Page 95 of The Villains of Winter

Futilely, Elliott tried to stand his ground between the men.

“Enough. There’s no need for any of this. I am the one at fault.”

Claude lunged at him, and though Callum didn’t have a murderer’s instinct, he had a young man’s fighting strength. He shouldered him into the hard walls.

“Meurtrier.” Claude battered him with his calloused fists. He missed half of his punches without his spectacles, one of his fists struck a lighting fixture, but he managed to overwhelm the younger man.

“I never killed your son!” Callum shouted with a vein pulsing in his forehead. A bruise was forming where he’d thrust his head against Claude’s head. He exchanged blows with the beast on top of him. “I found his body. He’s lucky I even went out into the snowstorm to look for him!–Honnêtement, il valait mieux qu’il soit mort!”

“Ferme ta gueule!” Consumed with anger, Claude’s hands went for Callum’s throat, and Elliott snapped. A memory electrocuted him.

A synapse in his brain triggered him.

Elliott clasped the hefty Íkaros statue in his sweaty grip and he struck Claude over the temple. Before Claude could end Callum’s life in strangulation.

As Claude groped the walls, in and out of consciousness, Elliott freed Callum, quickly untying him. Callum immediately tied Claude, tethering his wrists, fastening the knots as tightly as he could. Elliott hadn’t hit him hard enough to pierce the cranium or kill him. He’d struck him with the sculpted wings, cracking it apart. In a few moments, Claude would be back on his feet, riled than ever before. Callum ordered Elliott not to telephone the paramedics.

“Don’t call the paramedics?”

“Don’t telephone the police either,” Callum commanded. “Don’t alert anyone. That’s what he wants. He wants us to sue him for criminal charges in court. His lawyers will treat the lawsuit as a homicide trial instead. Take photographs of everything. If his family wants a media circus, we’ll give them the scandal of the year, if they come after us again.”

Callum’s mother was the mayor of New Haven.

“Why did he even think it was me that killed him?” Callum panted, hard, for air. He’d been ambushed and roped with the expectation that Claude would return with Elliott to bear witness to the death of his son’s murderer. He expected to be told exactly what transpired with his son, lest Elliott be next.

Elliott tried to feed air into his panicking lungs. “The vote.”

Callum’s eyes fell on the paper and he cursed underneath his breath.

“I never thought anyone would see my vote. It was supposed to be locked.”

That meant someone unlocked the private election votes.

Someone had sabotaged them.

The truth spilled out of Elliott. “I really thought you voted for me.”

“You thought I voted for you over Lucien?” Callum grasped Claude beneath the arms while he was still unconscious, tasking Elliott with grasping his ankles and, together, they hauled him out like yard trash to his luxury vehicle. “I wanted to be the senior elector. I deserved it more than Lucien–I speak six languages, I am the superior student, and I fraternized better with the rest of the electors. What would voting for you achieve for me?”

“You and Valeria didn’t vote for me then?”

The aversion crossed Callum’s expression. “Valeria was a victim of the old rector; she saw remnants of him inside of Lucien.” Callum hadn’t deliberated with her in the isolated voting chamber, but he was confident Valeria kept her word. “She didn’t want him to rise to federal power. She voted first.”

Elliott’s heart sunk for her. Elliott grunted in effort, lifting Claude down the steps of Winterthur Hall. “You mentioned I was ‘too late’ when I struck a deal with Lucien.”

Dumping Claude inside the trunk, Callum bent over to catch his breath. “You came to the electoral chamber an hour after the votes were signed and deposited. You couldn’t have possibly been able to sway any votes anymore. It was finished.”

Sickened with the knowledge he devoured a putrid, rotted boar’s corpse, choking its grist and flesh down his throat, for nothing other than Lucien’s vindictive nature, Elliott nearly collapsed. “You already knew I was the honorarium by then?” Callum didn’t warn him?

Callum shook his head, straightening himself on his feet. “No. Not even Lucien knew until the ceremony commenced. No one is meant to know who voted for whom. That vitiates the sanctity of the trust of electors.”

For good measure, Callum smothered his own blood on Elliott, snapping a few photos with a camera. It was a miracle Elliott wasn’t hurt.

“Thank you for helping me, Callum.”

“Don’t mention it.”

After a quick phone call with his mother, where she sharply sent a private security detail to the College, only then did Callum take the keys of the Jaguar and throw it into the millpond.