My Bratty Wife

Her name on his lips was a soft whisper, a breath of pure relief that brought him back from the peak of his exhaustion. Ryan murmured, "Hmm, it’s me," his voice a low, raspy sound, thick with a sorrow he could no longer contain. He tried to smile, to reassure her, but he knew it was a hollow, broken thing.

Suzy, now fully awake, immediately sensed it. Beneath the weariness, beneath the relief of his safe return, was a current of profound, unshed grief. "What’s wrong, Ryan?" she asked softly, shifting in the bed to face him completely, her hand coming up to rest on his arm. "You’re crying," she said, her voice filled with a gentle concern as her thumb brushed away a single, stray tear that had escaped to trace a path down his streaked cheek. The sight of it, the sign of his inner turmoil, made her own heart ache. "Did something happen out there? Something terrible?"

Ryan looked at her, his strong, handsome face, usually calm and stern, now utterly shattered. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come at first, trapped behind a wall of grief. He took a shaky breath, his gaze dropping to their joined hands on the coverlet.

"Byron is dead," he finally said, the words falling like lead stones into the quiet room. "I... I killed him, Cassandra."

Suzy went very still, her mind reeling in confusion. Byron, dead? At Ryan’s hand? It made no sense. She didn’t speak, didn’t know what to say, so she simply watched him, her expression one of silent support, giving him the space to continue.

"He was the murderer," Ryan continued, his voice cracking, the confession tearing from him in ragged pieces. "The one I’ve been searching for all this time. He killed them all. Evan, Doris, the others... even our father. He was under my nose this whole time, my own brother... and I kept missing it. I kept making excuses, thinking his was by my side all this while... I didn’t know his revenge mattered more to him than me." He let out a dry, humorless laugh that was more like a sob. "I was a fool."

Her heart broke for him. She slid closer, her hands coming up to cup his face, her touch infinitely gentle as she guided his gaze back to hers. "No," she whispered fiercely. "You are not a fool. You are a good man who could not imagine such darkness in your own family." She stroked his cheek, her touch a silent offering of comfort in the face of his immense pain.

He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing for a moment as if her presence was the only thing anchoring him. "His body is at the palace now," he went on, his voice a monotone of grief and exhaustion. "I don’t know what the King will decide to do with it. The shame... it’s too great. I can’t even give him a proper funeral, a burial in the family crypt. He’ll be interred in some unmarked grave or even discard like how the king treats criminals, his name will be blotted out from all records." His voice grew thick with a fresh wave of sorrow.