Page 81 of The Villains of Winter

“Attracted?” Perseus frowned at the thought. In Banebury, they had been raised that sex was not related to attraction, nor was marriage related to love. Lovemaking was a manner of art. A performance for praise and laudation afterward. However, sex was separate. Sex was about assertion, domination, submission, gratitude. “The only attraction you have is to yourself, James. You aren’t attracted to men or women, not truly. Elliott is moonstruck for women, I understand. Elliott could’ve expressed his gratitude, that’s all.”

Elliott had expressed his gratitude, profusely even. For Baneburians like Perseus, words were not enough. James knew what Perseus firmly, silently, hinted at–possession.

James should have dominated him into possession.

Elliott should have submitted himself in possession.

It was a matter of loyalty.

“Wouldn’t you save your friend’s life?” James asked instead.

Immediately, James knew the answer to that question. In their freshman year, Perseus Swann nominated his own childhood friend Niall Eastman and shook his hand right before the senior elector led him to slaughter. He even smiled at him.

James was there when the winter ritual was executed. Niall Eastman’s reddish-brown hair matched his blood on the snow. His white skin paled as his eyes widened in surprise. Niall was told the senior elector would kill him in the privacy of the pinelands. Tears scraped his young eyelashes, a cry pressed behind his lips. Niall was certain there’d been a mistake that he’d been chosen. Perseus promised him that everything would be fine. Perseus said he convinced the electors to vote for a volunteer.

James had never forgotten that moment.

At last, Perseus emerged from the pines. Relief filled Niall’s countenance as Perseus embraced him, but Niall choked with horror. Perseus cut his throat, unmercifully, there was no time left to plead to be spared. With a firm shove of a hand, Perseus sent him over the cragged cliff of the Marlborough Mountains. His ruddy cheeks purpled with effort as his legs kicked around for purchase on the ground. Niall Eastman had to have a closed casket from the height of the plunge.

Afterward, in front of everyone, Perseus delivered a speech in honor of his friend.

He commended Niall’s bravery to volunteer.

Perseus shook loose a cigarette stalk. “For my wife, I spent four million dollars on the wedding ring; I fucked her first. I needed to know if she was worth the effort. I wouldn’t even do half of what you did for a friend.”

“You might as well be Lucien. The archetype of Baneburians.”

“Don’t pretend you’re better than other men. You can pander to civility, and virtue signal all you want, but it’s human nature and basic instinct. You’re violating every function of law and order for a working class kid who can’t afford to pay you back on a labor income.” A darkened carmine hue blazed as Perseus lit the end of his cigarette.

James responded, “That is the entire reason I want to enter politics. To make a difference to everyone, not just the people who line my pockets with money.”

Even though smoking was strictly prohibited in the lowest sector of the Exeter Athenaeum, Perseus’s nerves were shot. He was now complicit, he could see in James’s volatile eyes that he had butchered the fellow third year student. He’d seen James murder men before, he knew his expressions by the terrifying sight of them. In December, Perseus had been the one to call the police to report the burnt remains, and he was now likely considered the last one to have seen Lucien Montclair alive. And he couldn’t say a word against it without implicating the existence of the cabal.

“You’re very frighteningly impressive as a liar.” Perseus inflated his contaminated lungs with nicotine. “I almost believed your little integrity speech, right now, despite everything. I thought to myself that you might be more moral than all of us. Then I remembered you beheaded the last honorarium. I suppose that wasn’t a friend of yours, Finch or Elliott, therefore that execution didn’t matter to you, did it?”

Beneath Perseus’s breath, James heard him mutter, Γίγνεται γὰρ ἕκαστος ὁρῶν καὶ ἀκούων. Like father like son.

“It mattered. I killed him humanely before the decapitation.” James kept his gaze even with him. Wulfram had insisted on the decapitation lesson. “I’m not better than other men. I know I am far more vile than most men ever will be.”

Perseus’s mouth scowled around the curl of smoke. “All of this happened because of your mentor, didn’t it?”

He knew of that? Perseus expelled the smoke through his nostrils. “It was a mistake for your mentor to be a woman, I’ve always said that. You’ve slept with her as well?”

“You seem extremely interested in my sexual history, Perseus. Are you asking me to come to bed with you?” James responded, lighting a cigarette of his own.

“We wouldn’t be sexually compatible,” Perseus retorted with an intake of the cigarette. The antechamber was hazed with charred smoke. “We’re both dominant by nature. I would never submit myself under you and you would never cede yourself to me.”

It would take a feat of nature for that to be any different.

“No, I haven’t slept with her. She is not interested in carnal matters with me. Her affection is attached to her telestic practices.” Professor Ilaria truly believed herself to be a Delphic priestess, therefore she regarded her virginal purity with utmost sanctity. Parthenos.

She was untouched by men.

Perseus was not convinced. “Old Hellmouth told me that she bathes you for ceremonial lustration.” Perseus didn’t understand that her particular obsession with James was a belief in his godhood, not a lustful desire for his body. She worshipped him and she expected him to worship her. She abhorred his seed everywhere. She wanted him pure as a worshiper should be. She would’ve preferred him to be a virgin for all of his life. That was the dark truth. “Hellmouth warned me that she masterminded the hibernal ceremony. That she preyed on your emotions. He’s right, you are too easily corrupted with emotion, James.”

Hellmouth knew of her antics?

James replied sharply, “Hellmouth initiated you into cannibalism. Did you resist corruption that night?” James recounted the troubled expression on Perseus’s face the night Helmut Wulfram instructed him to devour the subject’s lungs for a lesson in retaliatory cannibalism. Niall Eastman. His childhood friend had overheard a private cabal conversation. Wulfram forced Perseus to read Seneca’s Thyestes for the barbarous mythology of Atreus cannibalizing his own nephews in vengeance for the stolen throne committed by his brother. Let there be nothing that stands between you and retribution with an enemy. Not friendship. Not even blood. The pair called him Hellmouth ever since. “I am no less susceptible to corruption than you are, Swann.”