It had made a terrible kind of sense. They'd tried to kill him. Lestat had come to be sure they suffered before they were killed. He could be cruel. Louis had seen it, in New Orleans. Cruelty that took his breath away.

(Is not quite thinking of their fight, of being dragged into the air. Louis thinks of mortals, mortal suffering, the games Lestat had played when he'd hunted.)

Nevertheless, Louis is less convinced of what he had believed for nearly eighty years.

"Us," is a soft correction. Louis fingers stealing across the bench, hooking up under Lestat's.

There had been three of them.

Lestat had made a choice. Louis doesn't think he'd made it out of malice.

Armand's explanation, fraught, of limitation. Louis is sure too that this had been borrowed.