Armand’s voice was warm and pleased. Lestat tried to ignore the way the praise sent a shiver straight down his spine. He felt Armand’s eyes on him; he was not sure he’d concealed it as well as he would’ve liked.

“A good thing, since I’m beginning the race from so far behind.”

Armand tilted his head, coming to a pause. Beside them was a bookshop, closed for the night, its small window filled with beautifully-bound novels.

“I could teach you this, too,” a languid gesture of his hand indicating the books, “If you desire it.”

Lestat turned to look at him, eyes narrowing. Was Armand mocking him? But there was no pity or disdain in his expression. Just an affable curiosity, as if it were the most ordinary offer in the world.

What could he say? Yes was not a big enough word for the hope igniting in his chest. For the first time since he had been turned, Lestat felt that perhaps it was not so bad, staring down eternity. He would have so much time to learn. So much time to discover new things, to seize at the happiness and freedom he had spent so much of life assuming would be forever out of his reach.

He did not say yes or thank you or I desire it more than words could say. Instead, he grabbed Armand by the cravat and pulled him into a kiss. It was nothing like their last one, all gentleness and understanding. This kiss was messy and urgent, Lestat’s tongue urging Armand’s mouth open, his teeth catching at Armand’s lip and pulling.

A laugh and a loud whistle split the silence. The two of them broke apart, turning to face the pair of jeering drunkards a few storefronts down. One of them made a crude gesture with his hips.

— One each?

— One each.

They were gorged with blood and tipsy on secondhand wine when they reached the building that housed Lestat and Nicki’s garret. Armand was still instructing, in spite of the unsteadiness that had led him to loop an arm over Lestat’s shoulders.

“There are other uses of the Mind Gift than mere reading.”

“Is that so?”

And then an image blossomed in Lestat’s mind. It was a place he had never been: dark green water glittering in canals, reflecting the light of the bright afternoon sun like scattered diamonds; palaces of pale stone rising directly from the water; beautiful boats weaving between them; the high, distant chiming of bells; voices chattering and laughing in what sounded like a dialect of Italian.

Then, as quickly as it came, the impression vanished.

“You put that in my head?”

“A memory,” Armand explained.

“How?”

As they wound their way up the six flights of stairs, Armand taught him. He sent Lestat two more images as he explained—one of Venice at night, warm golden light spilling from the high windows of the palazzos; one of an impossible grove, its trees covered in tiny curling golden leaves, their thin branches bending under the weight of rubies the size of pomegranates.

“It doesn’t have to be real. It’s easier, with a memory, but it works as long as you can picture it.”

Lestat tried to send an image back. He chose something simple: a memory of his first pair of mastiff puppies, tussling on his bed. Armand let out a small sigh, all contentment and pride. He was smiling. Lestat had not seen him do that before.

“You really are quite the pupil, Lestat.”

Lestat felt hot all over; it was not the wine.

When they reached the rooms, Lestat locked the door behind them. A glance from Armand lit the wood in the fireplace, laid out but never kindled. The candles scattered around the room ignited one by one. Would Armand teach him this, next? To conjure fire from nothing? How many more marvelous abilities could be opened to him?

He had worried his thoughts would be full of Nicki as soon as they crossed the threshold, but all he could think of was Armand: the taste of his blood; his careful gestures; his soft expression of approval; his warm low voice saying Lestat’s name, praising him.

Lestat wanted more of it. More attention, more praise, more Armand. The impulse to show off for him was overwhelming. A wicked idea sprang into his mind and Lestat acted upon it without hesitation or consideration.

It was a longer memory he offered this time. It began at the theatre the night they first met. He let Armand see what he had looked like through Lestat’s eyes, that first glimpse of him from a distance. Ethereal and strange and so very enticing. But Lestat gave him much more than that. He let Armand follow once he departed the stage, showing only the snippets that he would need to track the passage of time. Flash of him in his dressing room wiping the paint from his face. Flash of Nicki saying he was staying behind to drink with the other musicians. Flash of walking back home through the quiet streets. Flash of climbing the long stair.

And then, when the memory version of himself reached his empty garret, Lestat left the rest to unfurl without interruption. He let Armand watch as he stumbled inside, hands already on the fastenings of his breeches before he had finished kicking the door closed behind him. Staggering to the bed and falling onto it face-first, lifting up his hips just enough to slip a hand beneath them and down the front of his smallclothes. Groaning into the sheets, loud and unabashed, his mouth open wide, hair spilling across his face.

Lestat saw it in Armand’s eyes, the moment he realized what he was seeing. The dawning understanding that the first time they met, Lestat had barely made it to his room before he was touching himself, thinking of him.

“Lestat—” Armand choked out, his voice suddenly hoarse. Lestat did not reply; he kept the memory running in their minds. He wanted Armand to hear every hitched breath and ragged moan. He wanted him to see how he’d pleasured himself, to watch how his hips had pressed forward needily with every stroke. Lestat wanted Armand to know all of it was because of him.

Lestat watched Armand intently as the scene played out. His eyelids had gone heavy again, his mouth falling open. He was breathing fast, standing utterly still—save for his hands. They did not cease moving; Armand twisted them together tightly, pulled them apart a moment later, rubbed his fingers along his palms, clenched his fists. All the movements seemed utterly unconscious and beyond his control, as if Armand had displaced his entire body’s store of restless lust into them.

Lestat could not tear his eyes away. He wanted to put those fingers in his mouth. Thought about it so intently, in fact, that his concentration on the memory faltered. The recollection stuttered and vanished, a new image replacing it. It was far more fragmentary than the memory, a blur of disconnected impressions. Lestat’s lips wrapped around two of Armand’s fingers, sucking reverently; Armand’s face above him, half-obscured by Lestat’s eyelashes, smiling down with that benevolent, proud-teacher look; Lestat’s hands sliding up Armand’s thighs, feeling the muscles all tense and trembly beneath them; reaching to undo the buttons as he hummed around Armand’s fingers, blissful, wanton…

“Lestat.”

Armand’s voice was firmer this time. The wispy fantasy evaporated. Had he lost concentration, or had Armand cut him off? Lestat wasn’t sure. Without the illusory sounds and images held between them, the room seemed impossibly still and silent. A powder keg ready to go off.

Lestat raked his eyes up and down Armand, not bothering to disguise his hunger. Armand was visibly trembling. Aroused, too—Lestat could see where his cock was straining against the front flap of his breeches. Good. He had so wanted to impress.

Lestat did not think—did not question his own actions for one second—as he closed the distance between them. Armand stepped away from him, his back bumping up against the plaster wall.

How different he looked, here in this clean room, in the light of a proper fire. So many details that Lestat had not noticed before. The faintest dark shadow around his mouth and jaw, an outline of where his beard would grow. The jut of his Adam’s apple. The shape of his fangs, kittenish and razor sharp. Lestat remembered their sting. He wanted to feel them again, on his neck, his stomach, his inner thighs…

“So, what do you think? Am I a prodigy?”

Armand let out a strangled wordless sound; Lestat moved closer still, mere inches between their bodies. He rested his hands on the wall at either side of Armand’s shoulders, bracketing him in. Easy enough for Armand to get away if he really wanted to. He wouldn’t even need vampire powers to do it: a solid knee to Lestat’s groin would do the job.

Armand did not try. He stared at Lestat’s mouth, panting and mesmerized. It was intoxicating, being looked at like that—like Armand would starve if Lestat did not touch him. Nicki had never looked at him like that. Not even in their earliest days.

Lestat remained where he was, standing much too close but not quite making contact. No need to rush. He took more care this time, shaping the images carefully in his own mind, before he slid them into Armand’s.

Nothing too complex, but Lestat was rather proud of the level of detail he achieved. A pretty moving picture of himself, completely bare, bent over the single rickety table at the center of the room. He gripped the edges of it as Armand fucked him, slow and deep, one hand on his hip and the other on his shoulder. Positioning him, pulling him back onto his cock, changing the angle. Moving Lestat just where he wanted him.

In the real version of the room, a loud whimper spilled from Armand’s lips.

“Lestat, wait—”

Armand’s voice was even more gorgeous than Lestat could have imagined right then, all strained with need. None of the composed, otherworldly coven master here. His pupils were huge, his hands twisting up fistfuls of his too-long sleeves. Lestat could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“Wait?” Lestat echoed, all coy sweet innocence and mirth.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so turned on. This was so much fun. He had always loved to tease: what a joy to learn a whole new way to do it.

Lestat felt playful. Incorrigible. He altered the scene he was projecting into Armand’s mind. In the vision, Armand pulled almost all the way out of Lestat and stilled his hips. Lestat whined in protest, writhing. He tried to push back and keep fucking himself, but Armand’s hands held him still.

Shameless urgency in his voice as he begged: ‘Please, please, Armand, I need it—’ Lestat had to use his imagination about what Armand’s chuckle might sound like, but he was much too aroused to worry about perfect accuracy. In the vision, Armand said, ‘Since you asked so nicely.’ Then he began pounding into Lestat once more, fucking him fast and hard, rocking the table with every thrust.

The real Armand let out a pathetic sound, his hips jerking forward in an involuntary mimicry of the scene, desperate little thrusts into thin air. Chasing for a friction that was not there. Lestat could see a damp spot spreading where the tip of his cock jutted against the fabric. Could he make him come like this? Not a single touch—just a truly spectacular show?

Armand’s head lolled to the side, his filthy hair hanging in front of his face like a curtain. Lestat pushed it back and was rewarded by the sight of Armand’s flushed cheeks, his lowered fangs and slack mouth, his pleading frantic expression.

“Wait, Lestat, I’m so—I don’t—please, I can’t—”

“Mmm, you can’t what?” Lestat purred. He hooked a single finger in Armand’s poorly-tied cravat, deliberately not touching him, and began to pull it loose. It came undone easily, and Lestat let it slither from his neck and fall to the floor between them

Armand’s breath hitched, an edge of panic to it, now. All at once, Lestat’s pornographic show vanished, crushed under the weight of Armand’s intention. He forced a different memory into Lestat’s mind, jagged and raw.

An older man (Santino, he somehow simply knew the name) crouched in a filthy cell amidst half a dozen rotting, torn-up corpses. No, one of them was not a corpse. The heap of rags and flesh moved, pulling itself into a sitting position. Armand. He was gaunt, pale, his lips cracked, his eyes standing out huge on his sunken face.

Lestat watched, heart thudding, as Santino whispered to Armand that if he wanted the torture to stop, if he wanted to feed, all he needed to do was affirm that he was Satan’s child and God’s instrument on Earth. He must swear to punish mortals, to remind them of evil so they could choose holiness. Armand was a wretched monster, Santinto said, a beast who existed only for this and must forswear all else.

Above all, Santinto said, he must swear not to indulge his own wicked flesh. He stroked Armand’s hollow cheek, ran his thumb across his chapped lips. ‘You remember what we do to lustful heretics, don’t you, Armand?’ Another memory interrupting the first. Howling, the shrieks and wails of dying children, the pounding of kettledrums and the stench of burning flesh. Fear and fear and fear and fear, paralyzing Armand.

Santino’s pleased little smile, as he pressed his thumb into Armand’s frozen mouth.

His voice was low and gentle as he told Armand it was good that he remembered and understood the consequences should he slip. He must live by the rules. He must not be tempted by luxury and lasciviousness. Must not take lovers, must never allow anyone to see him bare. He must not even touch himself, or glance at the thing between his legs, for fear that it would inspire thoughts of sin.

In the memory, Armand sobbed around Santino’s thumb, too weak and hungry to even produce tears. He nodded his submission, shuddering and mute. When Santino removed his hand finally, Armand threw his arms around his neck and clung to him like a child, shaking with relief and gratitude.

The memory ended and Armand’s voice was in Lestat’s head, pleading for him to understand.

—I have to obey. I can’t break the rules. I can’t.

Lestat swallowed back his shock and revulsion. He wished that Armand had not shown him this horribly intimate thing and interrupted his frivolous game. Lestat had not come here for more misery! He didn’t want to feel for Armand; he didn’t want to feel anything. He wanted Armand to fuck him until he couldn’t remember his own name. He needed escape, not further complications.

Not connection.

But there was nothing to be done, now. The shock faded quickly, replaced by an almost overwhelming rush of understanding. Until this very moment, Armand had been a cipher to him—an alluring mystery, opaque and unknowable. But now, Lestat saw him.

Armand in that cell, curled up between the bodies. Lestat in the tower, lying amongst the corpses. Santino, Magnus. Powerful men, twisting them into whatever shape pleased them. Helplessness, terror, abjection. Surviving it. Carrying on.

Another thought—he would not be like Nicki, greeting a painful confession with cold indifference.

“You can.”

Armand blinked in surprise, confusion written across his face. Lestat reached out and took hold of his hand, pressed a kiss to his palm. Armand’s breaths were fast and shallow, an edge of neediness audible on every exhale. Even after that awful memory he was still hard and his whole body shook at the slightest touch.

“You said it before. No more coven. No more coven rules. You’re never going back there, remember?”

Lestat waited for the truth of it to penetrate Armand’s remembered terror and arousal. Armand nodded slowly, his eyes round and wide. Unsure still, waiting for the rest. Listening for his new instructions.

