The bedroom was too quiet to be a battlefield, but that's what it was.
Maximilian Claymore sat on the edge of the mattress, one leg drawn up, fingers curled around a letter written on royal paper. The machines beside the bed hummed faintly, tubes gently rising and falling in time with a body that no longer cared to wake. The air was warm, the curtains drawn back just slightly to let in the golden hour.
The man in the bed hadn't moved in months.
George Claymore. Lord of the House. Architect of a thousand careful cruelties. Father to Elliot. Uncle to Max.
He looked smaller now. Burned from the inside out, ether channels scorched clean, spine twisted just enough that Max had once thought, briefly, almost cruelly, that it suited him.
Max's eyes dropped again to the letter in his lap. He had read it once already. Then again. And again.
Daniel Rhine's handwriting never wavered.
Elliot Claymore is dead.
