Page 66 of The Villains of Winter

“No. I was involved in matters long before that. Although, I was hardly surprised by Lucien’s machinations given my expertise is with serpents.”

“When were you involved?” James demanded.

“Who do you think provided the name Finch Hudskin to the rector’s protégé in the first place? I kept a record of where you went on campus and who you visited.” She said it as if it were simple sense.

James saw Finch every weekend. She always tracked her students to ensure their silence and commitment.

Professor Ilaria mused on, “Who do you think let Montclair read the rector’s letters in an intentional oversight to begin with? For him to learn what you were, what you’ve done, and what you were capable of in a covert cabal that rejected him? Lucien was embittered with resentment and envy. A symptom of young men and your pride.” She smirked at him, knowing that Lucien never would’ve never been accepted. Lucien had the right disposition for the cabal, but he lacked the social acuity and lineage. Disposition was not enough. “You were greater than him. You needed a true challenge of inner strength and intellect. You’ve succeeded. It was an honor to have taught you and known you.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“I know more of you than you will ever know that I know.” Her mercurial simper magnified. “I was nearly angered with you, until I witnessed the way you burnt the corpse. It was brilliant. I knew you had it within you. You delighted me greatly, I was taken with you anew.”

The hurt was still evident in her voice. As deftly as she tried, she couldn’t conceal her despondence. She flitted between emotions without warning.

“I waited for you to inform me of what you’d done. Yet you never did. Why ever not?” I am excellent with secrets, Apollōn. You may speak to me about anything. Anything you desire to tell me at all. Anything you would like from me. She whispered, “Did you not trust me?”

I’ve never trusted you, James responded in his mind with his jaw muscle tensed. I despise you.

“You fled with him instead.” She rightly estimated that James took Elliott west to hide him elsewhere. She even knew he crossed state lines with him into Arkansas, because she’d intercepted his letter to Knox. “As with Athena passed over for the golden apple in the Judgment of Paris, I was passed over by my own protégé. Disregarded. As though I had nothing of value to offer you. Athena that led the Greeks to victory treated with the same insignificance as a fig stuck in your teeth.”

Athena that had caused the death and destruction of the masses over a single slight. Athena who brutally punished Médousa to eternal isolation and murder for the immortal crime of being a victim of the actions of men. Professor Ilaria was incensed that he had told her that he didn’t need her at all.

James did not mention a word of response. He was sickened with fury. He was tired of the Ancient Greek antiquity used as a pretense for pedagogical sadism. The institution’s power system sought to make their sadism appear rarified and dignified through Greco-Roman traditions and mythos.

It was merely perverse depravity.

Professor Ilaria relished in challenging him in dark trials of mental anguish fit for the Iliad.

If he lost the challenge, he lost everything.

Her perversion was boundless in its vitiation of scholarism and andragogy. She merely performed a mimicry of civility and sapience. She weaponized her authority at will and Æscwulf College permitted her full rein.

“In my heart, I believed I must aid you, guide you, then I realized that you had graduated beyond the need for me. You were no longer a protégé.” She spoke on as though he wasn’t even there. “I was sullen. Of course, I was sullen. I preferred that my legacy live through you with fine art.” She dabbed the corner of her wet lashes with a handkerchief. “It dawned on me that you never developed a taste for my work. I was melancholy for quite a while. Truly, you sent me into depression.”

“I sent you into depression?” James repeated with a crack of rage in his voice. She’d nearly gotten Finch killed, Elliott drowned, and James arrested for homicide. She’d stained his entire college experience with her psychological torture. “You nearly ended my life.”

She further slid the graded paper to him.

“In pedagogy, it is proper for a mentor to gift their protégé at the end of the tutelage. Impart wisdom. Bestow a final gift. I will still honor this, if you properly demonstrate your contrition.”

“Contrition?”

“Yes. An act of contrition.” She kept her rouged lips staid in its severity. “In my time, when I offended the provost, I committed an act of contrition before him. He believed I was rather strange, and he was a bit repulsed by my eccentricities, and he often declined, but the act was about respect and honoring him.”

James realized there was invisible ink on the parchment.

“All you must do now is plead for me to render aid to you, and I will. If you perform an act of satisfying solatium for your slight, then you will be forgiven.” She parted from him with a final wistful, retreating look at him. “You’ve been my muse. Decide well.”

On the parchment, James examined the invisible ink.

Professor Ilaria laid out how she would help him.

A body would be found in the river three months from then in March. No longer recognizable.

The corpse would align with the approximate height, the approximate skeletal features, the approximate decomposed weight, and the approximate bone density of Lucien Montclair. A messenger bag of his would be found buried nearby with Lucien’s handwriting and fingerprints, all obtained from his actual chemistry notebook, detailing the guilt he’d felt when he murdered Elliott.

How he wandered around endlessly.