Page 32 of The Mourning Throne
Not loud.
Thin. Weak. The kind of sound that didn’t travel. It barely made it past Lex’s ears before dying in the sterile bathroom air.
But Morgan?
Morgan propped an elbow on his knee and sighed likehewas doing all the work.
“That’s all?”
Ollie gasped. Strained.
“Try again," Morgan said.
“I—I can’t—”
“You can and you will.”
The flatness in Morgan’s tone wasn’t anger. It was something worse. Certainty.
Ollie shook his head, hiccuping.
Morgan waited.
And when Ollie didn’t move—when his hands balled into fists, his back curved around the pain, his body trembling like a leaf caught in a storm—Morgan set his drink on the edge of the sink and stood.
“Then let me help you.”
Lex sat up straighter.
He kept the camera running.
Andwaited.
Morgan didn’t raise his voice.
He crouched beside Ollie like a surgeon checking for rot—precise, cold, not a damn ounce of sympathy—and then grabbed him by the collar, yanking him up by the fabric alone. The sound Ollie made wasn’t even a scream. Just this awful, hiccuped exhale. Like his lungs gave up first. Like his knees didn’t get the memo.
It wasn’t defiance.
It was justinstinct. The kind of noise bodies made when they didn’t know what else to do.
Been there. Done that.
“Back on the seat,” Morgan said.
Ollie scrambled. Panicked, jittery. A bug stuck on its back—arms flailing, knees sliding, zero fucking coordination.
Lex didn’t move.
Camera steady.
Heart pounding too damn hard.
God, he loved this part.
“You had one command,” Morgan said. “One.”
Ollie shook his head, voice cracking. “I—I was trying, I really—”