Lestat’s sympathetic sense of connection twisted into a different kind of understanding—less vulnerable but more erotic. He grasped in a moment of surprising clarity how he should handle Armand.

Perhaps for Armand total freedom was too far a leap from the obedience he was accustomed to. It would be cruel to expect him to cross that gap in a single bound. He would need to be guided, to be led, step by step.

His voice silky and low, Lestat murmured, “And if permission is what you are waiting for…very well. Happy to provide it. I say that you can.”

A sound that was half-sob and half-moan spilled from Armand’s lips. His face was incredulous and full of hope, voice breaking as he asked: “I can?”

“You can.”

Lestat did not let go of Armand’s hand. He guided it down, slowly, deliberately. Armand offered no resistance. Lestat brought Armand’s hand to the front of his breeches, helped him cup himself through the fabric. Even that small gesture was enough to tear another sound from Armand—this one definitely a moan.

“Does that feel nice?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want more?”

“Yes, please—”

Lestat moved Armand’s hand, directing him to rub himself through his clothes in lazy strokes. Armand shuddered hard, his eyes fluttering closed. His hips bucked into the contact wildly; he wasn’t going to last long, Lestat could tell. Not a surprise, really. Hadn’t even touched himself for, what? Judging by the clothes on Santino and Armand in that memory, centuries. Lestat was surprised he hadn’t come already.

“Keep going,” he instructed, “Make yourself feel good.”

Armand nodded, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth. He kept touching himself after Lestat let go of his hand. Something about the sight of it drove the lust in Lestat to a fever pitch. Maybe it was the wonder in Armand’s eyes at something so simple. The way his tentative movements grew more confident, hesitation giving way to ease. Armand knew just how he liked it, Lestat could tell. He just needed to remember…

Lestat’s own cock throbbed. He wanted more.

“That’s enough, Armand. It’s my turn now.”

Shuddering, Armand stilled his hand, letting it fall to his side. Lestat did not keep him waiting. He undid the buttons on Armand’s breeches with unnatural, vampiric swiftness and pulled down the front flap. A smile curled the corner of his mouth when Lestat noticed how much cleaner Armand’s smallclothes were than his other garments.

Not for long.

Keeping eye contact, he sank gracefully to his knees. Theatrical, yes, but completely worth it, to see the awe come over Armand’s features.

“Lestat.” Armand exhaled his name like a prayer; he liked that very much.

He nuzzled at Armand’s cock through the thin fabric, his own arousal close to painful by this point. Armand whimpered, high and needy. Lestat breathed against the cloth, let Armand feel the heat of his exhalation before starting to mouth at him. There was no finesse to it, no technique. It did not matter. The moment Lestat closed his mouth over the head of Armand’s cock, tongue pressing flat against the damp fabric, Armand was curling forward with a loud cry, shaking from the force of his orgasm. Lestat kept sucking through it, humming with contentment as Armand jerked and spasmed. The coppery tang was unexpectedly pleasant.

Armand’s legs gave out; Lestat had to hold him up to keep him from falling. He twitched with little aftershocks, each one pulling a whimper from his lips. Once Armand had stopped trembling, his body relaxed and loose-limbed, Lestat rose to his feet and coaxed him over to the bed. He let himself be moved, dazed and pliant. As soon as Lestat helped him to sit, Armand flopped onto his back gracelessly, letting out a soft laugh. It was only in that moment of careless abandon that Lestat realized how deliberate and calculated the elegance of all Armand’s previous movements had been.

Armand had never looked so angelic as he did right then: smiling faintly, hair sticking to his forehead and neck with sweat, his whole body slack. He ran a hand along the surface of the bed, petting it in sluggish awe.

—Soft.

It had been an occasion for celebration, when Lestat finally saved up enough to purchase a bed. For years since their arrival in Paris, he and Nicki had slept on pallets on the floor. It was a humble thing, their bed: creaky and unadorned, the mattress cheap as they came. Barely tolerable. Certainly not worth astonishment.

When had been the last time Armand had lain on anything softer than stone? Lestat watched Armand’s beautiful hand running back and forth over the rough-spun blanket as if it were the finest silk, and he already knew the answer. It had been too long.

Armand smiled up at him in mute wonder. Lestat felt an unexpected rush of protectiveness for him—this little zealot he had freed from a lightless hole. Lestat wanted to keep him. He wanted to lavish him in pleasure and softness, pour such a deluge of joy into him that he forgot he had ever believed comfort was a sin.

Lestat bent down and kissed him; Armand kissed back with nothing short of reverence.

—How do you want to take me?

Even telepathically, Armand’s voice sounded slurred and euphoric. Such a strange way to word it. Lestat swallowed, shifting his weight. In the pit of his stomach, a trickle of dread leaked into his arousal, spreading on its surface like spilled oil.

Simpler when it was only anticipation and foreplay, images exchanged in their minds. Simpler, when he was the only one doing the touching, not a single button or knot of his own clothes undone. Now that they had reached this moment, Lestat wasn’t actually sure if he could go through with it. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened with Nicki: unwanted thoughts of Magnus, panic, humiliation, excuses.

He stalled. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Armand blinked up at him. It took several moments before he understood, and several more before a tangle of half-formed images tumbled from his mind into Lestat’s. In his post-orgasmic haze, Armand got some of the details wrong. Lestat’s bed was no fancy four-posted thing with red velvet curtains. Or was that an artistic embellishment? The version of himself that Armand imagined looked different—cleaner, understandably, but also perhaps a little younger. Lestat was not sure.

The pictures blurred into one another, a succession of scenarios: Armand sinking down onto him, head lolling back with ecstasy, Lestat’s hand tight around his throat, nails drawing blood; Armand on his knees, Lestat’s knuckles white from how hard he was twisting his hair, tears spilling from the corners of Armand’s eyes as he gagged on Lestat’s cock; Armand sprawled on the floor, Lestat’s boot grinding down onto his cock, moaning when Lestat spat directly onto his face; Armand on the bed again, face down and back arched, dozens of bleeding welts standing out vividly on his ass and thighs, Lestat’s hand shoving his face into the mattress as he fucked him ruthlessly.

“Oh, you are filthy, aren’t you?” Lestat said, eyes wide. Too wide.

He turned away, busied himself with removing his clothes. He didn’t want Armand to see his hands shaking. Didn’t want him to know how shocked and unsettled he was.

Whatever he had expected from Armand’s fantasies, it had not been this: each one laced with degradation and pain.

Lestat was a great deal less worldly than he liked to pretend. Everyone joked about the great debauchery of actors, but he had not taken anyone except Nicki to bed since he was 20 years old. The two of them had never been adventurous when it came to sex, and that had suited Lestat just fine. They satisfied one another and they were content. Who needed variety when they had love?

At least, that was what Lestat had thought.

It was the thought of Nicki’s infidelity that settled the matter in Lestat’s mind. He wasn’t going to run away from this. His pride would not allow it.

“I have something else in mind.”

Armand propped himself up on his arms, looking at Lestat with simple curiosity.

“Well…you’ve been a regular at Renaud’s these last few weeks. You know how I love putting on a show.”

Lestat hadn’t been sure if Armand would like the idea. The sight of his pupils dilating and his fangs dropping answered that question neatly. Buoyed by the response, Lestat slid off his unbuttoned shirt and waistcoat, draping them over the back of a chair.

Another idea drifted into his mind, unbidden and potent. Lestat sucked in a hissing breath.

Why not?

He pushed it along to Armand before he could lose his nerve. The idea was not an image, but a sound. Armand’s voice, proud and benevolent, murmuring praise. Good boy. Just like that. Look at you. You’re gorgeous…

His heart raced with a mix of eagerness and shame. He darted a glance over to Armand, unsure what he expected. Distaste? Judgment? Disappointment?

What he saw, instead, was fascination. Armand tilted his head to the side a fraction, looking at him as if he were some intricate and beautiful piece of clockwork. Lestat felt a whisper of contact in his mind, like when Armand had read his memories earlier. It was tentative, as if waiting for permission. Lestat hesitated, then gave a tiny nod.

Armand did not seem to be searching for particular moments in his mind, but for threads running through multiple memories. Lestat felt each thread as Armand pulled it free to examine it.

The loneliness of his childhood. His queasy lifelong certainty that there was something fundamentally wrong with him, that he would never fit the mold he was meant to fill. His isolation from the villagers because of his rank, from his family because of their disdain. His desperate wish that if he could just say the right thing, do the right thing—if he could just be good enough—that they would finally love him.

This was not what he had intended, stumbling up the staircase with Armand, tipsy and eager to fuck away his problems. He had not wanted to be laid open and studied like a specimen.

And yet, what a relief to be seen. To be known, down to his soul, without any room for doubt.

“You’re beautiful, Lestat. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on. I’ve thought that since the very first time I saw you. I knew why the audience all adored you. I adored you.”

Lestat kept his eyes locked with Armand’s, continuing to strip; he did his best to look haughty, as if the words had not pierced him to the bone. He rid himself of boots, hose, breeches. A moment’s hesitation only and his smallclothes followed. He did not take down his hair from its neat ribbon.

Lestat approached the bed, debating for a moment before settling himself with his back propped against the headboard. Armand reached out and touched him. Just a faint brush of his fingertips against Lestat’s knee, but he jerked away as if he’d been burned. His heart was hammering much too fast. He quickly forced a smile for cover, fake coy. He was a good actor; he probably just looked ticklish.

“Mmm, no audience participation for this show, I’m afraid.”

Armand’s face was unreadable to Lestat, but he did not object or ask any questions. Instead, he shifted on the bed, sitting up cross-legged, giving him even more space.

“Of course. My mistake.”

Lestat settled. It was just pre-show nerves; he had tackled those many times before. He bent down, retrieved the bottle of oil that they kept tucked beneath the bed. Close to empty. Buying more had been on his mental list of tasks, the day that he was taken. Lestat was surprised he even remembered that.

So many little reminders.

He put it from his mind and focused on Armand watching him. His eyes had changed color, Lestat realized. Not carnelian any longer, but tawny.

“I couldn’t see you properly in that memory.” The idea might not have been Lestat’s, but Armand was taking to his role like a natural. Lestat wondered if he’d ever been on stage. “Let me see, Lestat. Will you show me how you do it?”

Lestat shivered, hands slipping in his haste to pull the stopper from the bottle. He poured a little pool of oil into his palm and set the rest aside. His cock lay against his thigh, heavy and flushed with blood. Lestat took himself in hand with a slightly exaggerated sigh of relief. The oil was nice—they had indulged and bought a blend with a little clove oil mixed in. Not too much; that would have been too expensive. But enough to smell it.

At first, he merely played with himself a little—slicked himself up, cupped his balls, ran the tips of his fingers along his length. Armand’s eyes on him were hot and intent, unblinking. It would unnerve him, if it weren’t so erotic. Lestat bit back a moan when he finally started stroking himself in earnest.

“Don’t do that,” Armand coaxed, “I want to hear you. You have such a beautiful voice. French sounds lovely to me, when it comes from your lips. As if the words were shaped just for them.”

Lestat grinned, his fangs flashing. He twisted his hand on the next downstroke and moaned shamelessly, showily. He watched the way Armand’s throat bobbed and felt a hot shimmer of satisfaction in his gut. It was so good, commanding his attention like this. The intensity of Armand’s eyes on him made him feel powerful and real.

“I could hear you humming some nights, when I followed you. Do you like to sing? Would you sing for me, if I asked?”

“Yes.”

Lestat wanted to sing for him. Had the coven allowed any music, apart from their ritual drums, their morose chanting? When was the last time Armand had heard a song that brought tears to his eyes—sorrow or mirth? Lestat wanted to give that back to him.

He did not feel the touch of Armand’s mind against his, yet when he spoke, it was as if he’d read his thoughts.

“You like it when people are looking. I’m sure some would call it vanity, but I think I know the truth. It’s generosity. If they’re watching you, you can make them smile. You like pleasing people, don’t you?”

Lestat closed his eyes, a hard shudder running through him. He began to move his hand faster, the pressure inside him building as he admitted, “Yes.”

“And you like doing this, now, because you’re making me happy. So good for me.”

“Fuck. I—yes.”

It wasn’t only the words that were undoing him, but the fondness in Armand’s voice. Lestat opened his eyes once more, saw Armand’s expression of approval that encouraged without demanding.

Lestat wanted to be so very, very good for him.

“Lestat, you’re a wonder.”

Lestat was gasping for breath now, the sound of his breath layering in with the obscene sound of skin sliding on wet skin. He stopped worrying about putting on a perfect show and lost himself in the act of self-pleasure. He dug his heels into the bed for leverage and began fucking up into his hand. His stomach and thighs and ass were all deliciously tense, the heat of his building orgasm wiping away any lingering inhibitions.

“That’s it, just like that. So beautiful, so good.”

If he were not on the very edge of orgasm, Lestat would have been ashamed of the sound that spilled from his lips: needy, surprised, utterly vulnerable. He could come now, if he let himself. There was fluid leaking steadily from the tip of his cock, his entire body thrumming with electric sensation. But he held back, feet curling, face twisted with the effort of restraint.

