The Beloved One!

Extra 08: The One Named Ivan Morley

Drip.

Drop.

Drip.

Drop.

The sounds of something consecutively splattering echoed throughout the cold dark dungeon. From records, no one had recollection of the criminals who had been jailed here before. But he was in there, the first in the century, Ivan Morley.

Walking to his prison cell the young man saw his uncle was held in the air chains bounding his legs down and chains bounding his arms up, both his upper and lower limbs painfully spread apart.

He was shirtless, only in a dirty white prisoner's trousers. The Morley's silver hair that he possessed seemed dull and his skin dry.

Vincent was somewhat surprised that even though Queen Milcah Cromwell had outlawed torturing prisoners that his uncle did not have a single bruise about the body.

Lifting his head upwards from the ground, Ivan saw him, the new Duke of Morley. A cracky chuckle escaped his dry throat. "Well if it isn't my dear nephew. Come to pay your old good uncle a goodbye before his execution?"

Vincent's azure blue eyes gazed upwards and downwards at the man who dared to call himself his uncle. He responded, "not a good-bye. But to see how you look before your end."

"Is it pleasing to your eye?"

The Duke said, "oh, I won't be fully pleased until, I see your head miserably and agonizedly roll from your body."

His eye commenced to twitch.

This was the man who had pretended to be a loving caring uncle to him.

This was the man who had acted behind closed doors, trying to kill him.

All of the so call accidents.

All of the the poison attempts.

All of the assassination attempts.

All of the schemes his uncle organized that would had gifted him an early demise. But he had survived all of those. He was alive.

Then a blurry image of a woman with a curly mess of black hair with her back facing to him slowly constructed in his mind. He could hear her, calling out his nickname. But he quickly exiled those thoughts.

Being emotional would do no one good. It would only lead to reckless decision making that would cause one his/her live.

The twitching of his eye stopped.

Yes. He won't dwell on the past. He won't be reigned by his emotions. He won't die.

The one before him. A chess piece. He was just disposing of a chess piece from a game that would cause him to lose. And losing meant his death.

Ivan asserted, "My dear nephew, the same ending that I have will you have as well in due time. I practically raised you into the person you are today."

The silver head scoffed at this and turned his back towards man. As if he would ever suffer the same fate as him.

The one ex-noble went on to continue. "Because of that I could see your future!!!The power that you've gained to put me here. That didn't come through cleaned hands. You will have to deal with the aftermaths of what you have done that would cause you to do more atrocious deeds to solve them."

Vincent had nothing to say to a man who was not too long for this world. He needed to checked one more time that he had covered his tracks properly, erased everything.

Seeing that his nephew was still walking away, Ivan released. "Just like that last assassination attempt I orchestrated. You knew the assassination was coming yet you had the audacity to involve Crown Prince Eric, this causing him to be gravely injured. You used this for the Royal Family to meticulously look into the assassination attempt that would later point to me, as I did orchestrate it, then to plant evidence revealing everything had I done. Do you think Queen Milcah and Crown Prince Eric will not find out? They're shrewd members of the Royal Cromwell Family that has ruled over Emphraim Kingdom since it's beginning."

Vincent stopped on hearing this.

"If you have dared to lay hands on the Royal Family just so that you could live, what won't you dare do, my dear nephew?" The prisoner quizzed, now that he had his older brother's son attention.

He slowly turned around.

"Oh don't worry. Keeping this one secret and the many others that you have that could bring about your demise won't ever be revealed by me. Think of it as a parting gift from your good old uncle." He guffawed then shouted, "I'm only doing this, because I want to watch from hell as light shine on everything you've done and going to do to live just to end up like me!!!" He saw himself within Vincent Morley.

••••

Once it was time for Ivan to head to the public execution site for all of Rafferty to see, a big smile was on his face.