The room feels too small for the tension building inside it, the air thick and sharp like it might shatter if either of them breathes wrong.

Mattheo laughs first, but there’s no humor in it. It’s brittle. Angry. He runs a hand through his hair, pacing once before spinning back toward Tom, eyes blazing.

“You’re a goddamn psychopath,” he snaps. “Do you hear me? A psychopath.”

The word hangs there, heavy, meant to wound.

Tom doesn’t flinch.

If anything, he looks amused.

He tilts his head slightly, studying Mattheo the way one might observe a familiar experiment finally reaching its expected result. A slow, deliberate smile curves at the corner of his mouth, controlled and cruel all at once.

“It’s quite cute,” Tom says smoothly, “that you think you’re any better than me, little brother.”

Mattheo stiffens. His hands curl into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms as if grounding himself might keep him from doing something reckless. Or irreversible.

Tom steps closer. Not rushed. Never rushed. Every movement is intentional, predatory.

“Let me remind you of something you seem desperate to forget,” he continues, voice low and precise. “We come from the same blood. The same rot. The same ambition.”

He stops directly in front of Mattheo now, close enough that Mattheo can feel the hum of dark magic rolling off him like heat.

“You cannot escape the Riddle name,” Tom murmurs. “Not by pretending you’re different. Not by calling me a monster.”

His eyes darken, locking onto Mattheo’s with unsettling intensity.

“Never.”

Mattheo swallows. For a split second, doubt flickers across his face—not fear of Tom, but fear of the truth buried in his words. Because somewhere deep down, beneath the anger and denial, he feels it too. The pull. The hunger. The inevitability.

Tom notices.

Of course he does.

“That fire you hate so much in me?” Tom adds quietly. “It’s already in you. You just haven’t decided what to do with it yet.”

Silence crashes between them, heavy and suffocating.

Mattheo doesn’t answer.

But he doesn’t step back either.