“Armand, tell me—tell me—” He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what he needed to hear, to push him over the edge.

Armand knew.

“I’m proud of you, my sweet boy.”

Lestat threw his head back and came with a shout. He couldn’t remember the last time it had been like this: the orgasm wrung him out, seemed to go on and on, hot and sharp and utterly delicious. He spent all over his stomach and chest, bright spatters of red on his skin. He stroked himself through it, until the stimulation became too much; finally Lestat collapsed against the bed, boneless and effervescently happy.

He floated for a minute, too lost in bliss to really think of Armand. When his awareness returned, he realized Armand had not moved. He was sitting cross-legged at the very end of the bed, hands clasped in his lap. Lestat could smell his blood, saw that Armand had curled his fingers so tightly he’d pierced the skin.

Still doing as he’d been told; still not touching him.

In the afterglow, all his earlier fears seemed silly. Lestat projected an image into Armand’s mind in lieu of speaking: Armand unfolding himself and crawling up the bed, Lestat drawing him into his arms.

Armand scrambled to comply, almost losing his balance in his haste. Lestat grinned, feeling nothing short of triumphant as Armand burrowed into his chest, tucking his head under Lestat’s chin.

For some time neither of them spoke. Lestat held Armand as the sweat and blood cooled and dried on his skin. When the scratchy texture of Armand’s waistcoat began to annoy him, Lestat unbuttoned it and hauled it off. He tossed the thing to the floor with such visible contempt that he startled a giggle from Armand. Beautiful sound. He wanted to hear it a hundred more times.

Lestat remembered, belatedly, he was supposed to be fetching things to take back to the tower. The mere thought of peeling himself out of Armand’s warm arms to return to that place made his stomach turn. He could feel dawn approaching fast, a heaviness in his limbs that he did not wish to fight. He could probably make it in time, if he left right away.

But shouldn’t he get to have this? After everything he’d been through, didn’t he deserve one night of happiness for himself?

Lestat might still have gone back, impelled by the thought of Nicki all on his own. But just as he glanced down, mouth open to make his excuses to Armand, Lestat saw that he had fallen asleep tucked against his chest, nose pressed just beneath Lestat’s collarbone.

One night, Lestat told himself. One night for himself, and then he would fix all of it.

Chapter Text

As he lay in bed, held tight in Armand’s arms and watching the last splinters of sunset light fading on the wooden floor, Lestat made a list in his mind of all the things he’d denied himself for Nicki’s sake.

There was a shop on the route they walked from their rooms to Renaud’s that sold candied chestnuts—Lestat’s favorite. It was an indulgence they could not afford in the first few years; once their fortunes improved, Lestat would sometimes stop to buy a small bag. At least, until he noticed how it put a scowl on Nicki’s face. He’d stopped coming in the shop with Lestat, choosing to stay in the doorway, arms folded across his chest and irritation rolling off him like fog. The foul mood would linger, sometimes for hours. Lestat began to stop less and less. He told himself that he would simply go on his own, but he never seemed to pass that way except with Nicki.

By the time Magnus took him it had been over a year since he last stopped for chestnuts. Lestat bought himself a bag, after. The smell was still sweet, but they tasted like dust on his tongue.

Shortly before he turned thirty, Lestat had proposed finding a clerk to teach him to read and write. The expense would not be too much if they budgeted carefully. Nicki scoffed, Why waste our money on a superfluous expense? You have me. Isn’t that enough? Lestat had rushed to reassure Nicki that of course, it was enough. He talked himself into believing Nicki was right: no practical reason for it. A waste.

When the new harpsichord player at Renaud’s caught Lestat running his fingers idly over the keys and offered to give him lessons, Lestat turned him down at once. There had been a warmth in his tone that suggested perhaps it was not only the instrument he wanted Lestat’s hands on; besides, Lestat knew by then it was best not to encroach on any territory that Nicki believed belonged to him. Music was his. Lestat knew not to sing to himself as he swept the floors of their little garret, if Nicki was having a low day.

For how many years had Lestat prioritized Nicki’s fragile ego, his insecurity, his melancholy? How ferociously he had shielded Nicki from any criticism! Lestat had been his unquestioning supporter, his tireless defender. It had made him feel virtuous and big, looking after his lover, indulging him, fighting to make a life wherein Nicki could be comfortable and happy.

What a fool he’d been.

How many opportunities had he missed? How much joy had he squandered, how many years had he wasted, all to spend every ounce of his love on someone who scorned it? Nicki had never wanted happiness. He only wanted to lie down in the gutter and play the martyr.

If Lestat had known how few mortal days remained to him, how differently he would have chosen! He would have eaten candied chestnuts until he was sick. He would have taken those lessons and written letters to his mother in his own hand—how much more honest he could have been with her, without a mediator!

He would have sung at the top of his lungs whenever he wanted.

No more of that, Lestat decided. Never again would he play Cinderella’s stepsister, lopping off parts of himself to fit someone else’s impossibly small slipper. He had run away to Paris to escape that fate, but despite his grand act of rebellion he’d failed. He had again let himself be diminished—only Nicki’s tools were so different to his father’s he hadn’t even realized what was happening. Nicki exerted control not with a clenched fist but a trembling lip. How sinister it was, now that he looked back on it with some distance, this campaign of melancholy that Nicki waged against him. Lestat could not hope to fight back against it—not without making himself seem a selfish brute by comparison.

Well then, fine. Let him be unfeeling, negligent, a brute. At least he could say he came by it honestly.

From now on Lestat was going to be himself—fully, utterly, shamelessly. He was going to suck every last drop of happiness from the world, and damn anyone who tried to stop him.

He would not go back to the tower after all. There were little farms dotting the countryside all around Magnus’ tower; Nicki needn’t go far or search hard to find a meal. Time for him to start learning to take care of himself. He’d been coddled plenty—and Lestat had other ideas for the night.

He slipped from the bed, amused by the disappointed sound Armand made against the pillow. He reached out a clumsy, pawing hand, trying to draw Lestat back against him. Lestat grasped the hand and kissed it before letting go.

“I’ll be back soon, little devil.”

The trick was finding someone with the correct build. It did not need to be a perfect fit, of course. Just something close until they made arrangements with a tailor. It took an hour, but Lestat came across a suitable youth walking by the Seine. He was round-faced, plain-featured, but tall and slim; the deep red of that shirt would look much better against Armand’s dark skin.

Before today, it might have been a challenge to lure this boy back to his rooms. Lestat could have done it, of course—he’d gotten by with just his charm for many years. But that also would have meant the boy’s death and an inconvenient corpse. How much simpler, to open up his mind and peer inside. Lestat learned just enough to know what would work best. He implanted the idea in the mortal’s mind gently, like a gift: Wouldn’t it be lovely to let it all go? To strip down to nothing and dive into those lovely deep waters and swim, the way he’d swum in the ocean as a boy with his brothers?

“Here, I’ll hold them for you.”

No one near them on the street to comment on the strangeness of it: one man shucking off his shoes and clothes while another dutifully accepted each garment, draping it over his arm with a smug smile. Lestat didn’t even wait to hear the splash before he was turning his back, heading once more for the Ile de la Cité.

Armand had awoken in his absence. Lestat found him sitting cross-legged in the center of the room in between two mountains of books, pamphlets, papers, and sheet music—one to his left and one to his right. From the looks of it, he had pulled out every readable thing in the place and was methodically making his way through it all. Lestat watched him set down an old script to his right and pick up the book atop the stack to his left: a small, thick volume with gold lettering on its cover.

How had he had time to read so much? There must be ten novels to Armand’s right, at least a dozen political pamphlets of Nicki’s, countless old newspapers. But Armand read with unnatural speed, trailing his finger down one page, then another, then flipping forward, all in the span of seconds. His eyes were a blur as they flew over the words, his lips moving silently. It was all too clear he had not noticed Lestat’s entrance.

There was something unnerving about the greedy, indiscriminate way he devoured the books. It was not impatience, Lestat realized. Armand’s shoulders were tense, his elbows tightly drawn in. He hunched over furtively as he read; he was afraid. Armand read as if he were certain that any moment he would be stopped and chastised, and he wanted to absorb as much as he could until then.

This theory was confirmed when Lestat closed the door and Armand looked up, finally aware of him. He swallowed, eyes round, freezing with his finger halfway down a page, looking for all the world like a disobedient boy caught in the act. Lestat laid the stolen clothes down over the back of a chair, coming a few steps further into the room.

Armand’s heart was beating so fast: a rabbit in a snare. It was not so hard, to guess the source of the terror. Surely the Children of Darkness had been every bit as hostile to the dangers of secular literature as they were to bodily comforts. Conjecture, yes, but Lestat felt sure.

He crouched down close to Armand, catching the brief flicker of a flinch as he forced himself to stay still. Lestat looked through the pile of unread books to Armand’s left. He could not read the titles but knew them by appearance. He spotted what he was looking for and pulled free a small volume in a blue paper wrapper, its pages a little ragged from much handling.

Lestat held it out for Armand, making his voice as steady and low as if he were soothing a nervous animal, “You should do this one next. I’ve made Nicki read it to me four times.”

Armand took it from him, not breaking eye contact, whole body taut as a violin string. Did he think it was some kind of test? He didn’t even glance at the book, just kept watching Lestat. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the inevitable shout or slap.

It was like staring into a mirror that reflected back the boy he’d been in Auvergne.

Lestat brushed his knuckles along Armand’s cheek. He had never felt so drawn to someone in all his life; certainly he had discovered another part of his soul, flung out somehow into a different body.

“It’s alright, Armand. You can.”

The echo of his words from the previous night had the desired effect. Lestat saw recognition in Armand’s eyes; the tension in his shoulders lessened. He looked down at the book, opening it to glance at the title.

Lestat stood, then, straightening his coat, shaken by the intensity of his own emotion.

“There’s just a few more things I need. I’ll be back in shortly. Will you start the fire for me, and build it high?”

Armand nodded.

Now that he was a vampire, it was child’s play hauling water up to his rooms. Lestat remembered what an arduous chore it had always been: he was not weak, but his shoulders and arms always ached by the time he reached the garret. Inevitably, he would slosh some water onto his hose and into his shoes. Miserable, the whole process. And now? A trifle.

He realized, with a jolt of surprise, that thoughts like this—cheery observations about how much easier it was to be a vampire—had been occurring to him more and more frequently. Carrying the water, tricking the young man out of his clothes, driving Armand wild with lewd images in his mind. Moreover, now that he was accustomed to it he enjoyed the preternatural sharpening of his senses: the vividness of colors, the richness of sounds. And how strange, to be rid of the small monotonous pains of mortal living—no more toothaches, no more sore feet at the end of a long day, no more itching insect bites.

Would it be so wrong to let himself enjoy it?

The fire was roaring; Lestat felt the heat from it as he opened the door. The piles of books and papers had all been tidied away—was Armand finished, already?

No, not quite. He was seated at the table, reading with his back to the door. It was not the rapid flurry Lestat had seen earlier: his eyes scanned the pages at a regular pace. Lestat walked around to see what it was, curious which book Armand had saved for last; then the bottom of his stomach dropped out.

It was Nicki’s journal.

Armand looked up at him, face calm and unapologetic. Lestat had told him he could, after all. He had not specified anything that was out of bounds. Should he have? Lestat searched inside himself and couldn’t muster up even an ounce of concern for Nicki’s privacy. All these years he’d been keeping journals, knowing that Lestat could not do the same. Lestat had swallowed his bitterness over it, too ashamed to ever consider that it might have been an intentional taunt.

What had Nicki written about him, knowing Lestat would never be able to read it? Mockery and complaints, like the ones Lestat had seen in his mind as he turned him? Had he sat across the table from Lestat, smiling blandly at him, and recorded all the salacious details of fucking that same harpsichordist Lestat turned down? Lestat had glimpsed a memory of them in Nicki’s mind, tucked away backstage, Nicki’s cock in the man’s mouth and a silent moan on his lips.

Armand’s cool voice interrupted Lestat’s churning thoughts.

—Do you want to know what it says?

Lestat tossed his hair back. “No. I don’t care in the slightest.”

It was a lie, but not one that Armand challenged. He closed the journal and set it aside. Lestat busied himself with pouring the water into the large kettle and setting it over the fire to heat. He had bought a few things on his way down to the river, thinking spitefully of Nicki with every franc spent. He pulled them from his pockets now: a fresh block of Marseille soap; a rough cloth for washing; a little comb with daisies painted on the handle.

He set these things on the table, then went to pull two broad basins from their place tucked beneath the bed and settled them at the center of the room, Armand watching closely all the while.

A little practice wouldn’t go amiss, if he wanted to be sure he had mastered all that Armand taught him yesterday. Lestat offered an image to Armand: a mundane memory of a mundane afternoon the previous summer. In this memory, the buttery light was slanting in through the windows, illuminating Lestat’s naked body. He was stripped bare, washing himself. He wet a cloth with water from one basin, wiped himself down, then wrung out the excess into the second basin. His movements were practical and unselfconscious, but the overall impression was not without eroticism.

