Chapter 257: The First Taste of Truth
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"Will you be all right feeding like that?" That question was in the air. She needed some time to process it. So, Lily did not answer at once.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything she had just seen.
The pale faces of the men.
The sound that had come out of the first one when Vera’s fangs entered his neck.
The way the bodies had shaken. Not from death, but from the helplessness of being held still while something intimate and terrible was taken from them.
The way Vera and Vela had not looked wild while doing it. That was somehow worse. If they had snarled like beasts, Lily’s mind could have placed the moment in a cleaner box. Monster. Predator. Horror. Easy words. Manageable ones. But there had been no theatrical cruelty in it. No madness. Only control. Need. Familiarity. The normality of something she had only ever imagined through fear and story.
That was what unsettled her most.
It had looked real.
Her fingers curled slowly at her sides and then loosened again.
She forced her breathing to remain steady.
Sekhmet watched her without pressing yet. Vera and Vela stood a short distance away, both calm now after feeding, while the two pale men were dragged back into the rough line of captives by others too frightened to do anything but obey the gestures thrown at them. Dickon stared from farther back, hatred burning in him like a bad fire that had forgotten how to spread and only knew how to smoke.
Lily finally looked at Sekhmet.
"It is different," she said quietly.
He said nothing.
She continued, making herself speak plainly because she knew he would hear false courage before the sentence finished forming.
"It is different from imagining it." Her eyes flicked once toward where the two captives had been fed on. "In my head it was darker. Wilder. More monstrous. But seeing it..." She swallowed. "It is worse in some ways because it is not wild."
Sekhmet’s expression did not change, but something in his gaze sharpened with approval.
Lily saw that and took strength from it.
"It looked controlled," she said. "Intimate. Almost..." She stopped and frowned, visibly irritated with the word threatening to form. "That is not the right word."
"Say it anyway," Sekhmet said.
Lily looked at him.
He stood with the stillness he wore when he wanted truth and would accept nothing polished in its place.
"It looked too close," she said at last. "Not like an attack. Not only like an attack. Like something your body could learn and stop thinking of as horrible if it happened enough."
That brought the faintest shift to Sekhmet’s face. Good, it seemed to say. Good that she saw it clearly.
Lily let out a breath. "That frightens me more than blood."
Sekhmet stepped closer.
Not enough to crowd her.
Enough to let her know he was present and listening with all of himself.
"That," he said quietly, "is an honest answer."
Lily’s mouth twitched. "You say that like I passed an exam."
"You did."
His tone remained calm, but there was weight in it.
"False courage is useless here," he said. "A new vampire who lies to herself about hunger is more dangerous than a starving one."
Lily nodded slowly.
"I can do it," she said after a moment. "But I would need time to get used to it."
Sekhmet’s eyes held hers.
That answer pleased him more than if she had boasted.
"I know," he said.
Lily studied his face. "You are not disappointed."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I was not looking for fearlessness," he said. "I was looking for whether you would tell the truth when it mattered."
The words settled somewhere deep and warm in her despite the dark around them.
She glanced briefly at Vera and Vela. "Did they answer you like that too?"
Vera’s mouth curved faintly.
Vela was the one who answered first.
"No," she said. "I lied."
Lily blinked.
Vela’s expression remained dry and honest. "The first time I was asked, I said I was ready. I was not. I was stubborn."
Vera looked amused. "You were furious, not stubborn."
"I was both."
That pulled the edge of tension from the moment.
Lily actually let out a small breath that nearly became a laugh.
Vera stepped forward just enough to join the conversation without intruding on it. "What frightened me was not the blood," she said. "It was how quickly my body stopped rejecting the idea of it."
Lily looked at her fully.
Vera went on. "You expect horror. You expect your mind to scream. Sometimes it does. But hunger does not wait for dignity. It enters through instinct first. Once it learns where relief comes from, the body becomes far less noble than the stories."
"That is a terrible sentence," Lily muttered.
"It is a useful one," Sekhmet said.
Lily sighed. "Everyone around you is too practical."
"That is why we are still alive," Vera said.
Lily could not argue with that.
Sekhmet folded his arms and let the silence settle again for a moment before continuing.
"Feeding is not one thing," he said. "That is the next part you need to understand."
Lily’s attention sharpened immediately.
"It is not always like this," he said, gesturing faintly toward the captives. "This is one form. Controlled, unwilling, practical. It answers hunger without killing. It teaches discipline. It uses living bodies as resources and tries not to waste them."
Dickon made a sound behind them, something angry and useless.
Sekhmet ignored him.
He kept his eyes on Lily.
"But vampires do not always need to feed like beasts," he said. "Feeding can be planned. Measured. Calm. Gentle. Rough. Willing. Unwilling. Cold. Intimate. Strategic. Emotional. Some people feed for survival. Some for power. Some for pleasure. Some because blood bond and hunger become tangled in ways their minds are not strong enough to separate."
Lily stood very still through that.
The twins did not interrupt.
Sekhmet continued.