The challenge is withdrawn, easy, Lestat flicking his focus back down to his cigarette. Taking his time, a long breath in of smoke, held there, blown out again off to the side.

Some internal amount of bracing himself before he looks back at Louis' face. Admiring him, despite everything. The way soot and dust and ash has settled on his skin, the streaks of blood, the peculiar but not uncompelling edge in his manner, in spite of its wounding origins. He needs to hear Lestat say it, but Lestat has to marvel at how obvious it should all be.

"For you," he says. "I came for you. I came to save you," and there is a dismissive bite to that word, the opposite of a grand declaration. "And look, you live. I did it."