My Bratty Wife

"It wasn’t hard, actually," Byron continued, his voice a low tone that was horrifically out of place amidst the tension. "I just gave him a taste of his own medicine. A slow, wasting poison that mimicked a ’natural’ decline. A fitting end for a man who took such pleasure in slow, agonizing destruction."

Ryan stared at his brother, utterly mortified, utterly broken. The grand conspiracy, the destabilization of the kingdom , the murders that had consumed his life for over a year – all of it, all of it stemmed from this deep, poisoned well of his brother’s grief and vengeful madness.

The monster he had been hunting for so long was not a stranger, but his own kin, a boy whose heart had been shattered and had regrown into something twisted and terrible. He was speechless, the pieces of his world reassembling themselves into a monstrous new picture he could barely comprehend.

Byron then turned his head, a thoughtful, almost witty look on his face, as if a new, interesting memory had just occurred to him. "Ah, yes," he said brightly. "The members of Parliament. You didn’t ask me why I killed them, did you?" He let out a soft, dry chuckle. "Oh, they did the most unbelievable thing to me, Ryan. Something truly unforgivable."

He surprised everyone by suddenly lowering himself to sit cross-legged on the cold, damp floor, his posture almost childlike, his bloody hands resting on his knees. He looked up at Ryan, his expression now strangely earnest, though his eyes still held a wild, manic gleam.

"Let me ask you something, brother," he said, his voice soft, intimate. "How would you feel... if you came back home one day, a little boy, no more than four years old, calling for your mother because you were hungry? And you find her, not in the kitchen, but dangling from a rafter in the main room, her feet just inches from the floor?" He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "You call her name, over and over, ’Mama, Mama,’ but she doesn’t answer. So you go to her, you reach up and you shake her dangling legs, wanting her to come down and play. And you feel how cold her skin is, how utterly, terrifyingly still she is." He held Ryan’s gaze, his own eyes wide and unblinking. "Tell me, Ryan. What would you have done? What does a four-year-old boy do then?"

Ryan was silent, frozen in absolute horror. The image Byron painted was so grotesque, so profoundly tragic, that it stole the air from his lungs. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even think.