Trigger Warning: Mildly Graphic Death (should be below WP censors, but still.)

It wasn't unusual for rivals to the throne to rebel and be locked in a tower. They often withered away without a trial, allowed to slowly be driven mad by the excessive loneliness. This was Ivan the Bloodthirsty's fate as a prince who could not inherit his father's throne.

He was born to a mother who began screaming in agony when she met men she didn't know. It was enough to curse him with the title of The Mad Prince. That was a decade before he stood numb and mute at her execution.

King Boris conscripted a new executioner. This ensured his beloved Dancia behaved just as terrified in the hour of her death as he endured in private.

The official law she broke?

Possession.

She consorted with demons and woke up mad.

His counselors would have questioned his son's parentage except that he was the spitting image of Boris' father, the founder of their nation. Even as a small child, when he stood next to the old king's statues, a sense of the old days washed over people. So, Grandfather's statues were moved away from the boy, as it interfered with treating him as the Mad Queen Dancia's son.

Ivan survived the court as a child by living on the fringes. His younger brother was favored for having a sane mother who could support him. Everyone adored the golden-haired Andrej.

When Ivan turned 12, he ran off for knight's training and watched Queen Radoslava from the perspective of distance for the first time. From there, he could see that she was the one who manipulated everything.

Was his mother mad, making the shift easy for Radoslava? Did the new queen poison her mind? And who pushed his father into publicly humiliating a woman who wasn't well? At first, he was certain his father was a victim as well. After 7 years, he wasn't so sure of Boris being a good man. Perhaps Dancia would have been better off at rest. That was a bitter conclusion, the first time he thought that way.

The last bit of his patience ran cold when his stepmother asked him to take tea with her after his 19th birthday. He woke up days later, confined to his room for running in terror from a pack of dogs that did not exist. It was days before he was to go to the war front and potentially make a name for himself, at the risk of death.

Instead, he was marked as a public coward and an insane fool.

It didn't take much to remember the trauma of childhood. Watching his mother Dancia slip through bouts of insanity. Her panic as those waves would end revealed paranoia. "They're poisoning me, Ivan! Poison!"

It sounded like another cycle of mania.

Then, she would descend into sullen silence because no one believed her.

The daughter of the great southern Holy Emperor remained alive out of Boris' fear of her father. She was executed the same year that assassins killed him and broke the backs of the Sons of Maol into the 4 southern kingdoms.

Almost a decade later, it was Maolin North that they warred with. They claimed to trace the madness infecting their crops back to Slavicazoya.

Ivan rubbed his face and hoarsely called for water. He didn't shout it. It did no good to explain himself because he could remember his own response to such nonsense. No poison could alter a person's mind and throw it into the realm of demons. Everyone knew that, except he now knew his stepmother had that ability. His mother died as a witch, while this woman was the real thing.

The Mad Prince did his best to appear calm and rational. He disavowed remembering what he had done since his official visit with the queen. It almost sounded cheerful, reminiscing about a pleasant afternoon tea.

That was hard to do when his youngest sister brought in a small pet demon in her arms. He wondered why his mother screamed at strange men, but for Ivan, the demons were dogs.

Ivan had thought he was in his rational mind when he woke. The urge to scream and run from the small creature was nearly unbearable, causing him to sweat in terror from fear of his own instincts. The moment he broke and began screaming at the beast would be his last moment free from the Queen's hell.

Instead, he busied himself with cautiously packing around his duties. A few days later, he stole his little brother's rapier. Then he went to secretly visit the queen at the hour she sent all the maids out of her wing so she could rest.

He intended to murder her in her sleep.

The Mad Prince caught her there with a twisted chalice made from a skull, and who knew what else, plated in bloody gold. Radoslava was naked, dancing, and chanting as she weaved through a thick screen of incense. It was eerily beautiful, depraved, and made the young man sick to his stomach. Why did his heart skip a beat when facing a beautifully sculpted enemy?

Ivan shook himself out of the carnal trance, disgusted. She should have been his adoptive mother, his surrogate, but they never had that relationship.

He strode over to the true monster, grabbed her by the throat, and pinned her to her own bedpost. The cup clattered to the ground, chiming like little star bells.

Queen Radoslava spit at him in defiance. A lack of aim caused it to dribble over her chin onto his hand. She struggled on the tips of her bare toes to not hang in his grip alone. Her voice hoarsely growled out, "Have you come to assault me for punishment, Prince Ivan?"

The prince's blood ran cold. Even in this angry and weak situation, she managed to make the taunt sound like she desired him. Some of her struggles had been to drag his eyes down the length of her as well. But she forgot something when trying to entice him.

He had already tasted and seen the depths to which she would go.

If he did something that evil, even as part of him screamed worse was justified, Radoslava would find a way to win.

And he would be dead.

Let her think she won, and damn himself.

He looked down her front, taking his fill of the seduction that turned his father from him and killed his mother. This beautiful body was his death, as well, when he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

Prince Ivan looked back up into his stepmother's face and smiled as mildly as he ever did. "No..."

He slipped his brother's short rapier into her navel and pressed it in deeply. Slowly, it bored into her body until she cried out in strangled agony. He then twisted it upwards until she wore the hilt like a piercing, and the tip narrowly missed her heart. The sound of the queen's agony was beautiful. He pulled her against himself as her cries stilled.

He knew she wasn't dead, as this was what he studied as a child. Stomach wounds took months to die from. That process would start the moment the sword was pulled from her body. With it in, she couldn't move, not without agony.

Even a decade later, having fought his way halfway across the nation to stay out of his father's grip, he could still feel her shaking against him. What he whispered was still haunting. "You'll wish I had taken you up on your offer every day, as you die."

Then he dressed her in a robe and laid her out on her bed with chaste reverence. He shouldn't have seen his father's wife as tempting. He never wanted to see her that way.

Ivan the Bloodthirsty fled the castle to hide in the battles between Maolin and Slavica. From there, he built his rebellion off the back of the war he'd been humiliated for. He struggled to hide from how haunted he was in the entrails of other, less personal deaths.

Some part of him was terrified at how sensual her execution was. It was a grave mistake on his part to allow her death to be so personal.

It could have made him...hungry.

Radoslava died four months later. Boris eventually won and placed Ivan in the tower shortly before his passing. The gloriously golden King Andrej sat on the throne for a decade, ignoring his brother.

Until today.

"Its Andrej's 32nd birthday," the new female jailer told him with a saucy wink. She was a nice change from the dour old man who wouldn't say a word to him as he passed Prince Ivan's meals through the bars.

So, no, there wasn't anything that unusual about Prince Ivan being locked up in a tower, scared of demon dogs, and being declared insane on charges of murdering King Andrej's mother. It was all true.

What was unusual was that the rebel's punishment now included a diet abundant in figs, oysters, watermelons, and chocolate. Four disparate ingredients with known...proclivities.

It was late in the summer of Prince Ivan the Bloodthirsty's 43rd year of life, and the madman was being prepared for a tryst. Was it the jailer's notion on her own? Or did it come from Andrej?

It wasn't like Ivan had anything better to do.