The Joker stared up at Byron with its painted leer, the same mocking grin that had been haunting my hands all night, except now it was his turn to feel its weight, to understand what it meant to hold the losing card and discover that fate had a wicked sense of irony.
Byron didn't say anything at first—couldn't, really, because speech requires functioning cognitive processes and his had apparently taken a brief vacation to process the impossibility currently manifesting on his poker table.
His fingers trembled against the card's edges, his mouth hanging open in an expression that would've been comical if it weren't so utterly devastating to witness, eyes bulging in sheer horror as the realization dawned over him with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer to the temple—he'd lost.
Not just the game, not just the money, but everything he thought gave him power, every assumption upon which he'd built his carefully constructed empire of exploitation and cruelty.
I leaned forward then, moving with casual ease, before plucking the second card from the table—the nine of hearts, perfectly ordinary, disappointingly mundane, the sort of card that wouldn't merit a second glance under normal circumstances but now represented the difference between victory and catastrophic defeat.
I matched it with my other nine, the pair clicking together with a soft sound that somehow carried through the absolute silence, before tapping them on the felt with the gentle finality of a judge's gavel.
"Pair complete," I said simply, utterly unbothered by the psychological apocalypse currently detonating in Byron's skull.
The overseer stepped forward without a word, his silhouette gliding through the dense heat of the room like a cut in the world itself, reality parting to accommodate his passage because apparently even physics knew better than to inconvenience him.
From his sleeve of black silk he produced a satchel of weighty chips and placed them before me with deliberate precision.
"Victory confirmed. One hundred thousand crowns," he intoned. "Transferred in full to the winner, along with all subsidiary contracts and holdings wagered by the losing party."
The room inhaled as one—a collective breath that spoke of shock, awe, and the delicious schadenfreude that comes from watching the mighty fall spectacularly from their self-constructed pedestals.
Then Byron exploded.
He launched up out of his seat with such manic force the chair went clattering backward, toppling over and crashing against the floor with a sound that punctuated his fury.
His eyes were feral now, leaking madness by the second, pupils contracted to pinpoints swimming in bloodshot whites that suggested his sanity had filed for emergency evacuation and was currently fleeing the premises.
"Cheating!" he shrieked. "You fucking cheated! You had to have cheated! There's no other explanation! The cards were marked, the deck was fixed, you had an accomplice—something, anything, because there's no way you won this legitimately!"
His voice cracked with each accusation, rising in pitch as hysteria took the wheel and reason dove out the window to avoid the crash. He was gesturing wildly now, hands cutting through the air like he could physically grab the truth and strangle it into submission.
"This is bullshit! Complete fabricated horseshit! He's a fraud, a con artist, probably in league with—with dark forces or gambling syndicates or—or reality-warping demons who specialize in card games!" The words tumbled out faster than coherence could follow, a verbal avalanche of denial, fury, and pure unfiltered panic at watching his world collapse in real-time.
The overseer didn't respond. Didn't acknowledge the accusations, didn't defend the result, didn't even spare Byron a glance worth remembering.
He simply turned and walked back into the shadows, the physical manifestation of not giving a single solitary fuck. His robes trailed behind like water parting for silence, his entire demeanor radiating the profound disinterest authority figures develop when dealing with people whose opinions ceased to matter the moment they lost.
He didn't justify the result. He didn't need to. The cards spoke for themselves.
Byron whirled on me, spit flying from his lips with such velocity I briefly considered requesting a hazmat suit, eyes nearly tearing from the sockets like they were trying to escape his skull before the rest of him caught fire.
"How?!" he demanded, the word coming out strangled, desperate, almost pleading beneath the rage. "How did you do it?! Answer me, you little shit! How did you cheat?!" His hands slammed down on the table hard enough to make the chips jump and scatter, knuckles white with tension. "Jasmin never misses a signal! Never! Not in five years of service, not once, not ever! She knows what happens when she fails me, she understands—"
"She didn't miss the signal," I interrupted. "She merely decided against it."
That shut him up for about two seconds—just long enough for his brain to process the words, attempt to integrate them into his understanding of reality, fail catastrophically, then reboot into denial—before he burst into laughter. Not the controlled mockery from earlier, but something sharper, more unhinged.
"Bullshit!" he roared between gasps. "That's complete fucking bullshit and you know it! You're full of it! Jazmin would never betray me, never in a thousand years, never under any circumstances!" His hands were shaking so badly now they looked like they were vibrating on a molecular level. "I pulled her from the streets when she was nothing! Gave her a name, a home, protection from a world that would've chewed her up and spit out the bones! She owes me everything! Her loyalty runs deeper than blood. Her very existence is bound to my generosity!"
"Generosity?" I interjected, my tone dripping with enough sarcasm to drown a small village. "Is that what we're calling systematic abuse now? How progressive. Tell me, Byron, does loyalty forged through beatings and sexual coercion come with a warranty, or is it more of an 'as-is' situation where the victim might decide their gratitude has limits?"
