CHAPTER 338: FATHER, I HAVE A FAMILY-I

The King strained against the soldiers’ grip, muscles trembling with the effort to wrench himself free. His pride screamed louder than the ache in his limbs.

To bow to his son? To bow to the boy he had raised? Unthinkable.

"Release me!" he roared, his glare cutting toward Cassius, hot with fury. "Do you not know who I am?!"

Cassius only chuckled, amused at the futile defiance. With a lazy sigh, he tapped the golden crown resting in his hand, his father’s crown, before lifting it high.

"The King," Cassius said lightly. "Of course they know, Father."

He placed the crown atop the King’s head, letting it settle for a brief, mocking heartbeat, then hummed as he plucked it away again. Twirling it between his fingers as though it weighed nothing, he tilted his head.

"But did you really think you’d be King forever?"

The King’s jaw tightened, teeth grinding. "What have I done for you to betray me like this? You are my only son! You will inherit the throne without this... cruelty!"

Cassius nodded, lips curling into a slow, dark grin. "You’re right. The throne is mine, always would have been mine. No one else could inherit it."

"Then—"

"But," Cassius cut in, his voice sinking into something far colder, "do you truly believe I came here only for the throne?"

The words rooted the King in place.

And then he saw it, those eyes. No longer the eyes of a boy he once commanded, but deep, unlit pits where something hellish moved. The same eyes that had once stared at him in fear when held by his late wife... the same wife who had given him the power he now clung to.

Her last words, dismissed long ago as the meaningless spite of a dying woman, rose unbidden, curling through his mind like a noose tightening around his throat:

One day, the son you treat as a pawn will be the one to end you.

Now, with his son’s shadow looming over him, he understood. Today was the day her curse would be made real.

"Is it for her?" the King muttered, horror creeping into his voice. "For your mother, whom you killed with your own two hands?"

Cassius’s eyes, half lidded with boredom, didn’t so much as flicker. He crossed the marble floor in long, unhurried strides, ascended the dais, and dropped into the throne as though it were his rightful seat. Lounging back, he crossed one leg over the other and idly toyed with the crown, pressing his thumb against a gemstone as if testing how easily it could be pried free.

"I’ve been thinking about that," he said at last, his gaze still fixed on the crown.

The King swallowed hard. The words were too calm, too casual. What twisted path was this mad creature’s mind taking?

"You see," Cassius continued, his tone almost conversational, "Arabella, my beloved, has a gentle heart. She would hate the thought of leaving me alone in this world, without a single blood relative. So even knowing I would kill you, she would try to talk me out of it."

For a fleeting moment, the King felt a spark of hope. Perhaps, just perhaps. Cassius had decided to spare him after all.

Cassius pursed his lower lip and scoffed. "And I was happy, you know? Not because she stopped me from killing you, but because she told me I could finally live for myself. That I didn’t have to exist for my mother’s hatred, or as my father’s trophy. I could just... be. Let bygones be bygones."

The King pressed his lips together, hiding the faint curl of a smile.

How foolish his son was. If it had been him, he would have slit his father’s throat for daring to offend him.

Still, all those years of lessons, punishments, and calculated cruelty had not been wasted as Cassius now hesitated to kill him.

Seems that even to such a bloody crown prince, his father was an existence even he wouldn’t dare to harm.

Just as the King savored the thought, imagining a life beyond the castle walls, a notion distasteful yet preferable to death, Cassius’s hand moved. The golden crown flew, clattering across the crimson carpet.

Clink, clank, clink, clang.

The fallen sound seemed to foreshadow the sudden air that had shifted from playful into a dark mirth.

"But father," Cassius hummed, grinning as he spoke, "I don’t want to let bygones be bygones. I still want to kill you, desperately so, not for mother’s sake, not for how you have been the cause for me to drive my hands into her chest, moving deep between her flesh and organs to pull out her heart as per her request, no."

Cold sweats veiled the King’s forehead as Cassius’s next words carried with the cold wind of death.

"But simply because you have crossed me. You weren’t a good husband, not even a good king, and how is it that you can’t become a good father?" Cassius shrugged, "I suppose though I have now a good lesson of what kind of a father I shouldn’t become to my little children in the future."

"I- I am still your father," muttered the King, stammering as he backed away even though Cassius didn’t move yet. "I took care of you! I made you the man you are now, a perfect crown prince! W- What happened with your mother... I didn’t have anything to do with it. You also knew that her body weakened once she gave birth to Marissa and since then her body weakens."

"A pureblood," Cassius sighed, rolling his eyes to the side with a bored expression, "A pureblood wouldn’t simply get weaker the moment they gave birth. A human, perhaps, a vampire? No. You also know that so it would be foolish to trick me."

"Your mother’s condition is differen-"

"Of course it is! After all that woman you brought as my step mother had meticulously poisoned her. But back then I didn’t know how it was possible for a vampire to be poisoned. Because even though Morgana had poisoned me every chances she could have throughout my childhood, I survived."

Cassius then clapped his hands, "But then it dawned to me. What if Morgana had always worked hand in hand with a witch? What if that witch was the one who had created that poison and fed it to my mother little by little?"