---
The words hung in the room like a blade that had already fallen.
"I am... a vampire. I became strong by drinking blood."
For a moment Lily did not move.
She simply stood there, looking at him with wide eyes while the shape of the truth finished settling inside her. The room stayed quiet around them, the curtains holding the daylight in softened folds, the table between them still carrying the untouched pieces of an ordinary afternoon that had quietly stopped being ordinary several confessions ago.
Sekhmet watched her face with the rigid stillness of someone bracing for impact. He had imagined this moment too many times in the space of a few breaths.
Shock first.
Then fear.
Then the small but fatal distance people made when something crossed from troubling into unnatural.
