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Remus smirked. “No one can be sure,” he admitted. “There was never a set pattern. Sometimes it was the firstborn. Other times it was the second. But who’s to say the second-born didn’t become the first?”
How veryMan in the Iron Mask.
“That’s not uncommon in history,” I pointed out. “Brothers killed brothers for power all the time. History is littered with power struggles among siblings. That is nothing new.”
“No, it isn’t,” Remus agreed. “But in 1569, two brothers waged the bloodiest war against one another, splitting the clan straight down the middle. And later, the country.”
“It nearly cost the McDonough clan everything,” Sheila murmured. “More than half the clan was killed in the brothers’ feud, and the aftermath nearly ended the clan altogether.”
“Who won the war?”
“Both brothers declared a cease-fire.” Kellan, who’d been silently listening up to this point, spoke up. “When they realized how much the war was costing them and how the destruction of their clan was imminent, they agreed to terms brought to the table.”
“Terms about killing babies.” Yeah, that was a bitter taste in my mouth.
Remus nodded grimly. “That was part of it, yes,” he confirmed. “No second-born would be allowed to live past their birth.”
“And the other terms?”
“One brother would get the north and another would claim the south,” Kellan stated. “They split the country down the middle.”
“I thought that had to do with the partition of Ireland in the early 1900s.”
“The partition was its own event.” Kellan leaned back in his chair and took a sip of wine. His green eyes bored into me, assessing me. “But it did solidify a few things.”
“When did it change?” My gaze shifted away from the haunting emerald stare of the man next to me and back to Remus. “When did the second-born babies stop being murdered?”
“We believe it was sometime in the early eighteen hundreds.” Remus’s fingers tapped the table. “But no one can be sure.”
“Why? What changed?”
“People were dying.” My eyes shifted back to Kellan. “Politics and religion were heating up the country. Who better to train and send into battle than those who were never wanted?”
“They were used as cannon fodder,” I sneered.
“Yes.” Kellan smirked. “Sacrifices for the greater good.”
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” I bit at him. “It’s disgusting.”
“But a necessity.”
I turned to Sheila. “Is that what you think? Is that why you’ve done all this? Because I think you want it all to end.” I shifted in my seat to face Marianne. “You certainly didn’t follow McDonough procedure, did you? Both Seamus and Kiernan are alive and well.”
Marianne snarled. “Leave my sons out of this.”
“Like you left my mother out of it?” I hissed. “Like you, she was innocent.”
“No firstborn is innocent in this.” She scoffed.
“Why?” I questioned her. “Because she got everything you never did? How was that her fault?”
Crickets.
“It wasn’t,” I argued further. “What are you trying to do? Seamus is dead. The woman who took you is dead. There is no one left to uphold those sick, twisted rules. You got what you wanted.”
“But there is always more to claim.” Sheila smiled behind her glass of wine. “Always more to be had that was never given to us.”
And there it was.