He met Armand’s eyes, their color vivid, pupils just a touch dilated. He changed the image: Armand bare, this time, standing as Lestat knelt before him, bathing him. He let the scene hover just a few seconds before it dispersed—a question, not a show.

“May I?”

Armand was quiet and still for so long that Lestat worried he had forgotten the trick of the Mind Gift. Just as he was debating trying again, Armand got to his feet.

—Yes.

Armand began to strip, his movements too smooth to be natural. Lestat was beginning to be able to tell the difference now. Apparently, Armand liked to put on a show every bit as much as Lestat; the only difference between them was that Lestat did not pretend his artifice was anything but.

Well, if Armand wanted his turn showing off, Lestat had no objections. He would play his role as audience to the hilt. He stood back, folded his arms over his chest, tilted up his chin, and watched. He’d had to use his imagination for the bathing scene he just presented: Lestat was very much looking forward to seeing the real thing.

Armand was beyond beautiful. His limbs were perfectly formed; there was grace in the curve of his neck, the shape of his collarbones, the taper of his waist. He was slim but not frail, a picture of contrasts: femininity in his dainty wrists and long elegant hands, masculinity in his firm muscles and the gorgeous hint of veins standing out just beneath the skin of his arms. Lestat took in the hair across his surprisingly ample chest, the way it whorled around his pretty nipples. He couldn’t help a little surge of arrogant pleasure, seeing the red stain that had seeped into the fabric of Armand’s smallclothes. It was nice to actually see Armand’s cock, after only picturing it and feeling its shape with his mouth. It suited the rest of Armand perfectly, nestled dark between his thighs.

Lestat didn’t notice the scars until Armand bent to gather up his clothes; there were dozens and dozens of them, layered on top of one another, a web of faint lines along Armand’s ass and the backs of his thighs, stretching all the way down to his knees. They looked old, many years healed; hard to tell just how many of them there were without getting closer.

With a lurch in his gut, Lestat recalled one of the suggestions Armand had put into his mind last night, after asking how do you want to take me? There had been fresh welts in exactly the same area, as if Lestat had only just finished putting them there, swollen and lurid with bruises, bleeding onto Lestat’s thighs as he fucked Armand too hard. Fucked him like he was trying to hurt him as much as possible.

Lestat shoved the image from his mind, checking on the water’s temperature as an excuse to step away and turn his back. At the time he’d been too aroused to dwell on the implications; there were no such distractions, now, and his mind raced. He didn’t understand how Armand could actually want that.

Or had Armand perhaps thought Lestat would want to hurt him and tailored the fantasy accordingly? The few times Armand had brought up Magnus, he spoke as if he’d known him. It made sense: a coven master must have some familiarity with every member of his flock, mustn’t he? Had Armand assumed that the fledgling would share his maker’s tastes and offered himself up for a pseudo-rape thinking it would arouse?

(Armand had called Lestat Magnus’s bastard before they ever spoke. How could he have known? A lucky guess? Or was there some scent, some invisible mark on Lestat forever linking them? A trace of Magnus swirling through his blood like poison. Inside him. The thought made Lestat want to cut himself open and bleed out every last tainted drop.)

A light pressure against the small of his back jolted Lestat out of his spiraling thoughts. Armand had come over and set his hand there. In the glow of the fire, his expression was stricken.

—I’m sorry. They make me ugly, I know. My maker fixed what flaws he could before turning me, but those scars were too old. I am…damaged. Can you– can you overlook it?

Lestat heard the frantic plea beneath the words, aching out of Armand’s large pretty eyes: Please don’t turn me away now. Please stay with me in spite of this. Please keep me. Please love me.

Damaged. As if he were a set of exquisite china plates marked for discount because of a few tiny chips. The urgency of Armand’s insecurity and need for reassurance wiped everything else from Lestat’s mind—and he was grateful for it.

So much in his life made him feel helpless and overwhelmed. But this? This, he could do. He could take care of Armand just like he’d taken care of his family, hunting for them, feeding them. Just like he’d taken care of Nicki all their years together in Paris. The difference was, Armand actually wanted to be cared for.

“Ugly? You can’t really think that, can you?”

Lestat ran his fingertips along Armand’s flank, over the trailing edges of the scars. Armand shivered; Lestat saw goosebumps spreading along his skin. He skimmed soft touches across the tracery of scars—feeling the ridges and divots, the subtle variations of texture—as he leaned forward to kiss Armand. He kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, not stopping until the plaintive look on Armand’s face melted into one of stunned bliss. As if he could not believe his luck.

So much gratitude for a sliver of kindness.

Someone had taught him this, Lestat was sure. Someone, by intention or by carelessness, had placed the idea in his mind that his beauty was his worth and that a few scars were enough to spoil it. Lestat wanted, with a fury so sudden it startled him, to rip that unknown person’s head from their shoulders.

He would show Armand just how much he deserved to be touched and cared for and adored.

Thick curls of steam were beginning to rise from the mouth of the kettle. Perfect timing. Lestat lifted it off the fire, pouring around a third of the water into the basin and leaving the rest to keep heating. A simple rinse first, then the soap, then another rinse, then he would deal with Armand’s hair. He coaxed Armand with a gesture to stand where he wanted him, kneeling down and rolling up his sleeves.

Armand really was filthy. It was clearer from close up. There was dirt, soot, and a concerning amount of blood. Lestat couldn’t figure out the odd patterns of it on Armand’s skin, until it hit him: they had been injuries. Cuts and gashes that had healed cleanly thanks to Armand’s powers, leaving no trace except the blood caked onto his skin. No new scars, for a vampire.

“Are they from your parents?” He dipped the washing cloth into the warm water, soaking it and then wringing out the excess. It was the first possibility that came to mind, for obvious reasons. Lestat got to his feet and began to wash Armand’s face: careful swipes of the cloth against his forehead, his cheeks, across his closed eyelids.

Armand did not answer him; the cloth came away red. How much of what Lestat had assumed was dirt on his face had actually been dried bloody tears?

“My father always preferred his fists to a switch.”

He didn’t know why he said it. The disclosure spilled from him, unplanned, unconsidered. He hardly ever spoke of his father—even to Nicki, who knew more than anyone else what Lestat’s youth had been like.

Well, perhaps not anyone else, now. Armand’s eyes were on him, that steady amber glow. Lestat did not know which memories he might have glimpsed, the few times he’d felt around in his mind. He had definitely seen Lestat being brought home from the monastery; perhaps it wasn’t even new information to him.

Lestat wrung out the cloth into the second basin. He dipped it into the clean water once more and began on Armand’s neck. Lestat lifted Armand’s curls carefully to clean the nape and felt Armand shiver. From so close, he could see the way the tendons shifted beneath Armand’s skin as he tilted his head. Lestat fought to hold back his fangs; it took every ounce of his willpower not to nuzzle into that hollow just above Armand’s collarbone and beg for a drink, just a little one, just a taste of him…

Later. Once Armand was scrubbed and clean and perfumed and soft and glowing with happiness. It would be worth the wait.

As Lestat wrung out the rag a second time, Armand finally answered his question. It was, Lestat realized, the first time he’d spoken aloud that night.

“I didn’t have parents. I was born from the foam on top of the sea, like Venus.”

Armand met Lestat’s eyes and shifted his weight, hips canting to the side, his left foot lifting slightly. He raised one hand delicately to his chest, wrist bent, fingers splayed just so; he brought his other hand to hover just in front of his genitals. Armand tilted his head, his expression soft, and then froze, holding the pose with uncanny stillness.

In spite of the obvious differences, Lestat recognized the pose at once. His mother had had a few prints in her room—intaglio reproductions of great works of Italian art. Lestat’s favorite by far had been Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. When he was small, he would take it down from its place and stare, bewitched. Augustin had caught him once and roared with laughter, clapping his shoulder and proclaiming that maybe he would grow up to be a man after all.

Lestat wouldn’t understand the meaning of the words until a few years later. Once he did, the memory of them filled him with hot inarticulate rage. The ache he felt staring at the woman in the shell was not something as base and vulgar as lust. It was artistic appreciation of how a simple collection of lines could capture all a woman’s softness and grace. It was awe at her beauty. It was admiration—an admiration that occasionally soured in the back of his throat to envy.

“I know the painting but not the myth. She’s born from foam?”

Armand did not drop the pose until Lestat began to wash his shoulders. He closed his eyes, head hanging forward, clearly relishing the feel of the warm cloth rubbing his skin. Such a simple pleasure; how long had he denied himself? Lestat suspected whatever bathing had been allowed by the coven had been as intentionally unpleasant and ascetic as possible.

“Mmm, yes. She is.” A beat of silence, then he added, “But I’m not really Venus.”

Lestat wasn’t sure why Armand felt the need to clarify that: he’d assumed it was a meaningless joke to soften his implicit refusal to discuss his family. Then Armand added, “Do you know the myth of Ganymede?”

The name sounded familiar, perhaps, but Lestat could not call to mind anything more than vague recognition. Swallowing back the familiar shame, he said curtly, “You know how little education I received.”

Armand hummed an acknowledgement. “Of course. I’ll tell it to you.”

At first, Lestat thought the long pause before Armand began was simply theatrics, building up his anticipation. But when he finally spoke, Lestat knew he’d been wrong; from the very first word, his voice was taut with barely-restrained grief.

“Long ago, in a faraway place, a mortal boy named Ganymede was born. He was very beautiful. Everyone told him so, since he was very young. So pretty, so soft, such precious curls. As lovely as a girl, but with wickedness in his smile. His family were poor, but it did not matter that Ganymede wore only humble peasant clothes rather than jewels and silks. Everyone who saw him…desired him.”

Armand brought his hands together and began to rub at the join between his forefinger and thumb. He seemed unaware of the nervous movement. His eyes were fixed on the ground, unseeing.

“Beauty like that can be a curse. It made Ganymede a prize worth taking, and so…he was. When he was still a boy, he was abducted from his homeland and carried many miles away, to a fantastical city. It was like a dream. Palaces floating on the water, full of strange people in strange clothes speaking words he could not understand.”

Lestat wrung out the cloth, his certainty solidifying. Myths, in his admittedly limited experience, rarely included details as mundane as a language barrier. He thought of the first visions Armand had shown him: Venice, through the eyes of someone who knew it well.

Armand was not telling him a myth. He was using a myth to tell Lestat about his own life.

“In some versions of the story, Ganymede’s parents are compensated for his loss. Stolen, bought…what difference did it make to Ganymede, when he was in the eagle’s claws?”

Armand lapsed into silence for a long time after that. He turned his head and stared into the fire, a blankness in his face that hurt to look at.

Eventually, Lestat coaxed, “What happened to him in the city?”

He could guess. Lestat might not have received much education, but he wasn’t entirely naïve. A beautiful boy, taken from his home and brought half a world away with no one to protect him. Lestat ran the cloth along Armand’s ribs, scraping as gently as he could at the places where the blood was caked thick onto his skin.

When Armand’s answer came, his voice was as hollow and dead as his expression. “He became a toy. Cruel games with cruel men, one after another. Different versions of the same story. Some of them wanted innocence, for the pleasure of spoiling it. Some of them wanted wickedness, for the pleasure of punishing it. Some wanted him willing. Some wanted him weeping. All the same game, in the end.”

Lestat’s eyes were drawn, almost against his will, back to those scars. How old had Armand been when he received them? Had whipping him been a part of those so-called games, or was it the penalty if he dared to resist? Lestat hoped he had fought at least once or twice. He hoped Armand had managed to make a few of them bleed.

He continued to bathe Armand, blinking through a thick red haze. He could not help the tightness in his throat, the pressure in his head that made the tears spill down his cheeks.

Armand was like him.

Lestat felt undone by the knowledge. He didn’t know why; he hadn’t been conscious of feeling desperately alone until that very moment. But he had been alone, hadn’t he? He thought of the icy stream, bathing himself the night after he was turned. He had washed the evidence from his skin with his bare hands, scraped and scratched with his nails when he had to, not caring if he bled. How cold the water had been, how isolated and comfortless the entire experience.

He’d been so sure he would never speak of it to a single soul. After all, who would believe him, much less understand?

Lestat poured more warm water from the kettle into the basin before he began washing the scars. He was as delicate as he could be, trying not to tug at the raised tissue as he ran the cloth over the backs of Armand’s thighs. He pressed carefully at Armand’s flesh to make room to wipe along the cleft of his ass, hearing the small hitch in Armand’s breath.

When he’d gone to fetch the water from the river, Lestat had entertained himself wondering at what point the bathing would turn into fucking. He’d assumed it was likely; last night had made him hungrier for Armand than ever. It had amused him to imagine the diverging possibilities—he had pictured himself washing Armand’s ass and then sliding two oil-slick fingers inside, pumping them into him and curling them just so until he found the right angle to make Armand’s legs shake.

It had been less than an hour ago; it felt a lifetime away.

Nothing could have prepared him for this. The overwhelming, raw intimacy of it: kneeling beside Armand, tears silently running down his cheeks as he washed the most vulnerable places on his body. Lestat touched him with the utmost care, as if his gentleness could undo every memory of rough handling. He gave Armand the tenderness he had denied himself in that stream.

“Did Ganymede ever escape?”

