Page 27 of The Villains of Winter

Despite the developments, James was cheerier than ever. James sipped from his monogrammed JVW IV mug. His blood teemed with untamed excitement. James would be reunited with his mother soon. He only had one list of items left to attend to.

Bid Finch Hudskin farewell.

Entrust his belongings to Elliott, Kitty, and Finch.

Deliver his eulogy to everyone.

Kill the provost. Kill the provost. Kill the provost.

Die at last.

​​ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

JAMES RESTED A SHOULDER AGAINST the slates of the student infirmary. The Woodrow Wilson Infirmary was a dreary, moth-white, rectangular building situated on the lower range of the mountain. A tempestuous rain had fallen upon Banebury in sleet, rendering the roads slick with ice, freezing windshield wipers to the glass, veering vehicles off the road, swerving student bicycles from the path. The hypothermic air congealed the blood beneath the skin.

The winter tires were built for traction, and therefore the experienced Connecticut snow drivers kept the icy roadways clear of collisions, no matter how far their vehicles skewed. However, James’s heart tightened every year. All he could think of was the night where the best part of his life ended.

A voice startled him out of his thoughts. “James Wilde, sorrow doesn’t suit you well.” Finch tried to sound poetic. He always made fun of James this time of year for the recitations.

After all, James still had stage makeup smeared on his face from the dry rehearsal.

James smirked on instinct. “Let’s not be foolish, everything suits me well.”

“Are you a pain in the ass on purpose?” These days, Finch Hudskin spent his afternoons in solitude at the infirmary, gaunter than ever. It fractured James inside to see the dismal state of Finch. Enervated. Disheveled. The junior year science student had collected his texts and term papers for the trimester. Finch was forced to work through it himself without a professor, his liver strained and leaden with pills and bottles. The sicker he became, the more invested he was in science.

It hardly felt like five years had passed since they were young boys wrestling in the tidal river, and yet it also felt like ten lifetimes ago.

James smiled at him. “I come bearing gifts.”

Finch frowned, then tried to remember the words. “Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs. I am wary of you, Apollōn.”

James didn’t bother to correct him that Apollōn had sided against the Greeks in the Trojan War. Apollōn wouldn’t have been the Greek bearing the gifts. “Fair. You shouldn’t trust me under any circumstance.”

Finch coughed raspingly. “What is this anyway, a pastry?”

“What else would I buy for you?” James handed him the elaborate, decorative paper bag with the Benoît’s Pâtisserie Parisian emblem on the front. James sipped from his monogrammed JVW IV mug. It scented faintly of century-old Scotch to keep warm in the frigid weather.

Finch wheezed for air, gripping the paper-wrapped loaf of the creamy, flaky Danish, smothered in glazed cream cheese inside. Then suddenly he froze. “Did you purchase Danishes from Benoît’s because you feel sorry for me? You heard the rumor already?” Everyone else had known for months. For Finch, the rumor was recent since he was isolated from the campus. James didn’t have it in him to tell him the rumors were old by then.

“I don’t care about the rumor. I will be the honorarium this year.”

“You genuinely stabbed him?”

“As deep as the knife would let me.” James followed after Finch into the infirmary halls in the south of the college grounds. James despised the stench reeking of decay and rot. The decrepitude of the soiled sheets and the disrepair of the rusted basins that had been in disuse since 1945 in World War II.

Finch heaved into a metal bucket. Dribble slipped down his hollowed chin. “Montclair is the rector’s protégé. Do you realize you’ve now practically volunteered yourself for death?” Finch rattled towards his infirmary cot. “Did it ever occur to you that I wanted death? That I am tired of squandering my parents’ money on surgeries, needles, and treatments? That I don’t want my aunt to chip in for my medical bills anymore?”

“Finch–”

“The annual sacrifice could’ve been a way for me to die honorably,” he exclaimed, his eyes turbulent. “I could’ve died to spare someone else. Now you’ve sentenced me to a slower, lowlier death–”

James snarled. “It would’ve been a dishonor to die on behalf of these spineless peers sending you out for death. You should’ve never been chosen for the sacrifice, Hudskin. Don’t let these scum convince you that if you are unworthy of life in their eyes, you are therefore deserving of death.”

Finch refused reason; his eyes were inevitably tinged with a tragic tint. “I could’ve meant something to everyone. The way I used to on the Northmen team.”

“We’re not on a team with our lives ahead of us anymore.” James patted his shoulder. “You would’ve never meant anything to them. You would’ve only been the breath of relief that one of them wasn’t in your place instead.” James sat beside him, one of the few that didn’t recoil in revulsion of soiled bedpans containing the remnants of Finch’s variegated fluids. “The trust of electors selected you because you were an easy target. Our peers are cowards, thin of heart.” Thin of heart.

Despite James’s best efforts to deaden the organ in his chest, James lacked none of heart.