An electric tension crackled through the cavernous parlor in the wake of Jack's declaration of war against his own grandmother. You could have heard a pin drop amidst the oppressive silence smothering us all.
Judith looked as if she'd been slapped across her regal features. Clearly the depraved matriarch had never anticipated such outright defiance from her heir apparent, accustomed to him bending to her every whim no matter how poisonous.
The shock contorting her wizened expression quickly morphed to scalding wrath, though - thin lips pulling taut and bloodless as those coal black eyes ignited with livid fury. In that moment, the true monster lurking beneath Judith's polished aristocratic veneers shone through uninhibited.
"Don't you dare speak such treacherous bile towards your own f
