“All cages can be broken eventually. It all depends on finding the weakest spots in their joints. The place where metal can be… bent, to allow just enough room for one to slip through the bars.”

For the moment, Lestat doesn’t notice anything that out of the ordinary, doesn’t consider the possibility that this Armand has even more time behind him than the vampire he left behind in Paris.

A part of him always expected their paths would cross again someday, but he’d anticipated it happening as a result of his own choosing — not like this, not in some strange place the two of them have just happened to find themselves in together. Maybe there’s a cruel sort of irony in it, the God that none of them believe in having a laugh at their expense.

“Hello, lover,” he murmurs, not ceding any ground to Armand but appraising him carefully, from this new angle. For all that their time together had been fleeting, it happens to be a time he still regards with some degree of fondness. He’s not surprised by this somewhat chillier response, even as he intends to see what he can do to make Armand warm to him again. “Did you miss me?”