It's discordant, these thoughts. Louis, needing him, and saying all the things he did that night and holding him so, and the way things have been since. A struggle to reconcile with these other truths, the unkind things spoken in a room, to Armand himself, the totaling of Lestat's failures as a companion, a lover, a man. The book, a kind of bridge between these things.

No chance to clarify it all for himself here, or this evening, just sits miserably as these things compete for his attention, his heart. Well. He does feel a little less like Louis loathes him. That's a hard one to keep, while Louis works his fingers through his hair so gently.

"Oui," he says.