Armand whirled around to look at him. Lestat had not managed to keep his voice as neutral as he’d hoped: the words came out thick and throaty. Armand raised a hand to Lestat’s face, his thumb swiping away a tear. Lestat closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into the touch, expression crumpling for a moment before he schooled it.

“You’re crying.” The distance in Armand’s voice was gone, replaced with confusion and dawning guilt. “I made you cry.”

Lestat couldn’t deny it. What’s more, he didn’t want to. He was so very tired of pretending.

“It’s a story worth crying over. I only hope Ganymede found a way to survive, somehow.”

Lestat pulled Armand’s hand away from his cheek and kissed the back. He wiped away his bloody tears from Armand’s palm and went back to washing him. He tried to focus on the details of Armand’s body to steady himself: the strong muscles of his calves, the dark hair slicked to his skin with water, the shape of his ankles.

He was beautiful, so achingly beautiful. And that beauty had been taken as an invitation.

You are perfect, my Lelio, my blue-eyed young one, more beautiful even without the lights of the stage—

Lestat got to his feet and retrieved the soap from the table. His hands were shaking as he untied the twine that secured its paper wrapper. The smell was faint but pleasant—olive oil and a tang of salt. He worked up a lather on the cloth and began to wash Armand.

This time, Lestat counted the scars as he scrubbed. There were twenty-two of them he could distinguish. Who knew how many others had faded and blurred into Armand’s skin. Who knew how many more blows had fallen without leaving a lasting mark.

Silently, hatred began to seethe up inside Lestat. All his mortal years, he had only ever wanted to be good. Every night when he went out on the stage, he believed he was doing a service to the world by helping his audience to laugh, lifting their burdens from their shoulders for a little while. He had believed without questioning it that all the smiling faces in the crowd deserved that service.

Lestat had always assumed most men were like him. Maybe there were a few villains mixed in, true, but that the majority of people were fundamentally good. It was why he had wept so bitterly as the fire of Magnus’ pyre had died down. He did not want to be a monster, cast out from the light and goodness of humanity.

But devils and monsters had not sold Armand, whipped him, raped him. Humans had. Those particular men were centuries dead, but had anything really changed? Magnus’ face had stood out in the crowd to Lestat, a vivid and singular horror. But how many other horrors had sat there over the years, their evil invisible to Lestat, camouflaged in the sea of faces? How many cruel men like the ones who had scarred Armand had he made laugh with his antics on the stage?

Lestat’s fangs emerged unbidden in his closed mouth. He wanted to throw down the cloth, descend to the street, and rip out every throat he saw. Had Nicki been right all along? Had he been a fool?

These thoughts occupied Lestat as he scrubbed Armand clean. He had just finished with the soap when Armand finally picked up the threads of his story.

“He almost didn’t survive. Ganymede would’ve died locked away in that place. But he caught the eye of an immortal. Zeus.”

Armand’s demeanor had changed completely from his earlier telling; his eyes were heavy-lidded and there was a small, dreamy smile on his lips. He let out a shivery sigh.

“Zeus was the most powerful of all the gods. He was immortal, and beautiful, and gentle, and wise.”

Lestat poured more of the water from the kettle, very hot now, into the basin. Armand’s description did not line up with the bits and pieces Lestat had picked up from plays over the years. Most of them referred to Zeus only for his jealous rages and proclivity for ravaging any mortal unlucky enough to catch his attention. But he did not interrupt Armand’s breathless account.

“Zeus chose Ganymede. He rescued him, carried him away from the cruel mortals and brought him to Olympus where he took Ganymede as his lover.”

Lestat began to rinse away the soap, the water so hot that a flush came to Armand’s skin at the touch of the cloth. Armand’s tone had become rapt, his body relaxed and loose. Perhaps it was the shift in the story, or the water’s heat, or both. He swayed slightly, eyes slipping closed, unsteady enough that Lestat braced a hand against his hip to keep him still.

“Ganymede was Zeus’ cup-bearer. The god had so many other servants, but Ganymede was special amongst them. He was his favorite. He taught Ganymede so many beautiful things, and Ganymede loved his new master. He worshiped him. He would have died for him without hesitation. But Zeus could not bear to live without his treasure. He made Ganymede an immortal like himself so that the two of them could be together forever.”

So Zeus was a stand-in for Armand’s maker—Lestat had expected as much. How much of this was truth, he wondered, and how much the framework of the myth? The look on Armand’s face was blissful, his eyes fully closed now in remembrance.

Lestat fetched a towel from the chest at the foot of his bed and began to dry Armand, curiosity and stinging jealousy warring in his chest. He was not even sure whom one he envied more—Armand’s maker, for the love and devotion that Armand radiated still, or Armand, for having a maker who had taught him and cared for him.

“So, Ganymede chose to be made immortal?”

Armand sighed once more, leaning into Lestat’s touch as he toweled him down. “Ganymede desired anything his master desired.”

Which was, Lestat could not help thinking, quite different from ‘yes’.

There was only Armand’s hair to wash, now; Lestat had saved it for last because he knew what a dreadful state it was in just from the few times he had touched it last night.

“Will you lay down on the floor for me, here? Wait—”

Lestat held up a hand to halt Armand, who had already begun to lower himself. He pulled the pillows from the bed, setting them down so that Armand would have a cushion between his body and the wood of the floor.

“You know you don’t have to do that,” Armand said, a little surprised, a little teasing. Lestat thought he knew what Armand meant—he was used to laying on hard surfaces and did not need to be pampered.

Lestat disagreed on that last point.

“But I want to.” Heat in Lestat’s voice, more forceful than he had meant it to be. He met Armand’s eyes, scrubbing the traces of tears from his own cheeks. This was important to him: as important as the washing itself. “I want…”

Lestat shook his head, abandoning words for images instead. Armand sitting cradled between Lestat’s legs, facing away from him, as Lestat combed fingers through his curls. He gathered Armand’s hair together carefully, tied it up with a silky ribbon, and laid a kiss on the back of Armand’s neck. After that, another image: Armand tucked in an improbably large nest of pillows, clean and flushed, eyes closed the way they had been when he talked about his maker’s kindness, drinking from Lestat’s bleeding wrist.

Lestat saw the real Armand’s fangs poke out, the tips just visible in his open mouth. The air had become charged between them. Without letting himself pause to think first, Lestat sent a third image: Armand naked and beaming, sprawled on a fur rug. He was loose-limbed, cock lying hard against his thigh, heavy and full. The imagined version of Armand ran his hands through the softness of the fur, gripping it tight with a moan as Lestat pushed inside him, slow and easy. In the vision, Armand gasped ‘I love you.’

The scene vanished, abrupt as a popping bubble. Lestat had not meant to include that final detail. It had slipped out like an admission, and his cheeks burned with fierce embarrassment.

Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? He wanted to spoil Armand, feed him and brush his hair and make his toes curl with pleasure—but it wasn’t selfless. Not really. He wanted to do those things and he wanted Armand to love him for it.

Shame prickled at the back of his neck, but before Lestat could stammer out an explanation, Armand cupped his face and kissed him.

He smelled of the Marseille soap, faint echo of the ocean, and his skin was so warm from being bathed. Armand pulled away, just long enough to bite hard at the center of his own bottom lip, piercing it with the tip of his fang. Then he kissed Lestat again, spreading his blood into Lestat’s mouth with little pushes and licks of his tongue. It was sweet; so much sweeter than candied chestnuts, than any mortal food could possibly be.

—I love you, Lestat.

Lestat’s breath hitched in his throat, his chest aching. Why did it hurt so much to hear? Why did it feel like a knife in his heart?

—I love you. Armand repeated. Of course, I love you. I loved you the moment I first laid eyes on you.

Armand broke off the kiss; his pupils were huge, his lips red with smeared blood. He licked his lips primly to clean them and then stepped back. Not breaking eye contact, he laid down in the place that Lestat had prepared for him. It took Lestat’s breath away to witness; he remembered, with sudden force, how Armand had forced him to his knees with the barest flick of his wrist. How easily he bent the world to his will: stopping time itself, drawing fire from the air, pulling memories from Lestat’s mind with delicate precision.

So much power in him, and yet here he was, all sweetness and submission. Naked and trusting, belly exposed.

Lestat felt the weight of that trust as he dragged over the basin of what clean water remained and maneuvered Armand so that his head hung above it. Lestat settled beside him and began to wash Armand’s hair.

He wanted to ask Armand what came next in his story. How had he and his maker been separated? How had the cherished fledgling become the wretched captive he’d seen in that memory Armand shared the night before, starved and sobbing with relief at his own subjugation? But he could not bear to ask. Armand looked so peaceful, as Lestat massaged the years of soot and filth from his hair. He didn’t have the heart to interrupt that serenity.

Instead, he recalled another exchange from the night before. Armand’s voice, hot and rich as his blood on Lestat’s tongue as they kissed, asking Would you sing for me, if I asked?

Lestat combed through Armand’s hair with his fingers, working out the tangles, easing apart the places it had clumped together with dried blood. He only hummed at first, an aimless lilting melody. Armand’s lips parted around a contented sigh.

—Your voice is lovely.

Lestat began to sing in earnest, then. He stuck to simple songs, traditional country tunes he had heard so many times in Auvergne that they came to him as easily as his own name. It felt right, sitting here on the floor with Armand, massaging soap into his hair, rinsing it, repeating the process until the foam no longer turned rusty with old blood. Lestat kept singing, kept washing.

At some point, he noticed Armand’s breathing had grown steady and slow. Lestat amused himself, changing the words of the songs without altering their rhythm or volume, testing: Can you hear me, you little devil? You’ve fallen asleep in my hands, haven’t you? Tired precious stray. Are you dreaming sweet dreams about kissing me?

When he was done, Lestat moved the basin as quietly as he could and set about drying Armand’s hair. Armand slept on. He looked so different in sleep: unguarded, vulnerable, young. He stirred just a little when Lestat lifted him and carried him to the bed, but slipped back under moments later.

Hunger was thrumming in Lestat, now; nearly half the night was gone and he had yet to feed. He tidied away the bathing things and turned his mind to the hunt. Underneath all the gentleness, Lestat’s simmering hatred had not disappeared. They were woven together, inextricable: the fierce protective tenderness he felt for Armand and his vicious rage towards humanity.

On his way out, Lestat grabbed Nicki’s violin case. He would take it to the tower, just so he didn’t have to look at it sitting there by the door like an accusation.

When he reached the tower, Nicki was not there.

Lestat searched every room for him, his initial annoyance giving way to panic, until he spotted a piece of paper lying on the bed. His name was written on it, and a great deal else that he could not understand.

He took the note and left the violin, only barely restraining himself from hurling it out the window.

The overwhelming helplessness and frustration he felt over Nicki led Lestat to feed again twice on the journey back to his garret. He was pink-cheeked and almost as warm as a mortal when he returned. Armand was still asleep, curled onto his side in a ball. It was a mystery how a man his height could draw in so tightly, make himself so small.

Lestat dropped onto the bed beside him. He would be patient. He would not disturb Armand just to satisfy his own curiosity.

His resolve lasted no more than two minutes.

“Armand. Armand, wake up, I need you to read this to me.”

Armand whined in annoyance, nose wrinkling when Lestat shoved the piece of paper in front of his face and flapped it through the air. He reached up and took it in his elegant fingers, unfolding it and blinking at it through sleepy, slitted eyes.

Lestat saw Armand’s eyes scan the length of the note, then begin again from the start. After reading it twice he still did not speak. Lestat’s stomach twisted in dread, and annoyance, and always, always, the old shame. How detestable it was, to be reliant on someone else. To be made to wait.

“Whatever it is, just read it to me!” The words came out sharper than he had meant them to. “Armand, please. I can’t bear this.”

“Lestat. I am leaving Paris. I do not know yet if I will return. Whether or not I do does not matter for us. I am done with you. I have no need of your teaching or your misguided martyr’s tears. You tried to deceive and exclude me, but I have finally gotten from you the two things I most wanted for so many years. You have given me a confirmation of pure evil, and the means to finally show my family the true depths of ruin I can sink to. Perhaps your mother will write to you to tell you what becomes of the unfortunate Lenfents…”

Armand hesitated, luminous eyes flicking up from the page to meet Lestat’s. Somehow, Lestat doubted Armand was moved by worry for Nicki’s family. Whatever came next, Armand was not sure if Lestat should hear it. But that decision wasn’t his to make.

“Finish it,” he gritted out, braced for the worst. They had spent more than half their lives together, and before Magnus, Lestat had kept nothing from Nicki; of course, he knew all the softest places to sink his dagger.

“…But I believe she will not. She would not want to run the risk you might visit home for the funerals. We both know how repulsive she finds your presence. She has been ill this last year, hasn’t she? I am sure she would be happiest if you allowed her to die without ever looking upon your loathsome face again. I know how badly you’ve always wanted to please her. Grant her this last gift and do not follow me. Goodbye, my love.”

Lestat closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples, breathing through the pain. He wished that he could cry, release some of the misery from his body, but for once, the tears would not come. He felt Armand shift on the bed beside him, then the tickle of still-damp hair beneath his chin. The weight of Armand’s head on his chest helped relieve a tiny amount of the pressure.

