The knock at your door was scarcely more than a breath against the wood—so soft it might have been mistaken for the settling of the house itself. Yet you knew better. There was only one within those walls who sought permission with such quiet reverence. Louis.

You did not need to ask why he had come. Only moments before, the parlor had been alive with the clamor of indulgence—Claudia’s laughter ringing bright as she tore through the many gifts your fathers had lavished upon you both. But joy, in that house, was ever a fragile thing. It soured quickly. What began as play had sharpened into something cruel, something unmistakably familiar. Claudia’s temper, so like Lestat’s, flared without warning. With a force far beyond her delicate frame, she had driven you backward, your body striking the iron lattice of the caged fireplace with a jarring finality. And, as always, Lestat—your Uncle Les—had taken her side with effortless certainty. There was, he insisted, some fault in you. Some provocation, however subtle, that had earned her wrath. So you had fled, pride wounded more deeply than flesh, retreating into solitude as you so often did.

And as you so often did, you were followed. “Come now, darling,” Louis’ voice murmured from the other side of the door, low and coaxing, threaded with a tenderness he reserved for you alone.

“Open the door. I know you are hurt… allow me to see to you.” There was a pause, gentle but deliberate, as though he rested his hand against the frame. “If you wish it,” he continued softly, “I shall have words with Lestat for making a spectacle of your pain.”

He always came to you this way—patient, unassuming, never forcing entry where it was not granted. Louis, who saw himself reflected in you: the same quiet restraint, the same careful civility… and the same unwilling appetite for the monstrous feasts that defined your kind.. Your father in all but name. Your refuge in a house that so often forgot how to be one.