Toby stood frozen, the sword still dripping in his hand. The blood slid down the steel in slow, deliberate lines, patting against the stone like a clock ticking away the moment.
He didn't look at Sirius's body.
His jaw locked tight, but the rest of him shook in small tremors.
The smell of iron filled his lungs, and with it came the sharp sting at his heart.
He had told himself he was ready.
That this was necessary.
That he was left with no other choice.
But the weight in his chest said otherwise.
Toby had killed before.
Gods, he had killed enough that the faces should have blurred into one another by now.
But this... this wasn't another nameless corpse. This was the man who once stood by him in battles, the man who shared bread with him when they had nothing, the man who...
He swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the sword.
'Necessary.'
He repeated the word like a prayer.
Like it could wash the blood away.
Like it could wash the guilt away, wash whatever remorse was eating him away.
Behind him, Sylvie's sobs rose, tearing into the silence. Each cry pierced him sharper than any blade.
He dared a glance over his shoulder, and his heart lurched when he saw her cradling Sirius' severed head, her hands trembling.
Her screams raw and fractured split through the air like a thrown stone.
She held the head in her lap. She did not understand. Even now she did not have the language for what had happened.
She had lost her mother before. That loss had already hollowed out the bright corners of her life but this... this would obliterate the rest.
"I'm sorry," he said, and the words came out small enough that the air itself might not carry them.
For a fleeting second, Toby wanted to kneel.
To throw the sword away.
But instead, he fixed his eyes on the ground, letting the reasons steady him, anchoring him against the storm threatening to break inside.
There were three.
Three reasons it had to be done here, and now.
The 'first' was simple, it had to be done.
From the second he learned that Sirius wasn't the true heir, the choice had already been carved into stone.
It was inevitable.
A memory threaded hrough him, a table years prior, a beer bottle left to cool, the friendship that once was between two men.
That memory was a gate he forced closed. He would not let nostalgia become excuse.
The 'second' reason was opportunity. Sirius was spent, his body bruised, his mind tired, his defenses lowered down.
Any other day, any other place, and it might not have been this easy.
Toby knelt at last, the stone biting his knees. He reached out for Sylvie. Her hands were fists of blood. They were so small and shaking yet she started hitting him and cursing him.
She was screaming, naturally so... And seeing her like this, asking him to kill her pained Toby.
But there was nothing he could do. So he took it all, her hatred, her grief, her anger... Everything.
Because he deserved every bit of it.
His thumb brushed the ridge of her knuckles, and it struck him how cold her skin already was.
"It's hard on me too, Sylv," he said. He didn't know if she even heard him through the storm of her own grief. "I know you won't believe me. And nothing will change because of these words. But… for the first time, I got attached as well."
His other hand moved, a small flick of light spilling from his palm. Her body resisted, for a moment, but the spell pulled her down into sleep.
She slumped against the stone, her breathing was shallow but steady.
Toby looked at Sirius again.
The weight of what he had done pressed harder because he knew the truth now.
There was no denying it.
His gaze lingered on the corpse longer than he meant it to.
Sirius had been perfect.
Not just his bearing, not just his strength of will but his power as well.
His essence had been dangerous and volatile, in a way that made even Toby hesitate.
It was the kind of energy the true heir was supposed to have.
He had too much essence, more than anyone Toby had ever come across.
That was why Toby had believed in him. That he might be the true heir after all.
But there was another reason, the 'third' reason.
The most dangerous yet the most important one, the one Toby dared not say aloud even to himself.
He had gotten attached.
This was the longest he had ever stayed with a suspected heir... years of watching, testing, doubting, waiting.
Years of not knowing if he was the one or another pawn meant to fall. It had worn down his judgment, shorten the distance he was supposed to keep.
If he waited, if he looked him in the eye tomorrow or the day after, he might not have had the strength to go through with it.
That hesitation, that weakness, would have doomed everything. He hated to accept it, but along the line, somewhere in all those years... He started seeing Sirius as his friend.
So...
"It had to be now. " Toby whispered to himself.
He got to know another truth that Sirius wasn't the heir.
And worse, he understood why Sirius had seemed so convincing.
He was indeed Allysane's own child,
"just like the real heir." The words escaped my mouth.
Toby always had his doubt, and even the blood matched.
But knowing Allysane, it wasn't anything difficult for her. So he didn't really take it as a primary source.
But now, she herself confessed it.
He was not the right one, but close enough to carry the same fire.
Close enough to make Toby almost believe.
" heh "
A sad chuckle came before he could stop it.
Of course, Of course it would be her.
That vixen Allysane, who had outplayed them all. Who had birthed the real heir and then ran away.
She set up decoys, so many of other children only to distract the hungry nobels. She let them be eaten, be killed, feeding them into the fire one by one.
Even her own blood, her own son.
All of it to protect the one that truly mattered.
"Talk about selective morality," Toby muttered, shaking his head.
How he wished the truth had been otherwise. How he wished he could have left Sirius alive, let himself cling to that lie.
But the truth was never what one wished.
He moved through the motions that followed killing because he had always been good at motions.
He tapped the communicator at his belt.The device hummed but he did not look at it.
"The bird wasn't hawk but a crow, and so... the wings have been broken."
The reply came within a breath, plain and immediately, "On it, Sire."
He let the device go.
Around him, the small world he had destroyed slept, Sylvie's small chest rising and falling, Slythra curled with the faint innocence of sleep and Sirius who unlike the other two, would never woke up again.
He arranged a cloak over the body so the sight would not meet any morning eyes.
Toby sat back on his heels and watched them. He had no right to grief here. It belonged to others, to the child with blood on her dress, and to the child who lost her two fathers in a day.
So he held himself but a single tear escaped him, slid down and fell onto the wrapped cloth, where it darkened and vanished.
He made no sound.
Sirius had been killed by him. Because that was the rule. Decoys had to be cleared, one after another, until nothing was left but the heir.
That was the only way forward. The only way this game could be played.