ƒυℓℓ
Crimson's eyes do not stray from her firstborn's body, he is so precious, he is their future, and he is at risk all the time. If the world found out about him he'd be dead within a moon. Heirs of a tyrant could not be allowed to live, she understands that much. Then, looking at him playing with Greta's tail, she finds that she can't see how anyone could kill a kit.
Except her. She's killed kits without giving it a second thought.
A ruckus starts up near the entrance to her throne room, and she swallows. The time has come for another supposed 'friend' to die. For a brief moment she misses Jinx's presence by her side, gushing about how excited she is to see another execution.
Shade vanishes from her sight the moment Tornheart appears, head low, eyes dead. The soldiers by her side shove her without mercy. They don't care for her anymore. Crimson can't find it in herself to grin cruelly at Tornheart's pathetic form.
By the traitor's legs a small gray shape hovers, slinking in and out of her paws just to be a nuisance. It's a normal thing for him to do. Today it would have disastrous consequences. Tornheart strikes like a snake, snapping her jaws shut around Shade's neck, sinking her claws into his fragile sides.
Shade screams and cries, wriggling in Tornheart's vice-like grip. He looks up at Crimson with fear in his frozen eyes, and she can't move quick enough - she can't move at all. She can only stare in horror as blood spurts from his open mouth, floods from his torn skin, gushes from his broken throat. A twist of Tornheart's head, and Shade's neck snaps. His eyes die.
"Kill me," Tornheart whispers, "you know you want to."
Crimson is full of hatred, for Tornheart, for Jinx, for Frozengaze, but she's mostly full of hatred for herself because she knows she's the one that drove Tornheart to kill a kit. Her son's death is ultimately her own fault. It breaks her.