I leaned back in my chair, studying my nails with exaggerated disinterest. "Because from where I'm sitting—which is, notably, on the pile of your former wealth—it seems like you confused ownership with devotion, mistook fear for respect, and somehow convinced yourself that a woman you brutalized would never take the first opportunity to watch you burn. You didn't give her a home. You gave her a cage with better amenities. You didn't offer protection—you became the primary threat she needed protection from. And as for owing you everything?" I smiled then, slow and satisfied. "Debts incurred under duress aren't debts. They're just accounting errors waiting to be corrected."
Byron stood shell-shocked, his mouth working soundlessly as his brain tried to process the rebuttal. He turned slowly toward Jazmin, who was beginning to stand now, straightening herself from my lap with movements that looked almost ceremonial in their deliberateness.
I watched his face cycle through expressions too fast to catalog individually. He stared at her with desperate hope bleeding through his eyes, expecting—genuinely expecting—that she might confirm his delusion, laugh at me, throw her arms around him, and deny it all with tears of relief and proclamations of eternal devotion.
But she didn't.
Instead, Jazmin looked down at Byron with an expression of such visible disgust it could've curdled milk from across the room. Her eyes—those violet-gold depths that had signaled his victories so faithfully—now carried nothing but loathing distilled to its purest form.
Byron's face crumbled slightly, confusion bleeding into his rage as he reached toward her with trembling hands.
"Jazmin," he began, his voice taking on a paternal quality that made my stomach turn, all gentle concern and wounded affection. "Jazmin, sweetheart, what's wrong? You look confused, upset—did this man threaten you? Coerce you somehow? It's alright, you're safe now, just tell me what he—"
"Don't you fucking dare!" Jazmin snarled. "Don't you dare stand there and pretend you're concerned, pretend you care, pretend for one single second that you see me as anything other than property!"
Her voice was shaking now—not with fear, but with fury finally given permission to exist, rage that had been swallowed, suppressed, and beaten down until tonight.
Byron's face went through several shades of purple in rapid succession. "I saved you—"
"You enslaved me!" Jazmin shrieked. "You pulled me from the streets, yes—pulled me from poverty, desperation, and promised safety, protection, a better life. And then you made that life a living hell!"
The words came faster now, each one sharp enough to draw blood. "I was twelve when you bought me, Byron. Twelve! Do you remember what you told me that night?" Her voice began to crack as she spoke.
"You told me how lucky I was, how grateful I should be, as if being your slave was somehow a kindness I should thank you for with loyalty and devotion!" She laughed, the sound jagged and broken. "You sold my body like it was merchandise, like I was livestock to your friends who would rent me by the hour, who'd touch me with hands that stank of wine and cruelty, who'd pin me down and shove their cocks into me while I was bent over whatever table or bed was closest—rutting like pigs in heat, grunting and drooling, slamming so deep I could taste bile when they bottomed out and flooded me with their filth!"
Jazmin's body was trembling now. "I was just a child. I didn't even understand what they were doing at first. I just knew that it hurt and that you told me to smile through it anyway. To make them feel good. To make them want to come back."
Her fingers dug into her arms hard enough to leave marks, nails biting flesh as if she needed the pain to anchor herself to the present. "You'd count your coins while I bled. You'd pat my head afterward and tell me I'd done well, that I was earning my keep, that this was somehow better than starving on the streets."
Her breath hitched, chest heaving as tears began carving rivers down her face. "The first time one of them raped me, I was still wearing the dress you'd bought me—the pretty pink one you said made me look 'appealing.' I cried so hard I couldn't breathe and you know what you did? You slapped me. Told me crying would ruin the merchandise, that bruises on my face lost you money! You're no savior! You're a monster who destroyed a child's life and expected her to thank you for it!"
Byron barked out with sudden anger, his eyes darting frantically around the room. "Lies!" he shouted, but the word came out weak, desperate. "All lies and manipulation! She's been compromised, seduced, turned against me by this—this creature!"
He whirled toward the other beastfolk slaves scattered throughout the room, seeing them for the first time since the card reveal, and I watched his expression shift as he registered their change in demeanor.
They weren't cowering anymore. Weren't hiding their faces or shrinking into the shadows. They were watching him with the same disgust Jazmin wore, unified in their contempt, emboldened by seeing one of their own finally speak the truth they'd all been living.
Panic flashed across Byron's ancient features as he spun toward the ragged men lounging on the various cushions and couches, the former marks he'd broken and conscripted into service.
"Don't just stand there!" he commanded, his voice cracking with the authority he thought he still possessed. "All of you! Stop this madness at once! Seize him, restrain him, take back what's mine before—"
Not a single one of them moved.
They just stared at him with bored expressions, the sort you develop when watching someone throw a tantrum over spilled milk—mildly entertaining, vaguely pathetic, ultimately meaningless. A few even smirked. One of them actually yawned.
