Chapter 318: What Mira Had Hidden
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They filed out in groups under rough order, heading back toward the hidden lower routes with the kind of dangerous energy that made ordinary morning workers instinctively clear space and not ask questions.
The first lesser vampire from the night before fell into line naturally.
Raka looked back once before leaving fully.
Not at Mira.
Not at Bat Bat.
At Sekhmet.
No bow.
No dramatic line.
Only one sharp nod.
The kind men like him gave when a bond had moved beyond words and become structured.
Then he was gone.
His men with him.
The hall quieted.
The front chamber of the Dawn auction house returned, on the surface, to looking like a place where ledgers and objects mattered more than blood.
That surface was a lie now.
A stronger one than before.
Mira stood with her hands at her sides and watched the emptying room.
Her decision did not weaken just because the noise had gone.
If anything, it sharpened.
She had waited long enough.
She would tell him.
All of it.
And then ask him to make her stronger too.
For a little while after Raka and his men left, the Dawn auction house felt too large.
Not because it had emptied completely. Workers still moved through the lower levels. Clerks still carried ledgers. A pair of handlers argued quietly over crate placement near the rear loading space until one of Mira’s looks reached them from halfway across the hall and cured the problem without a single spoken word. Business had not stopped. It never truly stopped.
But something had changed in the room after the lesser vampires went out.
Power had passed through the building openly.
A hundred men had stood there as ordinary rough lower-market stock and walked out changed, faster, sharper, hungrier, and bound more deeply to Sekhmet than before. Even the walls seemed to remember it. The stone, the wood, the air itself—everything held the aftertaste of bloodline force and decision.
Bat Bat still sat on the edge of one of the front chairs and swung one leg idly while watching the hall reset around her. She looked more comfortable in the body now than she had this morning, which was deeply unhelpful because confidence always made her more dangerous. The maids assigned to shadow her stood at a respectful distance and pretended not to monitor every move she made. They were failing. Bat Bat noticed. Bat Bat enjoyed it.
Sekhmet remained near the center of the room for another minute or two, eyes following the last of Raka’s men until they vanished from the open front path and the auction house breathed around their absence again.
Only then did he turn toward Mira.
She was already waiting for the look.
That meant she had not changed her mind now that privacy was nearer.
"Come," he said.
It was not an invitation.
It was an opening.
Mira nodded once.
No argument.
No delay.
Sekhmet looked at Bat Bat. "Stay here."
Bat Bat opened her mouth.
He lifted one brow.
She closed it again and crossed her arms instead. "I am being oppressed by being excluded from the interesting part."
"Yes."
"I want that recorded."
"It is."
Bat Bat squinted at him, trying to decide whether that answer counted as humor. She failed and settled for muttering, "Fine. But I am spiritually involved."
The maids looked near death.
Sekhmet ignored all of them and led Mira toward one of the side offices just off the main front chamber. Not the central office. Not the heavy records room. A smaller chamber used for private pricing talks and sensitive negotiations. The walls were thick enough to keep the hall at a distance. The desk inside was plain but expensive in the practical way that said it had been chosen to survive hard use rather than impress shallow buyers.
Mira stepped in behind him.
He closed the door.
The room quieted.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Mira remained standing instead of taking the chair. So did he. That told him enough before she ever opened her mouth. She did not want this conversation to feel like paperwork. Good. It was not.
Sekhmet leaned one shoulder lightly against the edge of the desk and watched her.
"Say it."
Mira let out one slow breath. Without any stalling.
"I made a mistake."
His expression did not change.
"What mistake?"
Her eyes met him directly. There was no point softening now. She had already chosen against that.
"When I attached myself to you, I stopped halfway."
That answer interested him immediately.
He said nothing.
Mira continued, voice steady, though the steadiness cost her more than she wanted him to see.
"I gave you a work contract. Useful terms. Honest labor. Loyalty inside the business. I told myself that was enough until I saw how you moved, what you became, and what gathered around you."
Sekhmet held her gaze.
"And now?"
She almost laughed, but the sound would have been too bitter to be useful. "Now I have watched a bat become a woman, a city lord’s daughter disappear into blood, two sealed half-gods kneel under your shadow, and over a hundred lower-market men walk out of this house as lesser vampires."
That was one way to summarize the week.
Sekhmet’s mouth moved faintly. "It has been busy."
Mira ignored the line because if she let him turn this into dry wit, she would lose the harder part of her own courage.
"I should have told you everything earlier."
There.
The true center at last.
Sekhmet went still in the more dangerous way he had. Not frozen. Focused.
"What did you not tell me?"
Mira’s hands remained at her sides. She did not fold them. Did not fidget. She would not enter this truth already looking guilty, even if guilt lived in it.
"About my enemies."
That pulled his full attention forward.
"Who?"
Mira looked at him for one heartbeat longer, then answered.
"The Medusa bloods. The Gorgon race."
The room changed. Not in a dramatic way.