Page 117 of The Villains of Winter

They were nearly at their destination.

“Marcus Hexley.” Perseus folded his newspaper. “Wulfram was fond of him. The Hexley twins were roommates with Helmut Wulfram and Thierre Montclair for four years in Swiðhun Hall. Wulfram fornicated with the younger twin to comfort him at the Bacchanal.” That’s what Perseus mistakenly believed when he’d read Wulfram’s diārium. Then he translated the subjunctive and optative. Wish and desire. He deciphered the encrypted language Wulfram had written in. He uncovered that Wulfram devoured the older twin’s heart to be close to him.

“His heart?” James was stunned. “Did he fall in love with the pair of twins?”

James heard of the year where there had been a deadly affair between all four roommates at Swiðhun Hall, escalating into a violent murder on campus. Afterward, the College banned men from rooming to together and every student was thereafter forced to their own dormitory bedroom. That might’ve been Marcus Hexley’s year, if memory served. Was Thierre Montclair the senior elector that sent Malcolm to hang? Was Marcus the student that took his twin’s place to save him? Was Wulfram the one in love with him?

“Love?” Perseus tightened his fists as he remembered the accursed diārium. He didn’t dare speak the written words in their entirety, in case the train attendants listened in. Wulfram was incapable of a full range of emotions. He’d been born with an inability to exhibit or experience certain feelings, therefore he translated through someone else to experience them. He believed ritualistic fornication let him intuit natural, raw emotions. “Wulfram fornicated with him ‘to taste the intensity of grief and agony on his tongue. To know sorrow and loss in its purest form as it had been kept from him.’”

Two men existed within Helmut Wulfram.

Hellmouth was primitive, brutal, and murderous. Helmut was civil, rational, and stoic. Neither side of himself could feel immense loss. Therefore, he felt the gods had abandoned him because he could not feel the high emotions required to reach them. “He believed the heightened thlípsi and sensuality would drive him out of his mind to communicate with the gods. Wulfram slept with a grieving college man in communion to the gods. He did not even let fraternity keep him from his Hellenistic devotion. No, I do not want to learn the ritualistic frenzy from him.”

James went silent for a moment in thought. “‘To know sorrow and loss in its purest form as it had been kept from him.’ What if the line meant that Malcolm kept his emotions from Wulfram and therefore Wulfram wanted him to release his grief. To purge his emotion. Catharsis.”

Catharsis happened through art; in Banebury, intercourse itself was treated as art; lovemaking was art.

Perseus hadn’t heard a word he said; he reclined in distaste. “Can you imagine emotion by way of penetration? That you would need to penetrate a man in order to feel what he feels?”

James lied, “No, I can’t imagine penetrating a man to experience emotion. Did he mention why he devoured the heart?” It made him uncomfortable how innately he understood Wulfram. There were moments when he wanted the presence of Elliott, if only to feel the proximity to all he lacked within himself. Purity. Forgiveness. Youth.

Perseus leaned forward. “In his farewell letter, Marcus Hexley had written that he was afraid to die alone, and in response, Wulfram ate his heart so he wouldn’t be by himself; he’d be within him. Who the hell even thinks to do that?” Perseus massaged his migraine. “I am exceptionally close with my cousins; if anyone clawed into my cousin’s heart after death, then fucked my younger cousin afterward, I’d want to know who to strangle. He’s a barbarian.”

“No one would fault your hatred of him.” In the end, James thought perhaps he did not innately understand Wulfram. They were not the same men. He would not have consumed Finch’s heart after burial, even to remain close to part of him; Perseus was right, that would’ve been desecration. It would’ve been barbarism.

None of it mattered any longer, however, they had arrived.

James hadn’t touched the champagne or caviar, and if Perseus noticed, he didn’t mention it. Courteous, James took a serviette, and he offered to carry Perseus’s tea for him. He held the rim methodically with the cloth.

Even though the cutlery and porcelain were strictly restricted to the URR, James rose out of his seat with Perseus’s intricate tea cup.

At that moment, the steam locomotive ground to a whistled halt.

“I thought I’d give you the honor of meeting my mentor.”

“Your mentor?” Perseus snorted. “Hardly an honor.”

“Hardly an honor is an honor nonetheless.”

“She’s an eccentric obsessive without a single thought of worth in that hysteric head of hers. If it were me, I would’ve removed myself from her tutelage a long time ago. She’s the only mentor worse than Hellmouth.” Perseus spoke without realizing he was headed to the serpent den. He only paused after they stepped down from the train and the URR departed without them. Without a torch above them, it was entirely dark. They were plunged into the grotesque shadows. “What the hell is that sound?”

Perseus paled as his eyes strained to adjust to the dark. His python-leather soles crunched over dead, shriveled, shedded skin of some sort of reptile. His ears perked at the increasing hisses sibilating through the sightlessly black atmosphere. Slithering around his ankles, something viscously cold wrapped itself around his knife-pressed pleated Yves Saint Laurent trousers, cinching his tendon tightly. Furious, he snarled towards James.

“What devilry is this?”

​​ CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

“PERICLES SWANN!” PROFESSOR ILLARIA GREETED, kissing both of his inflamed, irate cheeks. She led him deep into her heavily perfumed antechamber of ripened pothos and centuries-aged ivies. “What a pleasure to welcome Wulfram’s finest protégé.”

As though he could’ve been a thespian himself, Perseus’s facial features rearranged themselves in front of the mentor. Perseus smiled at her warmly, extending both of his hands to cusp hers delicately, kissing her knuckles softly. “Professor Séverine Ilaria, I am privileged to exist in your presence.”

“Perseus has spoken highly of you for years.” James positioned the tea cup in her desk with the rest of her tea set, locking it away while Perseus lavished her with beautiful praise.

“Will your wife be joining us, Pericles? I’ve never quite understood it myself, the urge to be married so young.” As she led the pair to her luxuriant refreshments, she missed Perseus’s perplexity at her words. He was stunned. “You will be very delighted to hear, I have selected Lucille as my new protégé!”

Perseus glared directly at James.

“How gracious of you.” Perseus recovered his expression, he did not falter with his words. He did not correct her in the error of his name; he calculated the minutes before he could leave. “Your grandeur far exceeds our humble stature, however. Lucille and I do not deserve to be bequeathed with your caliber of prestige. I plead with you to bestow someone else with such glory.”