Byron began stammering over his words, his composure shattering completely then. "What—what are you—I said move! Are you fucking deaf?! I'm ordering you to—why aren't you—you can't just—" He trailed off, looking genuinely bewildered now.
I stood slowly from my chair, stretching with casual ease, then walked around the table with measured steps to let the moment breathe.
When I reached Byron, I looked down at him—this ancient monster, this predator who'd ruled his little kingdom through fear, violence, and systematic exploitation—and let a slow smile spread across my face.
"Ah," I said, gesturing around the room, encompassing the slaves who no longer feared him and the men who no longer obeyed. "And here we arrive at the philosophical heart of the matter. The fundamental flaw in your operation. Care to hear it, Byron? Or should I let you puzzle it out yourself?"
I didn't wait for his response—he wasn't in a state to provide coherent feedback anyway. "You built your empire on a simple premise. That ownership equals loyalty, that fear generates obedience, that people crushed into submission will remain crushed indefinitely because they lack the will or means to resist. It's an old philosophy, really—older than you, probably, which is saying something—and it works beautifully right up until the moment it doesn't."
I paused, letting the words settle. "Because here's the thing about control systems built on fear and brutality. They're fundamentally unstable. They require constant maintenance, constant reinforcement, constant demonstration that the threat is real, present, and capable of being executed. The moment that certainty wavers, the moment the controlled party perceives weakness or opportunity, the entire structure becomes vulnerable to catastrophic collapse."
Byron was watching me now with the kind of intensity people reserve for watching their own execution, fascinated, horrified, and entirely unable to look away despite the very sincere desire to be anywhere else.
"You thought you owned Jazmin," I continued, my tone almost conversational despite the philosophical weight behind it. "Thought that because you held her contract, controlled her circumstances, possessed legal authority over her existence, that she belonged to you in some meaningful sense. But ownership without consent is just slavery by another name, and slavery only persists as long as the slave believes resistance is futile. The moment someone introduces the possibility of freedom—the genuine, achievable possibility backed by capability and opportunity—the equation changes fundamentally."
I stopped pacing, turning to face him fully now. Byron's hands were trembling, not with rage but with dawning comprehension that his entire worldview had just been dismantled piece by logical piece. "You... you can't..."
"Can't what?" I asked pleasantly. "Explain basic philosophy? Point out that your empire was built on sand and someone finally brought the tide? The truth is, Byron, your system was always designed to fail. Maybe not today, maybe not next year, but eventually—inevitably—because structures built on suffering and exploitation contain the seeds to their own destruction. You just happened to be unlucky enough that I showed up to water them."
Byron's eyes darted desperately back to Jazmin, his last hope, his final anchor to the world that made sense. "Jazmin," he croaked, his voice barely audible now. "Jazmin, please, you have to—I need you to—"
I held up the black chip, its obsidian surface catching the lamplight in ways that made it look almost alive. "This?" I said mildly. "The chip tied to Jazmin's contract? The one that represents her ownership and servitude?" I turned it between my fingers slowly, letting him watch. "Yeah, this is mine now. Has been since the overseer confirmed my victory. Which means you hold no control whatsoever in this situation any longer—not over her, not over your other slaves, not over the men you conscripted. You're nothing to them now."
Something broke in Byron then—not dramatically, not with the thunderous collapse buildings display when they fall, but quietly, the way glass cracks under pressure before shattering completely.
He began heaving like mad, his breaths coming in great shuddering gasps as reality overwhelmed denial and he understood, truly understood, that everything was gone.
The wealth, the power, the fear he'd cultivated, the position he'd held—all of it evaporated in one catastrophic hand of cards. His legs gave out beneath him, his ancient knees crashing against the floor as he crumpled into a heap of purple robes and desperation.
Then—and gods help me, I'll remember this moment on my deathbed—Byron clasped his hands together and started pleading. Begging with the pathetic fervor reserved for people who've realized far too late that they've lost everything that mattered.
"Please," he whispered, tears forming in those rheumy eyes. "Please, just one more chance, just one more game, one more crown to win it back—I deserve another opportunity, I've been doing this for decades, you can't just—I'll give you anything, do anything, just let me—"
His words dissolved into incoherent sobbing, great wrenching sounds that echoed through the sudden hush of the room.
I began slowly walking around him. Circling. Predatory. Savoring the reversal with a bit more satisfaction than strictly healthy but significantly less than he deserved.
When I'd completed the circle, I stopped directly in front of him, looming over his kneeling form the way he'd loomed over countless others, and let the moment stretch until discomfort became agony.
I lifted my boot, holding it inches from his face, close enough that he could see the dirt caked into the treads, the scuff marks that told stories of streets he'd never walked because he'd spent his life elevated above the people he exploited.
Then I smiled.
Because in that moment, watching this ancient monster realize he had no choice, that his own tactics were being deployed against him with such surgical precision, that karma really was a vindictive bitch with excellent timing—I felt something warm and deeply satisfying bloom in my chest.
"Lick it," I commanded.