“There’s still so much you do not know about vampires.”

Lestat had no idea what that had to do with anything. He didn’t voice the thought aloud, but Armand must have plucked it from his mind, because he went on, “I read his journal. Nicki loved you dearly. He berated himself constantly for failing you. He believed he was a burden to you, that you were bored with him and hiding your disappointment at his mediocrity as a violinist. He was terrified that he had become a mere habit to you.”

Tears did come, now, hot and painful, leaking from the corners of his eyes.

“Then why…?”

“It is the nature of the Dark Gift. It destroys the love between a maker and a fledgling. There can be no connection, no understanding. Only silence and resentment. I wish I had taught you this, before you gave him the blood. It is the way of things, always.”

Lestat wanted to believe it so badly. What a neat and straightforward tragedy it would be. Nicki loving him, sweet and constant, his perfect devoted paramour. A random unpreventable attack by devils, leaving Nicki so wounded and weak that Lestat had no choice but to turn him. The evil blood to blame entirely for the rift between them, for Nicki’s madness and flight. Tidy and simple and unpreventable: perfect for a two-act play.

But he knew it was not true, even as he yearned for it. Nicki had been right. Lestat had been, he could acknowledge now, growing quietly bored of their life together. He had been aware that Nicki had reached the limit of his musical talents and was stagnating. And Nicki’s love for him, though real, had existed alongside resentment, competition, scorn, misunderstanding, disdain. Lestat could not deny it; he recalled too many spiteful muttered comments about the aristocracy, about his idiotic optimism, about his lack of education, about his womanish displays of intense emotion. Nicki had been unfaithful, as a means of self-sabotage or perhaps due to his own boredom. His capture by the Children of Darkness was entirely Lestat’s fault. He had not been driven to turn Nicki to save his life; he had acquiesced to Nicki’s ignorant demands out of anger and nothing else.

“You clearly don’t resent your maker,” Lestat pointed out. He’d compared the man to a god without a hint of irony. Armand, who had been trailing his fingers in idle patterns over Lestat’s chest, froze.

Several moments passed before he replied in a soft voice, “It’s easy to forgive the dead.”

Lestat exhaled shakily. That answered one lingering question, at least. Armand’s maker had died, too. Orphans, both of them. He wondered what had happened. If Armand had been there, if he’d seen it…

“Lestat?” The question interrupted his train of thought. He felt Armand shift, resting his chin on his breastbone. He met Armand’s gaze. From this angle, he looked uncanny—eyes too big, expression too blank, a predator wearing a young man’s face as camouflage. “Would you like me to take care of Nicki for you?”

Lestat knew, with a cold rush of fear, what Armand was offering. He was not volunteering to fetch Nicki back to the city and keep him out of trouble. He was offering to ‘take care’ of Nicki the way one would ‘take care’ of a lamed horse or a sick old dog.

“No.” Lestat didn’t even have to pause to consider his answer. No matter how badly it had ended or how betrayed he felt, he didn’t want Nicki dead. “Absolutely not, Armand.”

Armand blinked at him a few times, then rolled his shoulders in a shrug. As if it were nothing much to offer. Just how many vampires had Armand taken care of as coven master? Lestat had heard screaming from inside the walls of Les Innocents when he went to rescue Nicki. There had been no more screaming when he returned. He thought again of the burned-out pyre, the twisted buckles and buttons.

So easy to forget, with Armand damp-haired and snuggled up against him, just how terrifyingly powerful he was. Armand had told him, while teaching him to use the Mind Gift, that power came with age for a vampire. But Lestat didn’t actually know…

“Enough about him. How old are you, anyway?” Lestat asked.

“Why?”

A hint of defensiveness, there. Lestat did not know what had put Armand on alert: if he was touchy about his age, or merely wary that Lestat was trying to begin a discussion about his past.

“Oh, just curious. It’s not like I can tell by looking.” Lestat tucked a stray curl behind Armand’s ear, then ran his fingernail along the shell. Armand melted into the touch.

“I’m between 285 and 290 years old. I don’t know the exact year I was born.” Armand hummed softly in his throat, “I should really just pick one.”

Lestat calculated back in his mind. Armand had been born near 1510. An impossibly long time ago. If he thought about that too long, or let himself wonder how different he would be in two and a half centuries, he was going to put himself in a very bad mood indeed. Lestat didn’t want that. He didn’t want to think about how he’d failed Nicki, or what the future held in store.

He wanted to be in this moment with Armand. Drinking every drop of happiness, just like he’d promised himself.

“Ah, I see! Yes, it all makes sense now. No wonder you fell asleep while I was washing your hair.” Lestat had made his voice bright and teasing, the sort of arch tone he used as Lelio on the stage, “You’re ancient, Armand.”

Armand snorted and swatted him in the chest, which made Lestat laugh, which made Armand laugh in turn. Rare, exquisite sound; Lestat wanted to make him do it a thousand more times.

“I am sorry about that. It wasn’t my intention.”

Armand’s breath was warm against the underside of Lestat’s chin as he nuzzled there and began peppering Lestat’s throat with little kisses. Lestat shivered, tilting his head back to give Armand more room.

“I didn’t mind. You looked peaceful.”

“Mmm, but I had plans,” Armand’s voice had become a syrupy purr. Lestat’s heart skipped at the sound of it. He felt the graze of Armand’s little fangs against his neck. They did not break the skin, merely teased. Lestat shifted on the bed, heat beginning to settle low in his stomach as he remembered the sting of them.

It was a struggle to make his mouth form anything that was not bite me, Armand, please, now, yes, drink from me—. Lestat managed only a single, strained word: “Plans?”

“Yes. I was going to repay you for all your kindness.”

Lestat should have expected it. Armand’s seduction was far from subtle. Still, he did not anticipate it so soon—the distinctive tug of Armand pulling at the laces of his breeches, loosening the knot.

Lestat was on the far side of the room, stumbling and unsteady, before he even realized he was moving. Armand blinked at him; he was naked still, his damp hair clinging to his temples and neck, just beginning to curl as it dried. He sat up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed but not actually leaving it. He tilted his head to the side, looking at Lestat with far too much acuity. Lestat’s heart was racing, fear sour in the back of his mouth.

He was getting good at identifying it, now—the telltale sensation of Armand sinking his hands into the silt at the bottom of his mind, feeling around for buried things. Lestat knew what he was looking for; he knew what he was going to find.

In his explanation of the Mind Gift, Armand had told Lestat the basics of blocking his thoughts. Lestat remembered those instructions, now, and slammed the gates of his mind shut. He was frantic, sloppy, uncaring if he pinched Armand’s fingers in the process.

Armand kept staring at him; Lestat had the awful suspicion that even without access to his memories Armand might begin to detect a pattern. Unfair, really. Nicki had been oblivious for months. But then, like was said to recognize like.

He had to at least try to say something, to explain himself. “I don’t require repayment.”

Armand looked—there was no other word for it—sulky.

“You no longer desire me,” he said.

The words came out so petulant that they cut right through Lestat’s self-consciousness and panic. He huffed a laugh, bitter and breathy.

“Oh, I desire you, little devil.”

Armand opened his mouth to argue, but Lestat shut him up with a deluge of images. How desperately he wanted Armand! Flashes of fantasy: Lestat’s back arched and his head thrown back, mouth wide around a cry of ecstasy. His legs hooked tight around Armand’s narrow waist, urging him deeper inside. Their hands laced together on the bed, Armand’s hair tickling his neck as he leaned down to kiss him, open-mouthed and messy. Lestat pleading fuck me, Armand, ah!—please, don’t stop–

Lestat dropped the images. A few steps were enough to carry him back to the bed. He stood there, just out of Armand’s reach. He could do this. He would do this.

Armand’s eyes were sunset orange, vivid and steady. Lestat felt eviscerated by them. Not breaking eye contact, Armand tucked his arms behind his back, clasping his forearms.

“Of course. I understand now,” Armand’s voice had gone thick and sweet again. He looked at Lestat through his eyelashes, shifting his legs apart. Lestat’s gaze dropped, just as Armand intended, down to his cock, half-hard already. “You guide, I obey. No moving without your permission.”

Perhaps Armand had not sussed him out, after all. Or he had, and was merely offering up this game to allow Lestat plausible deniability: he could pretend his reaction had been annoyance at Armand for taking the lead, rather than the flinch of a shivering beaten dog.

Lestat swallowed, drawing another step closer. Armand watched him, unmoving except for his quickened breaths. Hands trembling, Lestat reached for his half-unlaced breeches. He undid them the rest of the way, drawing out his cock. Armand’s nostrils flared, his pupils so wide now that only a thin sliver of orange showed around them. He did not move.

It would be simple enough, to take one more step forward and slide himself between Armand’s willing lips. Lestat had no doubt how wonderful it would feel—the slick wet heat of his mouth, the press of his tongue on the underside of his cock. But what if Armand moved—an involuntary swallow, a heedless hollowing of his cheeks—and surprised Lestat, sent him spiraling into another panic? He didn’t know if it might happen. He didn’t understand the cracks in his own mind and didn’t want to risk it.

Lestat lifted his hand and spit into his palm, relishing the hitch he heard in Armand’s breathing. He wrapped a hand around himself and started to jerk himself off. Armand never took his eyes off Lestat’s face; there was so little space between them that Lestat felt the puff of air from each of Armand’s exhales.

—Gorgeous. You’re doing so good for me, love. Does that feel nice?

Armand had said he would not move; he’d made no such promise about compliments. Lestat’s cock pulsed hard in his hand, a bead of fluid leaking from the slit. He stroked himself faster, hips twitching forward in time with his hand. Pleasure built inside him, tighter and tighter, an inescapable inertia. His hips began to stutter and lose their rhythm. Lestat miscalculated the distance between them, thrust forward far enough that the head of his cock just brushed Armand’s lips. Lestat let out a whimper at the unexpected contact, at the heat of Armand’s skin and the soft slide of his bottom lip against the wet tip of him. He drew back, dragging against Armand’s lip, hypnotized by the thin thread of saliva that stretched and broke between his cock and Armand’s mouth.

—That’s it, just like that. Are you close? You can let go. I have you. Just let go.

Lestat swore as he came in hot pulses, spattering red on Armand’s lips and chin, flecks of it on his neck, trickles running down Lestat’s knuckles. He stroked himself through it, whimpers spilling from his lips, body shivery with bright electric aftershocks.

Armand, true to his word, did not so much as move a muscle as his chin began to drip. Lestat fished out a handkerchief, dabbing Armand clean. His breathing was still ragged as he joked, “Look at that, undoing all my hard work.”

Armand’s eyes fluttered shut, a shiver visibly wracking through him. Lestat tidied himself, next, tucking his cock away and fastening himself up. He felt a flash of something like hope and pride. He had managed a second time, had navigated his way to a climax in another person’s proximity without catastrophe. He was figuring it out. He was learning what worked.

The feeling was not long-lived. Unbidden, a voice in the back of his mind—one that sounded an awful lot like Augustin—sneered: Coward. What kind of man are you? A pretty thing like Armand won’t stay with you long if you’re too scared to even fuck his mouth.

Lestat shoved the thought away, but the tiny ember of accomplishment had been extinguished.

Armand—and he was a pretty thing, wasn’t he?—was still watching, beatific and patient. His cock jutted out from his body, hard and shiny at the tip. He kept his arms clasped behind him, obedient and serene. Waiting for Lestat to look after him.

Lestat wanted to be worthy of that devotion. He wanted to give Armand everything he could ever dream of.

He could not bring himself to do any of the things Armand had placed in his mind the night before—could not hit him, choke him, pull his hair. Lestat wondered if that would’ve been true, without Magnus. But what use was it, trying to imagine ‘what ifs’? There were no other versions of themselves: no Armand and no Lestat who were not broken and mended back together again. They matched one another; studies in repair.

Armand was practically unrecognizable, compared to the state he’d been in when Lestat first saw him. He’d not yet taken the time to properly appreciate that restoration. How radiant he was, now that Lestat had polished him to a bright shine!

Lestat laid a fingertip under Armand’s chin, tilting his head up. Then, he bent down and kissed his forehead. He kissed his cheeks, his nose, his chin, his brows, his jaw, his eyelids. It was a slow, reverent process.

“Lestat…”

He understood the plea and finally brought their mouths together, tasting the faintest traces of himself on Armand’s lips. Lestat kissed Armand like it was the only thing he wanted to do for the rest of the night. For the rest of the year.

Lestat’s thoughts drifted back to when he’d first seen Armand’s scars. What was it Armand had said about them? I am damaged. Lestat wanted to tell him: No, you are not—not in the way that you mean. He wanted to tell him: I am, too.

He could not do it. Not yet. But there were other ways to change Armand’s mind.

Lestat broke off the kiss, tugging at Armand’s bottom lip with his teeth as he did. Armand leaned forward, chasing after Lestat’s mouth, trying to maintain contact. So many years those lips had gone unkissed. Lestat was going to have to work hard, to make up for lost time.

“You can let go of your arms, and I’m going to move you. Alright?”

“Yes.” A wonder, how Armand could fit such desire, such hazy submission, in a single syllable.

