Page 32 of The Villains of Winter

“He won’t be dead…” He mumbled to himself. “He will not leave the earth…”

I swear it.

I swear it.

“Philia is the highest emotion,” Isa Herrera decided, briefly peering at Elliott with pity. “Affection. The greatest form of love in Ancient Greece was considered fraternal love between men. The inexpressible bond between friends and comrades. The deep intimacy of love between equals. Perhaps men you would be driven to kill for in times of war.”

Now that the oppressive silence eased, a third year student posited her own opinion.

“Aristotle believed philia regarded young lovers and lifelong friends. Philia must be mutual. Your comrade must be willing to kill for you in return. His intensity of love must be that of your own, or it is not philia.” As always, Lyra sounded encyclopedic with her athenaeum-borrowed compendiums stacked at the edge of her limestone ledge. She removed her owl-shaped glasses to clean the spectacles with the silk of her Valentino houndstooth cape. Even her eyes were bloodshot on the eve of the dark ceremony. “Aristotle believed in friendships of pleasure. A friendship of pleasure formed through years of profound emotion and attachment could exceed even consanguinity. However, the heart strengthens love. The ardent friendship that turns into romantic longing over the years would be rooted in anteros or ‘love returned.’”

The chamber livened.

Callum Han massaged his temples as though he felt a migraine forming behind his frontal bone. He had the weight of man’s life in his hands as an elector. His heavy corneas were sleepless. Callum could only stare on at Elliott’s distressed countenance.

Elliott could not sit still any longer. Time threatened to murder his best friend.

The seconds were slipping through his fingers. Exigently.

He nearly screamed in rage. His neck veins tautened.

Someone prattled on, casual in his slouched posture. “Charis is the utmost love. It’s the biological imperative–right? Reproduction. Sex. The old Greeks believed charis is the amorous, carnal hunger that can only be extinguished with powerful release of sexual intercourse. It’s how humanity survived. Friendships and romance are irrelevant–”

Elliott leapt to his imbalanced feet; he shoved his beaten backpack straps through his arms. His chest heaved with words. But his mournful cry was stuck in his throat, obstructing his words like a thorn lodged in his throat.

Emotion mangled everything he tried to plead. Spare him, please.

Please, for the love of Holy God, we have to do something to help him.

Callum refuted the former speaker. “The word you would want then is himeros–wild, untamable desire. Excessive sexual longing. The feeling of intense eroticism where only sexual satisfaction can sate it. A yearning so provocative that one is overcome by lust. Aroused in the mind and body completely. However, himeros isn’t the purest form of love itself.”

With sorrow in her expression, Isa kept her eyes on Elliott. He wilted on the edge of his untied shoelaces. His heart was defiant and broken. “What do you think the purest form of love is then, Callum?”

Elliott gnashed his lip. All he could taste was skin, blood, and the salt of his tears.

Please, we can’t let him die. Please.

Please help him.

Please spare him.

The chamber fell silent. “Mania.” Callum knew with immediacy the most potent form of love in the ancient sense. “Mania is possessive, obsessive, all-consuming, destructive. A hurricane of codependency and need. Erratic emotions that drives one to commit extreme actions.” In Phaedrus, Plato defined theia mania in a way that was indescribable. Mania was madness. Theia mania was divine madness that could be induced by Apollo in the prophetic sense. Callum’s eyes drifted to Elliott in tragedy and empathy. He knew intimately what burned in Elliott’s chest. In that single heartbeat, Callum no longer thought of Plato or Socrates or Apollo, or even theia mania, but only the unbearable anguish that a young man could endure for someone he loved beyond words. “The loss of a friend.”

“I will not lose my friend,” Elliott seethed at him in torment; before Callum could even return a syllable, he stormed out. His eye was nearly lacquered black, the darkest hue it’d ever been, as though Fred Eversley sculpted his irises by hand himself. “I will not lose him.”

​​ CHAPTER TWENTY

“WHAT A SOMBER DAY. EVEN the rain cannot stop weeping for James Wilde, it appears.” Lucien Montclair stood at the high, gothic windows of the electoral chamber. The high curtains and irradiant chandeliers were the length of poppy fields above them and even the grand Corinthian pillars were imperious in their affluence.

Elliott gritted his teeth as Lucien Montclair allowed him to enter the stateroom of electors. “As an art student, I always wondered when you’d want to be welcomed here. You have a fine script. You’d make an excellent elector with the letters, Archway.”

Lucien displayed to Elliott the silver-plated antique fountain pens on the secretaire. One was already inscribed to him. Elliott Taylor Archway.

Elliott fought through waves of thrashing hatred. He dried the water suspended in his eyes. Lucien was mocking the dire situation. However, Elliott tamed his response. “I have no interest to be welcomed here as an elector.”

“A lapse of judgment truly.” Lucien’s eyes pitied him. “You’ve spent excessive time in the company of women. You could accomplish more for the rector than useless systems of astrology.”

“Astronomy,” Elliott corrected. “And I am not in the science field to attract women.”