Chapter 242: What are You?
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Lily did not speak right away after that. She was preparing for the real question. The question she was holding inside her heart for a while now.
The quiet in the room settled differently now. Before, it had been the quiet of comfort after a hard truth. Now it became the quiet of someone looking at a door in the wall and deciding whether to open it or not.
Sekhmet noticed the change almost immediately.
Lily had a way of going still when she was about to ask something serious. It was not fear exactly. More like care sharpening itself. Her fingers, which had been resting loosely in her lap, drew together a little. Her eyes remained on him, but not with the softness from before. There was still softness, yes, but layered under it now was thought.
Question... Memory...
She was remembering something.
Sekhmet knew what it was before she said it.
The moment everything had gone wrong in public and he had stopped pretending to be merely strange.
Lily leaned back slightly and folded one leg under the other. Her voice, when it came, was calm.
"Sekhmet."
He looked at her.
"There is something else."
The words were simple.
His body still reacted.
A small tightening under the ribs. A faint stiffness in the shoulders. Not enough for most people to notice. Enough for him. Enough, perhaps, for her.
He kept his face as neutral as he could.
"..."
Lily did not smile this time.
"At the auction," she said.
There it was.
Sekhmet felt his pulse shift once.
Lily continued, and now her gaze was direct enough to pin.
"The power you used against Iron House." She paused. "The way the twins fought with you. The way the blood moved."
His fingers froze, on the table.
Lily saw that too. She saw everything when she cared enough to look.
"I want the truth," she said quietly.
The room changed again.
This time not because of revelation already given, but because of revelation waiting at the edge of speech.
Sekhmet did not answer immediately.
His mind moved too fast. Faster than his face. Faster than breath.
The old instinct came first.
Deny.
Turn.
Delay.
Say it was a technique. A hidden skill. A bloodline trick. Something vague enough to satisfy curiosity without opening the real dark door behind it.
But Lily was watching him with too much care for lazy lies to survive long. And worse, she was watching him with trust. Trust made lying feel dirtier.
Still, honesty had its own terror.
He had told her about his father.
About gods.
About his mother and exile and humiliation and old houses and buried truths.
But this was different.
Those were family secrets.
This was him.
This was not history.
This was what lived under his skin now. What had moved in him at the auction. What had answered violence with something no ordinary person should have been able to answer it with.
Lily leaned forward a little.
"How did the twins fight like that?" she asked. "How did they move in rhythm with you? Why did their bodies respond to your commands before you even finished speaking? And you..." Her eyes narrowed slightly, not in accusation but in concentration. "What exactly are you doing when blood moves like it belongs to you?"
Sekhmet swallowed once.
He hated that she noticed that too.
Lily’s voice dropped.
"I have been waiting," she said. "Because so much happened. I have been watching you since purgatory. You looked like someone trying not to drown. But I am not stupid, Sekhmet."
He looked away first.
That was enough to hurt him a little. Not because she forced it. Because he knew what it meant. Some part of him still could not meet her eyes while this truth stood between them.
Lily’s expression changed at that.
Not harder.
More pain.
"Look at me," she said softly.
He did.
And because he did, he saw that this was costing her too.
There was no disgust there.
No fear.
Only insistence. Hurt that she had to insist. Fear of being shut out. Fear, perhaps, that if she did not ask now, the distance between them would grow teeth.
"I want you to tell me," she said. "Not because I want to corner you. Not because I want to judge you. Because I was there. I saw what happened. I saw what you did. I saw what the twins became around you. And since then every time I think about it, I realize I don’t even know you."
She took a breath.
"And I need to know whether I am standing beside someone I know."
That hit.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Worse.
Quietly.
Directly.
Sekhmet felt something cold move through his chest.
Not because she was accusing him of being a stranger.
Because she was afraid of it.
And in that instant, his mind did what frightened minds did best. It leapt ahead into disaster.
"What if she thinks I am a monster?"
The thought came ugly and immediate.
Not abstractly. Not philosophically. Personally.
What if he told her and she flinched?
What if her face changed in that one precise way that meant she could never unsee him again?
What if trust did not survive the shape of his truth?
He knew what he was now, at least in part. Not fully, perhaps. The system still parceled truth in fragments, awakening by awakening. But he knew enough to understand that people did not hear words like vampire and stayed unchanged unless they were very unusual or very damaged or both.
And Lily did many good things.
But she was still human enough to fear what fed on blood.
His silence stretched too long.
Lily saw what it did to him.
Her expression softened, but she did not pull back.
That was the worst and best part of her. Once she decided something mattered, she did not retreat just because the answer hurt.
"Sekhmet," she said again.
His hands folded together slowly.
"You might not like the answer."
Lily’s reply came without delay. "That is not your choice to make for me."
He looked at her.
That line landed hard because it was fair.
More than fair.