---
"There is more you should understand about me as well," she had said.
Sekhmet had almost laughed at that point, not from humor but from exhaustion. "Of course there is."
Elena had ignored the tone.
"Your father brought me here twenty years ago," she had said. "Me, you, and his personal butler, Ben. We came to the Lower Domain and to Slik together."
Sekhmet remembered freezing on that.
"Uncle Ben!!!"
"Yes."
A whole new set of memories had suddenly shifted under different light. Ben with his polished manners. Ben with his quiet efficiency. Ben with his irritating ability to seem ordinary while probably never having been ordinary in any meaningful sense.
"He was Father's personal butler," Sekhmet had said.
"Yes."
"And you…"
"I was your father's personal nanny since childhood."
There had been a long silence after that.
Nanny. Not a servant in the simple sense. Not just a house worker. But a guardian.
Not just a caretaker hired after the fact.
