No, of course, no, Louis has never said it, and Armand knows this. Loathsome, that he knows this. Humiliating that this one should see firsthand his failures, to know its details, to have been the only one to say it. Daniel had said something about the sympathetic villain of a story, but it is not what he wants. He doesn't want a story at all. He wants Louis to love him, and that is all.

Armand, drifting closer. Lestat, listing his head back to watch him, holding his wound and his ground. Closer to human in this way, twitching muscle and wet panting and wariness, closer than Armand's broken doll oddness, no need for an operable body to move himself so.

'I did love you,' spoken as a thought, because he can't catch his breath. 'Though you are miserable and hateful and will punish me for it until the end of all things, I loved you.'

But he left, yes. And so what?

'You say you are devoted, but you're the grabbing child, not me. Finding fledglings to save your life with and unwilling to make your own. To find someone of your own, to love them, to choose them. To risk the disaster that could come of it.'

Clearly, this cannot be Daniel. Armand only made Daniel to stay tethered to Louis, to stay tethered to Lestat. He doesn't even dignify the possibility with a mention, an exception, not when Armand abandoned the man to his fate. Getting to his feet, a scrape of boots on damp asphalt. Broken feathers, blood staining corduroy, curls wild and blood streaked. A different creature from the preening fledgling two centuries and more ago, the same one.

'I'm not one of those who will die at your pleasure. You will need to get your hands dirty for once, pute.'