Page 81 of The Mourning Throne
Something Lex was insistent on ordering—alone—on the car ride back.
Seared lamb, blushing pink at the center. Garlic mashed potatoes, piped into rosettes. Roasted carrots, fanned into a spiral.
Lex dragged the cart to the side of the cage with the kind of patient choreography Morgan had only seen once before—in a hospice nurse who’d fed his dying father.
Morgan had made his home on the windowsill, nursing his second glass of bourbon for the night.
Watching.
Listening.
He’d stopped pretending he wasn’t fascinated.
Now it was just a matter of whether Lex would let this act fall apart, or if he’d figure out his lines while it was happening.
Lex plucked the cloth napkin from the rack and spread it over his lap like he was preparing for a picnic. He forked a small piece of lamb and held it between the bars.
“Here,” he said, gently. “You need to eat.”
Ollie stayed put.
Lex didn’t react. He just kept holding the bite there.
Andwaited.
Morgan watched the moment stretch—past politeness, past command.
Long enough to make the space between words hurt.
Long enough for the cage to stop being a punishment and start feeling like a new way of life.
The absence of command wasitselfa command—sharp and precise. Lingering long enough so that its weight could actually carry.
Not bad.
Lex tilted his head. Still waiting.
“It’s not poisoned,” Lex said finally. He chuckled. “It’s just dinner. You’re allowed to eat. I know it’s not the dry cereal you like, but… a treat isn’t bad every once in a while.”
Still, Ollie didn’t take it.
So Lex set it down on the floor—just outside the bars.
Then he cut another piece. Ate it slowly. Moaned, soft and high, like it was decadent.
“God, it’s good,” he said.
Lex hated lamb. Morgan wasn’t sure why he even ordered it until now.
Another offering went outside the cage. Then another.
A little altar of meat and honeyed carrot, arranged with precision. The napkin beneath it looked like a mirror image of the larger plates.
Ollie watched the food—watched every morsel with eyes so large they didn’t quite fit his skull anymore.
“Go ahead,” Lex said. “You’re doing so well.”
Morgan’s pulse kicked once.
