Page 39 of The Villains of Winter

The cruelty was unspeakable.

The barbarity of being sent for death by his own peers bent him over.

Yet, even in his agony, Elliott would face death for James. James was safe from being selected for the honorarium, that’s all that mattered. If Elliott was useful for that one purpose for the upperclassman, then he was steadfast in the result.

As if summoned by the finality of his thoughts, Lucien Montclair emerged with the bident of the provost with eyes of victory. He took hold of the restricted ropes with an artificial simper of humanity. “Do you need a moment?”

Elliott kept his voice straight. “Not at all.”

“I am a man of my word, aren’t I?” Lucien twisted the knife deeper in the wound regardless of valor and respect, spreading his smug expression throughout the rest of his pale features. “James Wilde is safe like I agreed to you.”

James’s lips parted. “Elliott, you didn’t…Tell me that you didn’t barter a deal with him?”

Elliott couldn’t bear to look at him, not after the woodsmen fenced around him to twine his rope around the senior elector’s hold to lead him into the Eisenhower woodlands.

The weary crowds dispersed for the recitation at the Æscwulf College amphitheater, thankful to be spared another winter. Young children already slept in their parents’ arms and the elders visibly ruminated about their laments of the past.

The elders had seen decades of youths enter these woodlands never to return. By the time Elliott was cold and gone in the dirt, the feasts would be held in celebration of his life. In honor of his sacrifice.

His body would be exhibited at the end of the play.

Then, next year, a new student would be sent to the woodlands. All for the exaltation of Winterfylleþ.

James had to leave to perform The Paean of the Villains of Winter, but he remained in place.

James barricaded their path. “Tell me he’s lying, Elliott.” Before Elliott could respond, James swerved to glare at Lucien with implacable fury. “You are a damned liar.”

“Do you really believe I’m lying?” Lucien savored his words, as if it was absolutely delicious for him. “Ask Elliott, when he came to me on your behalf out of the goodness of my heart, I agreed. Didn’t I, Elliott?”

James was shaken in shock.

Elliott walked on as townspeople threw petals and leaflets of gratitude after him. Women grasped his cheeks and kissed where James’s scent was left. His masculine scent of cypress disappeared from him.

Elliott could no longer inhale him, only the darkness of terror.

​​ CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HOLD ON FOR ME IN the Eisenhower Woods.

By now, Elliott shivered. It had begun to snow in earnest in the brutal brumal landscape that encompassed the distant Marlborough Mountains. Elliott had worn copper-soled shoes because he assumed he would be heading to the amphitheater for the recitation, half drunk and depressed. Sorrowful for the poor soul chosen for the hibernal ceremony.

It hadn’t once occurred to him that he would be the honorarium.

“I found out my answer,” Lucien said abruptly, treading several miles into the woodlands, only to circle the treed hinterlands all over again. Suspicious, Elliott had begun to wonder where he was truly being led. Hadn’t they been at the ceremonial entrance already? Wouldn’t the recitation be nearly over by now?

The audience was expecting Elliott’s dead body as the grand conclusion.

Anyone with a heart would’ve put him out of his misery at that point, but Lucien lengthened his agony. It dawned on him that Lucien deeply enjoyed the predation; he was no more than a predator that played with his vulnerable flesh. A vulture that circled a carcass in the sky. A merciless eel that circled its kill in the treacherous waters. They spent nearly five miles of rounding the woodlands, bend after bend. Hours wasted. Lucien wasn’t merely wrenching the knife any longer, he was strangling Elliott to death with tension. Waiting for him to wail. Expecting him to snivel, beg, and plead.

A quick, unsatisfying death was not nearly enough for his thirst. Elliott could hardly stand to gaze at the gleaming, obsidian bident in his grasp after a few minutes.

“You found what answer?” Elliott bit back. He had a spine in his voice and it entertained Lucien. If Elliott was to die, he wanted to die with courage.

“You’ve always made me insatiably curious of what James Wilde meant to you. I needed to know the end of the folklore of the fox and the swan. In the end he meant your life.” Lucien widened his lips. “How valiant.”

Elliott grunted. “You wouldn’t understand it.”

“Is it because he’s attractive?” Lucien inquired, with a tint of envy. “Do you find him that beautiful that you would die for him?”