Chapter 296: The Breath Between Nights II
---
Sekhmet exhaled once.
"I am not arguing with you tonight."
Bat Bat brightened instantly. "Victory."
"That was not permission."
"It sounded like permission."
"It sounded like exhaustion."
"Exhausted permission is still permission."
He looked at her for a moment longer and then gave up because yes, he was too tired to spend further strategic thought on whether she was allowed to sleep in his room.
"Fine."
Bat Bat made the tiniest victorious noise and shot upward in delight before catching herself and pretending she had expected this all along.
"I accept your wise decision."
Sekhmet did not answer.
He closed the room fully, checked the lock more out of habit than needed, and crossed toward the bed. She checked the door lock because she was worried that Elena might come and take her for study. She made sure that Elena can’t come.
Sekhmet was busy watching his bed.
The maids had made it up so completely that it almost looked like someone else’s room now. Too smooth. Too proper. Too innocent for what had passed here earlier.
He stood beside it for a moment, looking at the clean sheets.
Then shook his head once and sat.
Fatigue hit more clearly the moment he allowed stillness. Not crushing. Not a weakness. Just the cost of using too much chaos energy, too many decisions, too much fear held in a controlled shape for too many hours.
Bat Bat landed on the bed near his knee and looked up at him.
"You smell less hungry now."
That made him glance at her.
She shrugged with her wings. "I notice things."
Apparently.
Sekhmet removed the outer layer of his clothes slowly and set aside the few things he needed near the bedside table. No more plans tonight. No more risks. No more new bloodline experiments until morning. The meeting with Mihos could wait. Raka would either receive the lesser vampire correctly or he would have a very unpleasant morning.
He lay back at last.
The mattress took his weight. The sheets were cool and clean. The room still smelled faintly of Lily beneath the new order the maids had pressed into it, and that alone was enough to tighten something quiet in his chest before he forced himself to let the thought go.
Bat Bat watched him for exactly two seconds.
Then climbed onto his chest.
Not delicately.
Like a creature taking the highest, warmest point available and declaring it hers by instinct and right.
Sekhmet looked down at her.
She circled once, made a tiny satisfied sound, and settled herself over him with absurd authority. Tiny claws carefully controlled against his clothes. Wings tucked in. Ears relaxed.
"This is acceptable," she announced.
He should have moved her. But he did not.
"You are very small," he said.
Bat Bat opened one eye. "And yet emotionally important. I will become big soon."
That almost made him smile.
He let one hand rest loosely near her, not holding her, only present in case she rolled off in sleep. Bat Bat, having gotten exactly what she wanted, was asleep within moments.
Of course she was.
Creatures like her spent the day as if every hour were a war on order and then collapsed instantly when comfort arrived.
Lucky girl.
Sekhmet stared at the ceiling for a while longer.
Mihos man was waiting for an answer.
Mihos himself was hidden somewhere under all the problems of his house, all of it. When he meets him he will know the truth.
His eyes finally closed.
Bat Bat’s tiny weight on his chest rose and fell with his breathing, ridiculous and strangely grounding.
.
.
.
.
Meanwhile...
The night in Dawn House had settled into one of those quiet hours when even large houses seemed to breathe more softly.
Servants moved less often. Doors opened and shut with more care. Lamps were lowered not because anyone feared darkness, but because the day had spent enough of itself and now wished to become something quieter before morning returned to demand work again.
That was why the lesser vampire’s departure went almost unnoticed.
Almost.
He moved through the lower corridors with controlled silence, carrying Sekhmet’s token hidden beneath his sleeve and his new obedience stitched deep into the blood that had replaced older instincts. He did not move like a human servant, nor like a thief. His steps were too measured for one and too efficient for the other. The transformation had already changed that much. Even newly made, he held himself with a faint unnatural grace that ordinary men did not possess unless years of training had beaten elegance into them by force.
He reached the outer side corridor without trouble.
At the turn where the house widened slightly toward the shadowed service yard, Elena saw him.
She stood near a half-closed doorway with one hand resting against the frame, her posture as still and alert as always. She had not been waiting for him specifically. Elena never waited for one thing only. She simply existed in a state of prepared awareness that made accidental encounters feel deliberate.
The lesser vampire stopped immediately and bowed his head.
Elena’s gaze moved over him once.
Calm. Precise. Cold enough to peel apart lies without speaking.
She felt the blood on him first. Not by scent exactly. By familiarity. His changed energy still carried the imprint of Sekhmet’s return from the Void Land, and that mattered. If the man had moved like this without that mark, she would already have had three maids and two hidden blades around him before he finished breathing.
Instead, she understood enough.
Not everything.
Enough.
"Going somewhere," she said.
The lesser vampire kept his head lowered. "Yes."
Elena’s eyes narrowed by half a degree. "By his order."
"Yes."
That was all she needed.
She did not ask where. She did not call guards. She did not send a maid to trail him. If Sekhmet had released something carrying his blood and purpose, then either it was meant to go or it would become a lesson. Elena trusted him enough to let the consequences belong to him where appropriate.