Page 110 of The Villains of Winter

The astringency of medicinal disinfectants mingled with the pungency of ammoniac vomit. A grainy, chunky television was mounted above them in the corner, reporting the electoral race predictions countrywide.

After an hour, Elliott couldn’t take it anymore. “James, I’m sorry for all of this. I’m so sorry I lied to you. I love Finch and I love you more than I can even express. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“Elliott, there’s nothing you could’ve done. She chose war. I will give her war.”

I will murder her. Elliott was sure he hadn’t heard James right earlier. His spine was chilled in his body. I will give her war.

“You don’t mean that…” Elliott felt his heartbeat in his throat.

James remained in the chair, unmoved, since the night before. The family allowed them to stay until they heard news of Finch’s condition. James hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten a morsel, or left the chair since he embraced the Hudskins and he informed them of the situation.

His eyes were murderous. “I fucking mean it. Ever since I met her everything has been fucking hell.” He seethed at him. “She is cursed. Everything she touches corrodes. Everyone dies around her in tragedy.”

The opposite was true. Every winter ritual, Professor Ilaria had made a grand production of the sacrificed body. She adorned the slain body in the noblest of robes. She delivered a final farewell with a gentle flourish. She treated every sacrifice like they mattered. She treated Finch like he mattered; she did everything she could to save him as he was dying, even boarding him onto the restricted underground train.

No, Finch Hudskin wasn’t dying in tragedy. Elliott tried to swallow his panic and keep hope. He will live. He will survive this.

When Elliott convinced others to vote for Lucien, even if it meant killing him, Elliott had been consumed with fear, and now that same fear consumed James, he believed. “You don’t mean it.”

“If Finch dies, she’s dead with him. I mean every word.” There was a visible crack in his lineament, splintering his face in half, where he was no longer the naturally charming and majestically handsome young man. Beneath the roughened crack lurked a raw rage Elliott had never seen from anyone.

“You can’t say that in public,” Elliott cautioned him, because he knew anger wasn’t what James felt. It was fear. The fear of loss. The fear of grief. He didn’t know how to express it beyond how men were always taught to express their inner pain–bellicosity. Rampage. Destruction. Elliott promised him, “Finch won’t die.”

Finch couldn’t die. He only took small sips of the pomegranate extract. They would pump his stomach or flush out the medication intravenously.

However, James could feel his best friend leaving the earth. He said it in a way that drained the blood out of Elliott’s face. “Finch is dead because of her. Lucien is dead because of her. I steeped the fields in Lucien’s blood, yet I never thought to seek if someone sent him after Finch. I was too corrupted by emotion.”

I was too corrupted by emotion. James sounded like an ancient warmonger. He sounded like…Professor Wulfram in his lectures on ritual retaliation, battlefield honor, and glory reclamation that Elliott used to listen to outside of the philosophy chambers.

“We shouldn’t mention Lucien here–” Elliott lowered his voice. There was a row of visitors with get-well cards and aromatic bouquets of flowers beside them. “Finch’s severe reaction to the geriatric medication residue was unexpected. No one could’ve predicted it. No one even knew there was residual medication in the chalice.”

“Professor Ilaria is the whole fucking reason why the banquet led to death. I am trying to warn you–she orchestrated it.” His voice climbed in hatred. “If Apollōn guides my arrow, it will plunge straight through her chest.”

“Apollo isn’t real–” Elliott tried to point out as James was descended into dark recitations of Ancient Greek apothegms about warfare and mystic vows recited from myths of retribution. All Elliott could do was help return him back to reality. “Apollo is not real, James.”

“Apollōn isn’t real to you and me, but he is real to her, and therefore, I will call upon him to end her life.” James would accept nothing else. “Her prized Homer said it himself–revenge is sweeter than flowing honey.” That gall of anger that swarms like smoke inside of a man’s heart and becomes a thing sweeter to him by far than the dripping of honey[18]. “May Árēs grant me the strength for victory in the war she’s begun with me, if anything happens to Finch. Even a hair on his head must not be taken from him.”

Ares? The god of war? He was invoking the god of battle bloodshed and courage now?

“You can’t kill a professor–” Elliott fought down the emotion rising in his throat. How could he explain to James this was his sense of panic speaking? Last winter, Elliott had nearly sent another man to death in order to protect James and now the Montclair family felt the implacable grief Elliott caused. How could he stop James from feeling the writhing remorse he felt from his own actions? Elliott endangered Callum’s life when Claude Montclair attempted to strangle him because Elliott had convinced Callum to vote for Lucien. James couldn’t be led down that same path. “If Finch dies, it’s my fault. I’m the one that invited him the professor’s banquet. Blame me–”

“She wants you to blame yourself,” James snapped. “Don’t you dare take on her accountability for her. She expects that of you. She will lure you to seek her for comfort in your time of guilt and need. It will strengthen your bond to her.”

Elliott stammered uselessly. James wasn’t even there at the banquet. He was sightless in rage at the wrong person. Elliott rarely could ever get James to direct his ire at him. “It was all an accident. Arthur Newton was an accident. Finch Hudskin was an accident. She couldn’t have engineered–”

“She’s a theater actress, Elliott! A fucking actress! She’s not innocent!” James hollered at him at last. His snowy white hair was chaotic and wayward, and his golden eyes were seas of flames. “Think for a moment. How did she even know where you were in rural Arkansas? She stalked everyone in my life and she’s escalated to fucking murder.”

A few volunteers’ heads turned at the word ‘murder’, before returning to their mild chatter. A dozing woman glared at the pair with her newborn in her arms at his raised voice.

James’s words were slurred and vociferous in an incoherent rant. If any of them had been able to decipher his wrath-drunk remarks through his caged teeth, there would’ve been concern. Elliott understood him, however.

Lucien Montclair was gone.

Arthur Newton was gone.

Finch might be gone.

All that remained was that Elliott had witnessed death after death without the strength to prevent it.