Chapter 279: The Crimson Womb II
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Then his mouth sealed over the wound. And blood entered him. The first taste hit like light. Not metaphorical light. Actual bright shock through his senses.
Sekhmet’s eyes widened against her throat.
Inside his mind, the system rang.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification:
Foreign bloodline detected.
Warning: first consumption of angel blood recorded.
Blood Proficiency increased by 0.20%.]
For one dangerous heartbeat, his body forgot the rest of the ritual.
Angel blood.
The words struck through him harder than the taste itself.
His mind flashed white with disbelief even while his mouth remained at her throat. He took only a controlled swallow, then another, forcing himself to hold to discipline while thought detonated behind his eyes.
"Angel?"
He had always thought Lily was human.
Not because he had studied her bloodline deeply enough to confirm it, but because the world around her had been built that way. Her father was human. Her place in the city was human. Her presence had never struck him as anything other than noble, warm, bright, yes, but still within the shape of mortal blood.
Angel.
Which meant—
His thoughts moved instantly.
If her father was human, then her mother...
His eyes opened.
He pulled back at once before he took too much. Blood welled red at the bite marks, and he caught her gently before the surprise in him translated into roughness.
Lily blinked at him, breathing unevenly. The flush in her face had changed now. Not from embarrassment. From pain, from adrenaline, from the first terrible intimacy of feeding.
Sekhmet stared at her.
She noticed.
"What?" she whispered.
He almost asked right then.
"What is your mother?
Why didn’t you tell me?
Why do you have angel blood in your veins?"
Sekhmet paused, then continued, "But no. Not now. Not in the middle of this. Not while she had just given me her throat and her trust."
He locked the questions away with effort.
"Later. When she is stable."
When she was his third true vampire and not in danger of collapsing mid transformation because he let curiosity become stupidity.
So instead he said only, "You are all right."
Lily searched his face as if she knew there was more under the sentence. But she nodded.
Sekhmet forced his thoughts back into line and lifted the glass.
"Drink," he said.
Her eyes moved to the blood.
The glass looked almost black-red colour under the Void Land sky now, it looked thicker somehow, brighter in the center. Power lived in it openly. Not a metaphor. Not imagination. Every person standing there could feel it.
Lily’s fingers trembled once before she took it.
Bat Bat made a small, outraged sound. "You never offer me any glass of blood."
Auri actually had to look away to keep from reacting.
"This is not for you," Sekhmet said without taking his eyes off Lily.
Bat Bat folded her wings in high offense. "Very rude. Very exclusionary. I will remember this master. You eat without Bat Bat."
Lily almost laughed, and the absurdity of that almost steadied her.
Good for her.
She needed steady.
Sekhmet held her gaze. "Drink all of it."
Her throat moved once. Then she lifted the glass.
Vera and Vela watched with complete attention now, and memory moved across both their faces in different ways.
Vera remembered her own turning as heat first. Heat so immense it had made thought feel like paper in fire. The taste of his blood after, richer than anything her entire life had ever taught her tongue to expect. The terror when the body realized it wanted more. The strange, sacred humiliation of needing and trusting at the same time.
Vela remembered the violence of it more clearly. How the first swallow had felt like swallowing a blade made of red light. How her heart had kicked against her ribs as if trying to escape before changing sides. How she had looked at him afterward and knew she could never again pretend that Sekhmet belonged entirely to herself.
Both women watched Lily lift the glass and saw their own past for a moment reflected in her fingers.
Auri watched too, and the expression on her face was sharper now. She looked protective. She also looked concerned. She was deeply alert. She did not fully understand the shape of vampiric creation, but she understood ritual and irreversible acts. She understood that what stood before her was not simply blood drinking. It was transformation through choice, and that choice had edges.
Lily took the first mouthful. The reaction was immediate. Her eyes widened. The blood was warm.
Far warmer than it should have been after sitting in glass. It entered her mouth like heat, iron, and some deeper force that had nothing to do with ordinary life. It did not taste merely of him. It tasted of strength. Of old hunger. Of stormfire trapped in liquid shape. Her whole body reacted before her mind could finish understanding what she had swallowed.
She nearly coughed at first.
Sekhmet stepped closer. "Slowly if you need to. But drink all of it."
Lily nodded and drank again.
Bat Bat hovered in visible resentment, muttering, "No one ever offers me glowing ritual blood. I live in neglect."
Still, she did not interrupt.
The second swallow went down easier than the first.
By the third, Lily’s face had changed. The color in her cheeks deepened. Her breathing grew uneven in a different way now. Not from fear. From the blood itself beginning its work before the actual command had even been given.
She finished the glass. Every drop of the blood was gone. All gone inside her body.
When she lowered it, her fingers were no longer fully steady.
Sekhmet took the empty glass from her and set it aside on the cloth.
Lily’s mouth parted slightly as she breathed.
The taste still lived in her mouth. The heat too. She looked at him and there was something new in her expression now, something that had not been there before.