Chapter 336: The Meeting V
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That landed hard. Everyone felt the meaning of it. Mihos was angry at first. The guards felt it. Even a fool could feel it. Inside Mihos mind the pleasant cruelty felt like a joke and his expression tightened by a fraction.
Mihos’s eyes cooled further. "A low born dares to threaten me. How entertaining."
He took one small step closer, enough to make the hierarchy of the camp seem to lean inward around him.
"You wear the Dawn house name," he said. "That is already more generosity than your blood deserves."
Bat Bat’s fingers twitched. Elena did not look at her, but Bat Bat somehow still felt the warning and remained silent.
Sekhmet’s face did not change.
Mihos continued, voice now quieter, which made it crueler.
"You and I may share a little blood somewhere behind us. That does not make us equals. Your father was banished from the family. He lost his standing. He lost his place. He even lost the right to matter in the way true lines matter."
Mihos’s eyes sharpened on Sekhmet’s. "And what remains of him is only you."
Kess stood very still.
This was worse than an insult now. This was the sort of family contempt that stopped being performance and became instinct.
Sekhmet let the words pass through him without showing the full force of the anger they deserved.
That itself was a weapon.
Mihos had expected offense. Pain. Young temper. He had expected the lower one to reveal himself by reacting too quickly when his father was dragged under the boot.
Instead Sekhmet said, "You talk a great deal for someone who has nothing but his family name. You didn’t even dare to come to me. Instead you sent a servant with your message."
The nearest two guards went rigid.
Kess wanted to die again.
Mihos’s smile vanished.
A cleaner expression took its place.
"I sent Kess," Mihos said, "because lower dealings rarely deserve personal effort. You aren’t worth my personal visit."
"Then why are you here? Why did you ask to meet me?"
The question cut directly enough that even Elena’s eyes moved once toward Sekhmet. It was not a warning. It was an approval by her, she almost said it out loud. Good job young master.
Mihos heard the challenge and understood it perfectly.
Because that was the truth under the entire road, the camp, the message, the insult, the waiting servant, and the chosen stage. If Sekhmet truly did not matter, Mihos would not be here. He would have sent pressure, not presence. Money, not blood. Silence, not himself.
Mihos’s mouth shifted faintly.
"Because your father forgot his place," he said. "And because men who forget their place teach their sons bad habits."
There he was. Closer to the truth now. Why did he come? There was less trade and more truth.
Sekhmet’s eyes did not leave his. "Then perhaps tonight you intend to teach me mine."
Mihos looked almost pleased for the first time.
"Perhaps."
The word hung there.
The merchant road behind them continued its distant nighttime business. Lanterns burned. Beasts shifted weight. Guards watched and pretended not to lean into the moment.
Inside the pavilion, servants held breath. Somewhere deeper in the camp, the invisible fact of Lady Seraphiel’s presence made everything just slightly more dangerous than it would have been otherwise because any scene that became too loud might travel inward and become a story told to the wrong listener.
Mihos turned his head slightly then and looked at Kess.
The servant went cold at once.
"You took your time."
Kess bowed hard enough to feel the humiliation in his spine. "Young Master, I—"
Mihos barked like a dog, "Silence."
Kess obeyed instantly.
Mihos’s gaze moved over the dust on him, the road sweat, the evidence of the run. His lip barely moved, but the disgust in it was obvious.
Sekhmet saw that too.
The heir disliked seeing his own servant turned into a demonstration of lower-branch control.
Mihos returned his attention to Sekhmet. He said, "You brought him back running."
Sekhmet replied, "Yes."
Mihos asked, "Why?"
Sekhmet replied, "Because I wanted him to remember where he stood before he returned to you."
A very dangerous stillness entered the camp. Not from the guards. But from Mihos.
That answer had gone precisely where it was meant to go. Not into Kess. Into the heir who owned him.
Bat Bat pressed her lips together so hard she nearly disappeared into self-inflicted silence. She liked the line too much. Elena noticed and, without looking directly at her, extended one finger downward by the smallest amount.
A warning for her to stay quiet. Bat Bat obeyed. Although it might be temporary.
Mihos tilted his head once, studying Sekhmet with a colder kind of interest now. The lower born cousin in front of him was not posturing. That much had become annoyingly obvious. He was choosing each answer the way one chose where to place a knife for maximum clarity.
"And what do you remember," Mihos asked softly, "of where you stand."
There it was. The final positioning. The old house speaking through the heir. The banished father’s son standing in front of the current main line holder.
The camp waited. The guards waited.
Elena’s hand remained relaxed at her side.
The three rank-three maids stood like carved patience with violence stored under the skin.
Sekhmet met Mihos’s eyes and felt again the weight of his power, the chaos rank five energy pressure, the trained body, the inherited privilege sharpened through real strength. He was not a weakling wearing old gold. That made the meeting worth having.
Very quietly, Sekhmet answered, "Close enough that you came yourself for me."
That did it. Not the fight. Not yet. But the moment before. The atmosphere split.
Mihos’s expression hardened into something stripped of all remaining courtesy. The guard lines shifted. One of the white griffin-like birds opened its wings fully now, feathers catching lantern light like pale knives.
The black armored lizard rose by inches, claws grinding against the road stone. Kess stopped breathing.
Bat Bat’s eyes widened in delight and impending disobedience.