Lestat set about positioning Armand how he wanted him; he pushed him back on the bed, rolled him over onto his stomach and then hauled his hips up. Armand allowed himself to be posed with the ease of considerable practice. Under Lestat’s hands, he braced his weight on his knees and forearms. He was pliant and unquestioning as Lestat fussed over him.

Lestat took his time. There was something delicious about the disparity between them. He was fully dressed—every button fastened and every lace knotted—while Armand waited on all fours, not a stitch on him, hazy-eyed and achingly hard. A few of his curls were stuck to his neck with sweat.

Lestat made a wordless, appraising sound in his throat, then adjusted Armand’s knees, shifting them wider apart. Yes, that was perfect. Armand twisted his hands into the sheets, gripping so hard his knuckles went pale. His loud breathing had become ragged and his cock hung between his legs, untouched still. A pity. Lestat would need to fix that soon.

“Look at how wet you’ve gotten for me.”

Armand’s cock twitched, a thick bead of blood dripping from the tip and onto the bed as if by command. Shuddering, Armand buried his face in the crook of his elbow. Not just overwhelmed, Lestat thought: ashamed. As if his words had been accusation rather than awe. He couldn’t have that.

He brushed Armand’s hair to one side of his neck and, with gentle guidance from his fingertips, coaxed him to lift his head once more.

“No hiding, love. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

Armand nodded; his mouth hung open slightly and Lestat could see his sharp little fangs. Pretty monster, so eager for him.

“And these are nothing to be ashamed of, either,” Lestat said, splaying his hand against the curve of Armand’s ass, thumb running along the length of a scar—one of the thickest and darkest. Armand’s breath hitched. No pain in the sound: only surprise.

“I do not know who made you believe they are ugly, but he was a liar and a fool.”

Lestat climbed up on the bed behind Armand, kneeling between his legs. Armand’s breathing sped up, near frantic with anticipation. Lestat began at the lowest one, running a fingertip along the length of the scar and, a moment later, following it with his tongue. He repeated the pattern—trace, lick; trace, lick; trace, lick—making his way up Armand’s thighs. He could taste the sweat on Armand’s skin, feel the shake of his muscles as he fought to stay still.

“I can see all of you. Every part. There is no piece of you that is ugly or flawed.”

He lost himself in it; any hesitation Lestat might have had at the beginning dissolved entirely. It was hypnotic. He got messier as he went, relishing the shine of his spit against Armand’s skin, breathing on it now and then just to see Armand quiver.

“Lestat, please…” Armand whined.

It was intoxicating, being wanted so much. It had never been like this with Nicki, even in the early days right after they ran away to Paris and could barely keep their hands off one another. Something about Armand’s need was pathetic and animal and helpless in a way that drove Lestat wild.

The skin high on the insides of Armand’s thighs was so sensitive. Lestat took his time there, sucking little bruises into the spaces between the scars. It was delicious, hearing the high choked-off sounds Armand made, feeling the clenching and spasming of his thighs.

Lestat’s lips and nose were hot and tingly from the constant friction. Once he was sure he’d given his due to every one of Armand’s scars, he let his attention wander elsewhere. A little pressure from his thumbs to spread Armand’s cheeks, and Lestat licked a stripe up the cleft of his ass. Armand arched and he rocked back hard, unable to keep still any longer. Lestat couldn’t understand what it was he’d gasped out—something in Italian, from the sound. He might not know the words but could guess the gist.

He repeated the action, slower this time, letting his tongue catch against Armand’s hole. The shudder it earned him was nothing short of gorgeous. This had always been Lestat’s favorite thing about sex: the honesty and clarity of the reactions he could elicit. No room for doubt, when he pressed his tongue inside Armand and felt the hot delighted flutter of his muscles clenching down.

Lestat smelled blood, a sudden brightness in the air. He looked around and saw that Armand had bitten down hard on the back of his own hand in an effort to muffle his moans.

Lestat nipped at the curve of Armand’s ass, playful and possessive, not hard enough to break the skin. “Don’t. I want to hear you.”

Up until that point, Armand had been all easy submission. But now, he shook his head, hair swaying.

“Lestat, I shouldn’t. I can—” Armand sounded close to delirious, gulping for air between his words, “I can get loud. Your neighbors—”

Lestat scoffed, kissing his way down Armand’s seam, lavishing little licks over his perineum, his balls. It was too sweet, really. Nearly three hundred years old and Armand was shy.

“Mmm, and so what if they hear? A little jealousy won’t kill them. If anyone comes to complain, we can simply drain them together.”

What a lovely thought; Lestat spun up an image of it and sent it to Armand’s mind, pressing his tongue back inside him at the same time, as deep as he could get. A human—he borrowed the face of the boy he’d tricked into the Seine—trapped between them, writhing in pain. Armand latched to one side of his neck, Lestat to the other. Blood smeared on both their faces, their throats working as they drank. Sharing the feast.

It punched a moan out of Armand; he sounded desperate and Lestat was not inclined to keep him waiting any longer. He reached around, finally taking Armand’s cock in hand. Armand’s shout was half relief, half plea. Lestat grinned against the curve of Armand’s ass: he hadn’t been kidding about being loud.

Armand’s hips bucked, helpless stuttering thrusts he could no longer keep in check. Lestat didn’t even need to stroke him—just made a loose fist and watched with hot approval as Armand fucked into it. He was gorgeous when he let go like this, all his elegance and composure falling away under the ferocity of his need.

Armand shredded the sheets beneath him, his sharp fingernails leaving long rents in the fabric as he pumped his hips faster. Well, what of it? They were monsters, the both of them. Was it even passion if there wasn’t a little damage in its wake?

Lestat laughed again, giddy and light-headed. Why had he ever thought it was such a terrible thing to be a monster?

He tucked his face against Armand’s side, feeling the tautness of his muscles, the thunder of blood beneath his skin. Impossible to resist. Lestat sank in his fangs in deep, a wide and greedy bite. Armand came with another gratifyingly loud shout as Lestat drank from him, long lazy pulls; he could taste the flood of the orgasm in Armand’s blood, a velvet heat. The sheets were a mess beneath them, ripped to ragged strips, spattered in bloody spend.

Armand collapsed onto his belly, gasping and boneless. Lestat laid down beside him, rolling onto his side and grinning at him. It had been too selfish, really, drinking from Armand—he’d killed three times tonight and Armand had not fed since yesterday. Lestat nicked a cut into his wrist and held it out in offering. Armand lifted his head from the pillow, smelling the blood, his curls plastered to his forehead and cheek. He was too blissed out to drink neatly; Lestat’s blood ended up smeared on the tip of his nose, his chin, a streak of it on his cheek.

Lestat was going to have to clean him up all over again.

None of the neighbors complained. Not that night, or the one after, or all the ones after that.

Before the coven took Nicki, while Lestat was hiding what he’d become, he had been constantly aware of the passage of time. Ten days since he took me. Two weeks since he took me. Twenty days. A month. Two months.

Lestat did not realize he’d stopped tallying the days until there were buds on the trees and pale green leaves unfurling on every branch. Since when had it become Spring?

Time had turned fluid since Armand arrived. One night blurred into the next; using the Mind Gift had become like second nature to Lestat. He amused himself, using it to choose his victims. He roamed the streets, listening for malice and sanctimony, for joyless tyrants, for men who reminded him of his father.

A letter had come, eventually, from his mother, telling him of the mysterious illness that had swept through Nicki’s family, killing his parents and siblings. An exotic fever, possibly from the bite of some nighttime creature. Lestat wondered if the villagers had come up with the explanation on their own, or if Nicki had somehow started the rumor—a little joke, in case word got back to Lestat.

Armand had read the letter aloud to him when it came; he had begun teaching Lestat to read right away, but Gabrielle’s handwriting posed a far greater challenge to him than printed books.

Much easier than the reading had been the fire. Armand had hardly even needed to explain; within an hour from beginning, Lestat could summon flame, making it dance in his palm.

“Show-off,” Armand had muttered, eyes bright with pride.

“Mmm, and you love it,” Lestat had purred, insufferably smug. Armand had ducked his head and smiled.

“I do.”

There was no event that precipitated it; no specific change that made it possible in his mind. The days grew warmer, the muddy slush of late winter vanishing from the gutters. Lestat hunted and learned and slept with Armand tucked against his chest.

And one day he realized, without warning or understanding why, that he wanted Armand to know.

“I’m…going to tell you a story.”

It was a few hours from dawn. They were sprawled together on the bed, already in their sleeping clothes, warm and full from the hunt. Armand had been reading to Lestat for the last hour, his head pillowed in Lestat’s lap, Lestat’s fingers combing through his unbound hair lazily.

“Have you ever heard the legend of Bluebeard?”

Armand shook his head. He closed the book and set it aside. Lestat’s eyes slid away, drawn to the flicker of the candle on the nightstand. He had a feeling this would go easier if he did not try to maintain eye contact.

“Once upon a time, there was a man named Bluebeard. He was an alchemist who had stolen a great power in ancient times and made himself immortal. He lived alone in a…in a tower, a small distance outside a vast and sparkling modern city.”

Lestat felt Armand shift in his lap, his relaxed attitude sharpening into keen attention. The mention of the tower had been enough. Armand had asked a few times why Lestat did not return there for his fortune. He kept promising he would and then putting it off. Another day. Next week. Soon.

Lestat could feel the intensity of Armand’s gaze. Up until now, he had refused to broach the subject of Magnus. Armand had tried to cajole him into it, but Lestat had not given an inch.

“Even with all his stolen magic, and the endless riches he had built up over the centuries, Bluebeard was…was lonely. He scorned the society of other immortals like him. He decided to find himself the perfect bride. One day, he selected her: an actress at a humble theatre. She was…”

Lestat faltered, his voice cracking. What was the fatal attribute that had tipped the scales and made Magnus choose him? Lestat understood now that Magnus had used the Mind Gift while he was up there on stage, pried him open and surveyed everything hidden inside him. That was why he had given him that name. Wolfkiller.

Had it only been that day of slaughter that made up Magnus’ mind—Lestat’s viciousness, his resilience, his determination to survive at any cost? Or had there been more? Perhaps Magnus had seen it—the unnamed kernel of wrongness inside Lestat. The thing that made his father sneer at him with hate, made his mother shrink from touching him, made Nicki laugh at his pain.

The fundamental flaw in his soul that made him bad.

“She was just what he’d been hoping for. He attended the play, night after night, to watch her. He whispered the pet name he’d given her, using his magic so that she and she alone would hear it. And he dreamt of…of running his fingers through her golden hair.”

“Did the actress fall for him, this mysterious stranger?”

Lestat’s heart lurched; he broke his own rule and looked down at Armand in appalled confusion. How could he say something like that? Armand met his gaze: first with curiosity, then alarm when he saw the expression on Lestat’s face. It was clear he’d thought it a reasonable question to ask.

“No.” Lestat’s voice was a horrified rasp. “No.”

He was telling this all wrong if Armand thought it was going to be a love story. He felt sick, swallowed hard against nauseous rage.

“She was terrified. She– she tried to tell her lover that someone was watching her, but he only laughed and said it was all in her silly head. But it was real. She knew it was even if he didn’t believe her.”

Armand must be able to feel it, with his head pillowed on Lestat’s thighs: he was shaking, tiny continuous tremors he could not stop.

“Bluebeard grew tired of only watching and dreaming. One night, he used his magic to come to her bedroom window. He pulled her from her lover’s arms and dragged her away. S-she kicked and screamed like a wild thing, but he was a powerful magician and she was only–”

He trailed off, glanced at the window Magnus had broken in through. Boarded up now to block out the sun. How safe he had felt here, all those years in Paris! This room had been his sanctuary. How could he have been so stupid? Trusting a silly lock on a door, a silly latch on a window. Trusting the goodness of the world.

What a blind fool.

“Bluebeard brought her to his tower.”

Lestat’s heart was racing now. He went silent for some time, rubbing a lock of Armand’s hair between his thumb and forefinger. He felt each hair, the slide and shift of them. The room smelled of candlewax and clove; early that night, while they were both heavy-limbed from sleep, Lestat had been relaxed enough to slick himself up and fuck between Armand’s thighs. It had been lazy and easy and perfect—slow delicious rolls of his hips, Armand’s hand splayed on his ass to encourage him, murmurs of sweet praise until he came with a sigh.

The smell was fresh and clean. Nothing like the tower: copper of old congealed blood, damp mold from Magnus’ rotting clothes, the unfathomable sickening horror of so much decaying flesh. It was a smell that had clawed its way down Lestat’s throat. He dreamt of it sometimes—that odor, in the pitch darkness—and would wake up sweat-drenched and gagging.

“She prayed to be saved, but of course–” Lestat broke off with a laugh. Tiny, wretched sound. Bitter as bile. “–God did not hear her. She fought him with her nails and her teeth, but it only made Bluebeard laugh. He liked…feeling her struggle.”

Lestat could not help it; he glanced down at Armand to gauge his reaction. He’d more than half convinced himself that Armand already knew—the outline, at least, if not the particulars. It seemed so obvious from Lestat’s perspective: his absolute refusal to discuss Magnus no matter how Armand prodded and prompted, his choking wretched nightmares, his unexplained flinches, his persistent tentativeness when it came to sex.

