Page 30 of Adam, Mine

“It should never have happened,” Elias repeated.

Petyr held out his hands.

“Dignified? Please.”

“Why?” Elias whispered.

Petyr swallowed. “He refused to acknowledge that you were a man. A person like the rest of us, and I corrected him.”

Elias gritted his teeth. And what was that to the crime of abandonment? Of seeing wickedness and allowing it to flourish? Of hearing screams of a captive and turning your back? Elias wanted to shout a thousand words into this man’s face.

Instead, he gently took Petyr’s hands and slit his wrists.

Petyr leaned against his headboard and closed his eyes. “God is on your side.” He said breathlessly, “Better by your hand than by my own.”

Elias held Petyr until he stopped breathing. But still, he felt nothing.

The last man’s house was in a densely populated area. He couldn’t handle him the way he’d handled the others. But Petyr gave him courage.

He knocked.

Henry opened the door, yelled in terror, and tried to close it again, but Elias pushed inside and closed the door behind himself.

“Are you going to kill me?” Henry asked immediately.

Elias paused for a moment.

“I need information,” he whispered.

Henry backed away, looking around his house for a weapon. He snatched up a candlestick holder and held it between them.

“I don’t know where Victor is. I—I think he’s left town,” Henry stammered.

“He had a book,” Elias said, crossing his arms. “Do you know where he got it?”

“I’ve never seen that book in my life!” Henry shrieked, stumbling on a rug behind him as he continued to back away.

Elias sighed. He locked the door behind him and then turned to Henry, who was drenched in fear-sweat and began to walk toward him.

“I am from a small town,” Elias began. “Victor took me from a place where books are few. I have always been bright, but one cannot know what one has never been exposed to. I need you to help me. Where could one get a book such as that?”

Henry looked around wildly.

“Focus,” Elias whispered.

“I . . . I . . . We have a library at school with alchemical texts. Maybe he stole it from there?”

Elias wrapped a hand around the candleholder Henry was clutching and tore it from his grasp.

“I’ve met with a professor who knew him. He gave me Victor’s name but did not mention this crime. His face showed nothing but vague recognition,” Elias said quietly.

Henry curled up against the wall and slid to the floor.

“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me,” he chanted.

Elias looked down at him.

“Brave enough to beg for your life but not brave enough to beg for mine?”