Page 118 of The Villains of Winter

He declined, exactly as James anticipated, excessively commendatory. Against his knowledge, Perseus’s adulation and near-deification of her only served to endear him to her.

Oh, how she loved to be worshipped. How she delighted to be seen as far too superior for anyone to be worthy of her.

“It is my gift to you.” She couldn’t quite recall what Lucy even looked like until James produced a photograph for her. “Ah, yes. She bears resemblance to Actress Number Five in, I believe it was the play The Tides of Scorpius, where she starred as a constellation depicted by Ptolemy. Lyra.”

“Ara,” James corrected, and he reminded her gently, “Ara was the first altar that the gods made offerings to when they formed an alliance against the titans.”

In time, she would know the prescient alliance he forged against the titans.

“Yes, of course. You know my plays as magnificently as I know mine.” She kissed the corner of James’s mouth openly.

Perseus recoiled.

Her memory was spotty as of late, names proved even more difficult, due to the fact that she was once a student of Æscwulf College initiated in the cabal. Her blood was as polluted as James’s blood, except her condition was worsening.

James saw his dark future in her.

Already, he found himself leaving notes in journal margins to remember simple details, despite the fact that he was physically fit and healthy otherwise. Spice Girls. Mean Girls. James was ‘hot-blooded and virile,’ the cabal medical practitioner stated, however, he had troubling signs of premature poor recall with explicit memory, semantic memory, and spatial memory.

His brain was destabilized, rendering him prone to lapses of judgment and thought. It was compacted with post traumatic stress disorder. There were years of his past he couldn’t remember. His condition resulted in progressive memory dysfunction. If he didn’t leave the cabal while he could, it couldn’t be reversed.

His brain was slowly deteriorating in his skull. The physician was sworn to secrecy and, therefore, he was coldly honest with James when they were alone.

However, James focused on her. He pulled out an ornate chair for her.

Perseus glowered as he seated himself across from her in a thorny, vined seat. Now he understood why James asked about his mentor and he inquired about Hellmouth.

He was offering his wife up for slaughter in his place.

It was a small revenge between friends, Perseus believed, undeserving of actual irritation. Perseus had voted for his friend last winter; James selected his wife as his successor that summer.

Perseus roamed his eyes over the abundance of scallops, mussels, oysters, and conches. There was a bounty of grains and wines, as though she were expecting dozens of guests instead of the three of them. Séverine had no concept of conservation. She believed greatly in extravagance and excess, perfect for a goddess of myth. As Perseus settled the serviette at his neck, he partook in the sea food abundance in order to depart as soon as he could, slurping and swilling the oysters in hopes she would mistake his silence for contribution to her flights of fancy.

She rambled in tangential anecdotes, long-winded revelries, and random limericks that entertained her.

He couldn’t begin to understand how James tolerated any of it.

In fact, James seemed to encourage it. “Tell us of the Swiðhun Hall accident.”

“The Swiðhun Hall accident?” Her excited eyes were wide. “My dear, an accident implies lack of intention, it was very intentional.” She was astonished he’d believed otherwise. “The College barred the entire dormitory of men from living in close quarters. There were sexual affairs, fist fights, stabbings, and retaliations happening out of their control.” She reminisced. “I was very grateful, of course. I never quite liked my roommate nor her eclectic music. I was elated to have my own room to myself when the women were separated as well. Swiðhun Hall nearly became a bloodbath that winter.”

“Yes, Marcus Hexley’s nomination was a tragedy.” James hardly paid attention. Perseus hissed at him to shut up, but James revealed the diārium. “Professor Wulfram wrote in a diārium that he devoured Marcus’s heart to remain close to him. I can only imagine how painful it was to lose a friend.” To have a friend taken from you.

To their surprise, Professor Ilaria corrected him, “You must’ve misread the diārium. Young Helmut devoured his heart to be close to him. My love, twins share consanguineous blood, young Helmut ate of his heart if only to taste of young Malcolm, even by distant blood. To be close to him. Malcolm preferred they were strangers after the death of his twin.”

Perseus’s mouth opened wide. Seawater escaped his parted lips. “What?”

“Has he not told you?” She reveled, perfectly jubilant to be the center of attention. “I would be quite ill at ease if he hasn’t, because it left an indelible mark on him as a man.”

Perseus despised the affectation of interest in James’s tone. “How so?”

Thus began her discursive, meandering peregrination through her faulty memory. “Wulfram wanted to consume Malcolm in every sense. To have knowledge of every part of him—his thoughts, his literature, his philosophy, what his scent was at night, how his blood would taste. You must understand that our college years were the very first time the high pagan descendants were socialized with anyone our age; the first friendship is intoxicating; the first love is intensified past comprehension; that was why I remained solitary.” Séverine sensed the ruin it caused.

She misinterpreted Perseus’s scoff of contempt beneath his watery breath.

“You didn’t think Malcolm Hexley drugged himself the night of the hibernal ceremony, did you?” She fluttered a hand as though to flitter away a thought. “Anyway, the romantic trysts and envious affairs are what everyone else believed transpired at Swiðhun. The truth of the matter was Thierre was intended to be the first Montclair inducted into Oxlade. One of the mentors believed in him very greatly as his professor. However, when Thierre discovered the gruesome deeds required of the matter, he fled. Poor Helmut had to clean the entire mess of the mentor himself. It was the end of his budding little friendship with the boys. Precisely similar to the late Lucien, Thierre ran to tell someone. Thierre had told Malcolm of the cabal when they were both horridly drunk and, of course, Malcolm told Marcus quite immediately after. In the end, Marcus pretended it was him who knew of it instead. A beautiful act of bravery! Oh, how I adored to witness his sacrifice!” She reveled. “Marcus was executed; Thierre took his own life in guilt; the mentor was ex-communicated. By the New Year, the College pretended as though it were all an amatory winter affair turned fatal. Alas, the registration for a roommate was prohibited.”

Perseus speared James with a hostile stare as James further entertained her. “That was truly what happened?”