Page 30 of The Villains of Winter

James departed the shower, then dressed. He waited for Elliott to step out and get dressed. Then, he held onto Elliott’s wrist. His thumb grazed over the triquetral bone, skimming over the individual joints and musculature as he inspected his palms. “Do you need help with the bandages?”

Elliott hid all the keys in his room. But at night, his sleeping body thought his loose metal screws and bolts in his toolbox were keys.

Elliott shook his head, wrapping his hands before they traversed through wind and snow from the BAF to Winterthur Hall and warmed themselves in Elliott’s room. They were stopped by a few well-wishers and mourners. Elliott’s hands stung from the frigid air, but he ignored it.

He tried to ignore everything.

James kindled the burgundy-bricked fireplace beside Elliott’s bed. Afterward, at the desk, James devoured the Yule fruit cakes and allspice ginger bread, his expensive merino-wool socks set on a stack of tomes near the kindling fire. James received a behemoth inheritance from his paternal grandfather. Even though his father hated him, his grandfather had left him nearly a fifth of everything.

The refraction of flame danced across his features. James had chopped the timber himself, instead of stealing it from Wulfram’s lodge, as he usually did. James’s logs were uneven, crude, splintered, but it worked fine.

To wash down the homemade goods, James drank Heather Tần’s hazelnut hot chocolate from Elliott’s monogrammed ETA mug.

A quarter glass of brandy rested on the desk beside the farewell cards. The fire made his swan-white hair seem licked with chariot embers at the ends, his eyes radiant with contemplation as he rotated the initialized mug through his hands.

The unbearable quiet was killing Elliott. Typically, the dormitory was filled with laughter, and they were roughhousing by the end of the year, Kitty reading by the snowed windows. Kitty hadn’t returned any of Elliott’s telephone calls to the foster home. She was convinced she could get the provost to intervene.

A few minutes later, James spun the contraband vinyl, breaking the silence as he listened to the song Elliott played for him every year on his birthday, since James wouldn’t live to see the next September. “Say, do you remember dancin’ in September?”

Elliott sat beside him, organizing one of the science professors’ conspectus. Roslyn couldn’t land him the chemistry professor assistant position, but she was able to procure him an astronomy professor assistant position. It should’ve felt full circle in a cosmic kismet. The professors paid Elliott very generously to hand-copy star charts, given his artistic skill. Elliott further had entry into the personal student file system. Except Elliott could hardly concentrate on neither the planetary movement nor star alignment nor student files at the moment. “Are you frightened?”

James groaned with the weight of his soul. “Damn it, not you with this, Elliott. Anyone but you.”

“James, I’m worried for you–”

“I’d speak to a therapist or a priest, if I was concerned about myself.” James removed his socks from the tomes, but Elliott pressed on.

“I think Lucien wants to kill you–”

James sat forward. “Which song do you want to listen to, since I can’t listen to mine?” James already knew Elliott’s favorite song, and before Elliott could respond, he alternated the vinyl to Aretha Franklin crooning that was the way she felt about her man. “Please, please, can you hear my love knocking on your door?”

Elliott shut it off. “James, listen to me–”

James rolled his eyes dispassionately. Wasn’t the winter long enough without Elliott clinging to James? Didn’t Elliott ever grow tired of sticking to him like a burr in his skin, always fretting after him like James would die right in front of him?

“I…” Elliott lowered his voice to barely above a whisper. “I will take care of it. You shouldn’t be worried. That’s all I wanted to say.”

James’s eyebrow piqued with interest, his whisper of raillery tickled the skin of Elliott’s neck, tingling him with sensation when he leaned near him in conspiracy. “You’ll take care of it?”

Elliott nodded. “I will.”

“How brave of you.” James smirked teasingly, and Elliott’s stomach fluttered like a canary. “I took care of it as well, Elliott. I attained a secret gift for the provost.”

James didn’t expand on what he meant by that. Instead, he left to lather his jaw for his evening shave with a steel straight razor in the hazy mirror.

“Forget the provost,” Elliott muttered timidly, which was blasphemous enough for James to set his razor down and look squarely at the younger boy. His hair still damp from the shower. “James, listen to me.”

Elliott peered through the half-wet waves in front of his eyes. Elliott scarcely interrupted James, therefore James was rapt.

“I…I plan to meet with Lucien Montclair.”

James blinked. “Why would you do that?”

Because I don’t wish for you to die; I would sooner slit my own throat than for you or Kitty to die. Elliott kept his thoughts trapped between his ears. If it flew out of his mouth untamed again, it would only bear pain. “There are better options for the honorarium. Someone else.”

“Someone else?” James inquired, perfectly entertained that Elliott had such a darkened mind to send a separate student to death. “Who else?”

“Well, for one…Lucien Montclair.” Tyrannicide. All Elliott had to do was convince his sect to turn against him. They already despised him. It would be like Julius Caesar in the ides of March. Cave Idus Martias. Elliott pressed against the desk chair as James walked over to him.