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The carriage rolled away from the western road and back toward the city, carrying with it more tension than its wheels ought to have been able to bear.

For the first little stretch of the journey, no one spoke.

That was not because there was nothing to say.

It was because too much had just happened, and every person inside the carriage was still arranging those events into some shape their thoughts could hold without splitting.

Kess sat with the driver as ordered.

Inside, Elena sat near one side, her posture as composed as ever, though her eyes had gone sharper rather than softer since they left Mihos’s camp. The three rank-three maids sat in their usual disciplined positions, but their silence had become a charged silence rather than a calm one. Bat Bat, who under ordinary circumstances would have filled the carriage with questions before the first wheel turn, had somehow managed to stay quiet for nearly an entire minute.

That was impressive. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Also temporary.

Lady Seraphiel sat opposite Sekhmet, one hand resting against her knee, her expression thoughtful in a way that meant she was not yet done with the night. The camp lights had fallen behind them. The merchant road had begun narrowing again toward the western city approach. Outside, the dark passed in broken lantern lines and moving shadows.

Inside, everyone was thinking the same thing.

It was Elena who asked first.

"How."

Sekhmet looked at her.

Elena’s gaze did not waver. "How did you make Kess your servant?"

There it was.

Bat Bat straightened instantly. The three maids all shifted, not visibly enough to count as movement, but enough to prove the question had hit exactly where all their curiosity had already gone. Even Lady Seraphiel, who had thus far remained quiet, turned her full attention toward him.

No point pretending they would let it go.

Elena continued, voice level. "None of us felt anything."

That line mattered more than the question itself. Not felt. Not seen. Not sensed.

Stephen had not caught it.

Seraphiel had not caught it.

Elena had not caught it.

Three god-level beings and several trained rank-three maids had stood on that road, and yet Kess had gone from frightened servant to kneeling loyalist without a visible thread of force crossing the space between him and Sekhmet.

Useful.

Very useful.

Also the sort of thing that made everyone in the carriage reconsider the true shape of the man sitting among them.

Bat Bat could not hold back any longer.

"Yes," she said at once. "How. That was very good. Disturbing, but very good. He just suddenly decided Master was his favorite."

One maid murmured, "That is not how anyone would describe it."

Bat Bat ignored her. "I still want to know."

The second maid, the softer-faced one who was no less dangerous for appearing kind, added quietly, "I also want to know, Young Master."

The third did not speak, but her eyes said enough.

Lady Seraphiel finished the circle.

"I want to know too."

Sekhmet leaned back against the carriage seat and let the questions settle around him before answering.

Let them wait for it.

Then he said, in the most unhelpfully calm voice possible, "It is a trick I learned. It is nothing."

Bat Bat looked personally betrayed.

Elena’s expression did not change, which meant she was much less convinced than Bat Bat and much more dangerous about it.

Lady Seraphiel’s mouth curved slightly. "That answer was insulting."

"It was honest."

"No," she said, with smooth certainty. "It was evasive."

Bat Bat nodded vigorously. "Yes. It was suspicious honesty."

One maid, perhaps against her own better judgment, muttered, "There is no such thing."

Bat Bat looked at her as if disappointed by her lack of imagination.

Sekhmet said nothing for a moment.

The carriage rocked gently as it passed over a rougher strip of road, then smoothed again.

Bat Bat tried once more.

"Did you put a spell on him."

"No."

"Did you bite him secretly?"

"No."

"Did you scare his blood into obedience?"

That one almost made one of the maids laugh.

Almost.

Sekhmet’s mouth moved faintly. "No."

Lady Seraphiel watched him over clasped fingers. "Then answer properly."

He could feel the shape of the problem clearly enough. If he said too little, he would only sharpen their curiosity. If he said too much, he risked revealing patterns that should remain his alone. The system itself remained off-limits. The Blood Puppet skill structure remained off-limits. But some answer had to exist that fit what they already knew of him and the bloodline.

So he chose one.

"I can control blood," he said. "That much you all know."

No one argued.

"If the person is weaker than I am, I can make them submit."

There it was. It was clean enough. But not completely. Yet true in a way.

The reaction inside the carriage came in layers.

Bat Bat’s eyes widened again. "That is not nothing."

One of the maids lowered her gaze slightly, not in fear exactly, but in the strange respectful caution people developed around a power that could make blood itself an instrument of obedience.

The second maid looked at Sekhmet differently after that, not with less affection, but with more reverence and a little more danger. Good. Better they respected what sat at the center of him than reduced it to charm or rumor.

Lady Seraphiel, however, was not satisfied yet.

Elena was even less so.

Elena said, "That does not explain what I did not feel."

Sekhmet looked at her.

She continued, "I felt no Chaos entering him. No visible transfer. No force line. Nothing."

That was the true core of it.

Not that he could dominate blood.

That he had done it with no readable signature.

Sekhmet answered the only way he safely could.

"It felt like instinct to me."

Elena’s eyes narrowed by half a degree.

He went on. "I did not cast it the way one casts a normal skill. I just thought about it, and it happened."