Evidently, he’d been mistaken. Armand’s eyes were huge, their irises a vivid orange. Shock, pure and simple. Lestat looked away again, his stomach churning with misery. And yet he felt the corners of his mouth twitch up into a smile. Why was he smiling? Why couldn’t he seem to make himself stop?

“Obvious what comes next, isn’t it? Even a child could guess. Bluebeard had gotten his bride, and so he had his wedding night.”

Lestat ground out the words between clenched teeth, that vicious smile still on his lips. He laughed again, shaking his head. He had not gotten this far, with Nicki. Would it have mattered if he had? Even if he had been able to say it, in plain and direct language, would Nicki still have called him a fool?

There was a tug at his hand. Armand pulled it towards him and laced their fingers together, holding tight. He did not say anything, merely squeezed Lestat’s hand in his. The pressure knocked something loose in Lestat’s chest; he wasn’t smiling any longer. The tears felt molten hot on his cheeks, pressure breaking like a dam. His breaths hitched with sobs, but the words came easier.

“When Bluebeard was finished with her, he carried her down to a cell beneath the base of the tower. That’s how the legend goes, that’s how it always goes. There is a secret room full of bodies. The actress realized then that she wasn’t his first bride. He’d married many, many times before. But Bluebeard was very particular. He wouldn’t accept anything less than perfect, and he handled disappointment—poorly. Even after watching her for all that time, Bluebeard wasn’t sure yet if the actress was good enough for him. So…so he brought her to the prison cell full of the rotting corpses of his old wives and left her there with the worms and the rats and the rejects.”

Lestat could hear his own voice growing thinner, further away from him. Armand kept squeezing his hand tightly; Lestat looked down at it. How odd it looked, the way they interlaced. What a complicated shape they made. How beautiful the alternating pattern, Armand’s narrow dark fingers nestled between the thicker pale ones.

“Every single one of the corpses looked just like her. They were more similar to her than her sisters. Long limbs, small waists, pale skin, blue eyes, blonde hair. Dozens of copies of the same woman.”

How could he begin to explain the horror of it? Worse in his mind than all the rest, those long periods among the used and discarded lookalikes. How in the hours and hours and hours of silence he felt bodiless, unreal, erased. He did not have words for the way his sense of self slipped away from him, and he became not an individual, not a living rational person. Lestat de Lioncourt vanished; he did not exist and he never had. He lay there among the corpses, their soft putrefying flesh pressing against him like overripe fruit, and he became meat.

“Bluebeard took his time deciding if he would keep the new bride or kill her. For a week, every day was the same. He came down, unlocked the prison cell, and brought her upstairs to his room. He gave her food to eat and wine to drink. He wanted her to keep up her strength. Then he pushed her down on the bed or the floor and s-stroked her hair while he–”

Lestat heard a tiny hitch of understanding in Armand’s breath; the words died in his throat. For all the progress he’d made in other areas—he could be naked with Armand so long as he undressed himself, could tangle their bodies together as long as Armand was not on top of him, could tolerate a hundred small intimacies that each felt like a victory—Lestat still could not bear to have his hair touched. The few times Armand had tried, Lestat had reacted with savage disproportionate rage.

He yanked his hand free from Armand’s, using the cuff to wipe the fresh tears from his cheeks. It wasn’t fair, he knew, to feel angry at Armand. He was the one who was weak—Armand had committed no crime apart from perceiving it. Self-loathing welled up inside him, sludgy and thick. He should be above this. He should be stronger than a few memories, no matter how unpleasant. What kind of man was he?

Lestat let his head drop back against the headboard, quite a lot harder than was necessary. It made a satisfying thunk and the pain cut through the fog of helplessness and disgust.

He had started this. He ought to at least finish.

“She fought every time, even the nights he fed from her before rather than after. She tried to escape, too. The walls were stone and the bars would not budge no matter how she hit them. One night, she dug a bone from the flesh of one of the older corpses and used the bars to snap it into a sharp point. The moment he unlocked the door she put it through his stomach.”

Lestat shook his head, fresh tears spilling from his eyes. What a fool he’d been. How pathetic, the hope that had burned in his chest. He’d known Magnus was a vampire by then, of course, but what did he know about vampires? He’d spent hours in the dark trying to remember old myths. Garlic, crosses, communion wafers. That femur had been his best attempt at a stake. He’d apologized over and over as he’d worked it free from the corpse—yet Lestat had had a feeling the young man, whoever he’d been, would’ve understood.

“He didn’t even take me upstairs that night. He– he pulled out the bone as if it were a splinter and fucked me on top of the corpses, laughing–”

The shaking was much worse now. Lestat had managed to get this far, but it was careening out of his control. The cushion of the Bluebeard legend had worn too thin and he’d let it slip without even meaning to. If he kept talking now, he didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t want to know.

“That’s not the end of the story, but I– I believe I am…done.”

Armand lifted his head from Lestat’s lap, which was good. It gave Lestat the room to pull his knees tight against his chest and cross his arms on top of them. That helped. Lestat shut his eyes and tried to picture the leaves on the trees. The warmth that lingered after sunset when he and Armand went out hunting. The stalls that had sprung up—as they did each year—on every other street, selling bouquets of fresh-cut flowers. So many different kinds, bundled up in little paper wrappers. How Lestat loved to linger as he walked by, inhaling their warm perfume. It was like he could almost feel the sun on his skin again. Flower stalls. Paris, in Spring. Time passing like a slow river, putting space between then and now.

The bed shifted as Armand moved to sit beside him, close but not touching. Lestat wished he had not wrenched his hand away like that earlier. Armand had been nothing but patient and kind. He ought to apologize. He didn’t think he could say another word right now, even telepathically, to save his life.

But Armand did not ask him any questions, or make any move to reach for him. By tiny degrees, the trembling in Lestat’s body lessened. When he could bear it, he let his head drop to the side, resting his temple against Armand’s shoulder.

Lestat expected nightmares, when dawn came and he succumbed to the pull of sleep; yet he dreamt not at all. Armand might have had something to do with that—Lestat knew it was well within his power. Knew, too, that Armand only slept a fraction of the time that he did. He had said it was because he was so much older, but Lestat wasn’t sure he believed that.

He blinked awake, disoriented, and looked to the little clock on the mantle above the fireplace. It was almost 2—he’d slept half the night away.

The fire was crackling and steady but Armand was nowhere to be seen. Lestat had no idea how long ago his lover had woken up. It must have been a considerable amount of time, based on the sheer number of flowers with which he’d filled the garret.

They were on every surface, crammed into makeshift vases of all shapes and sizes. From the looks of things, Armand had stolen several crates from some unsuspecting shop or restaurant, just to make more raised surfaces on which he could stack bouquets.

There was no logic to the arrangement. It was a riot of rose and iris and crocus, lavender and daisies and clary, all thrown together in a chaotic explosion of color. Lestat stood up from the bed and nearly tripped over a mug overflowing with buttercups left on the floor.

Lestat’s eyes were drawn, naturally, to the one flat surface in the room that was not buried in bouquets. It was a large old chest, its wood slightly rotted, the lock rusted and broken. Lestat recognized it from the tower.

At that moment, Armand came in the door, his arms full of a half dozen more bouquets. Yellow lilies, mostly, but some pale pink roses, too. He looked neat as a pin, his dark hair combed smooth and drawn back in an immaculate ponytail, wearing the dark green frock coat Lestat had bought for him. Not a trace left of the grimy fanatic Lestat had pulled out of the catacombs.

“You’re awake!”

Armand deposited the bundled flowers on the table, scooting what looked like a stolen milk jug full of lilacs to the side to make room. His smile was bright but hesitant. Before Lestat could speak, he asked, “Is it too much?”

Lestat didn’t even know how to begin answering that. Instead, he asked, “Why…?”

“You were thinking of them.” When Lestat merely blinked, Armand drew his bottom lip between his teeth and added, clearly reluctant to do so, “Last night.”

In a rush, Lestat remembered. He had thought of flowers, hadn’t he? How long had he passed like that, huddled on the bed, shaking, making himself think only of tulips? He had not noticed Armand reading his thoughts. Then again, he hadn’t been in a state to notice much of anything.

Lestat brushed the ruffled petals of an iris with his fingertips. Softly, he said, “I’ve always been so fond of flowers.”

It was a secret joy of his, as a boy in Auvergne: going out into the hills and gathering wildflowers. When he was very little, he carried them back to the castle and gave them to his mother. Once he was old enough to notice how much she disliked that, he stopped bringing them home. He understood that no one wanted them, and besides, it wasn’t quite right, for a young man of his age to like flowers this much.

He still made his little bouquets bundled in grass, but he left them in the crooks of trees as he walked and wondered if anyone ever stumbled across them. He hoped so. He hoped they made someone smile.

That was a constant thread in the story of his life, wasn’t it? So much love, and no place to put it.

“I know.”

So much love in Armand’s voice Lestat could drown in it. All those years he’d longed for someone to give his bouquets to. He hadn’t even considered the possibility of someone giving them to him.

Lestat pointed, “That’s his chest.” No need to elaborate on who ‘he’ meant.

“Ah. Yes.” Armand rubbed his fingers together, a nervous gesture Lestat had come to know well over the time they’d been living together. “It is. I went and got it for you. I…” Armand hesitated, clearly taking the time to choose his words carefully. “I just thought…you shouldn’t ever have to go back there, if you don’t want to.”

“Oh.”

All this time, it had never crossed Lestat’s mind once that he could ask Armand to go and get the chest for him.

Armand plucked a petal from one of the roses he had set on the table, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t intend to make it a habit, and there won’t be time tonight—we should hunt, love, before it gets too close to sunrise—but…tomorrow, I was planning on going back. I thought, perhaps, with your permission, I might start digging some graves. Set things to rights.”

Lestat was confused for a moment before understanding caught up to him. Armand was talking about the prison. That room with the bodies of Magnus’ victims, still rotting there in the damp and the dark. Lestat hadn’t gone near it since he was turned. But he realized, at that moment, that its existence was a pit in the back of his mind. Just knowing it was there, unchanged since the final time Magnus had pulled him out of it—except, perhaps, for the birth of more maggots.

And now, Armand was proposing to go there and what? Pull all the bodies out and bury them? Lay them to rest?

He was glad for the flowers, now. The air was thick with their smell. Lestat reached out, grabbing a bundle of jasmine and bringing it to his nose. He inhaled deeply, the almost noxious sweetness of it.

“Did you look?” Lestat wished his voice had not come out so small.

“Not yet.”

“Armand, there are so many—”

“Then I will dig many graves.”

There was a stubbornness in his voice that Lestat had rarely heard before. He lifted his eyes to meet Armand’s; level gaze, set jaw. It really suited him, that ponytail, the high embroidered collar, the lace cravat. He looked handsome. Dashing, even.

“I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.”

What did he want? Lestat imagined telling Armand no. He imagined months going by, then years, then decades. Magnus’ tower looming a few miles outside the city, a terrible monument with its secret chamber underneath. Cancerous horror in the back of Lestat’s mind, eating away at any fragile happiness he might build for himself.

“I want you to.” Lestat’s voice was firm, decisive. He set down the jasmine. “It’s just– it’s so–”

“I don’t mind doing it, for you. Not if it helps.”

It was not that he had never been loved like this before. Nicki had loved him; for more than a decade, he and Nicki had loved one another the best they knew how. He could not even imagine the person he would be were it not for Nicki’s love–the very structure of his soul had been imbued with it.

But he had never, Lestat realized, been understood like this before. How had Armand known, even before Lestat realized it himself, that while those bodies remained in that room, a part of him would remain with them? Was it because Armand had crypts of his own, yawning black and catastrophic in the back of his mind? Did their similarity allow this insight, or was it a talent particular to Armand and his patient, ever-watchful eyes?

“I can’t come with you.”

Armand’s brows drew together, a small furrow between them. “Of course not. I would never ask you to.”

He ought to, Lestat thought. He owed it to them. His brothers; his duplicates; his fellow Bluebeard brides. But he could not, because he was a coward still. Would he be a coward, always? No matter how thick the façade he built, no matter how carefully he polished it–would some part of him always be ruled by this?

“Lestat.”

Armand’s voice broke through his thoughts; Lestat looked at him. How had this world produced such a being as Armand? A world of his father’s boots and his mastiff’s guts steaming in the snow and Magnus’ face in the audience and the wet churning of maggots in the darkness and the sick unwanted lurch of pleasure in his guts when Magnus forced open his lips and let the blood pour in. How had the world of unending horrors shaped a mold out of which came a man like Armand?

He had drawn nearer without deciding to do it. Armand reached a hand up to touch his face, and Lestat pressed his cheek into the warmth of his palm, all dignity gone. Needy child, desperate for a pat on the head, a soft voice reassuring him all would be well.

“Will you let me take care of this?” Armand asked. Lestat heard the true meaning. Will you let me take care of you?

Lestat melted into the obliterating comfort of it and kissed his ‘yes’ into Armand’s smiling mouth.