The temptation is to hide. To refuse him.

This is not an appeal, not truly. It is only a recitation of fact, even as unbelievable as it feels.

"We killed you," is unsteady, disbelieving. His hands fall from his face slowly. It is as Louis suspected: painful, to observe the expression on Lestat's face, painful to see him at all. "I cut your throat, and I left you."

His sins, for which he was spared punishment.

Lestat has touched him since he was pulled from that coffin. This is not the first of anything, except it is the first time Lestat has touched him while Louis was present enough to give it due attention. They have spent every day laid together in a coffin, waking entangled, and Louis' attention had skipped over as a stone across a smooth lake. Self-preservation, maintaining focus on Claudia, on the coven, on his ambitions to punish them for her.

But all that has been done, and Lestat remains. There is no coven left to kill, unless he means to hunt Armand, hunt Sam.

And Lestat tells him this, a truth offered to Louis so gently that it feels like a kind of torture.