Page 42 of The Villains of Winter

Elliott managed to break free and run. Hold on for me in the Eisenhower Woods.

Elliott sprinted into the birches, spearing past the pines, panting as he hid against a gargantuan fir tree for five minutes. Ten minutes.

After fifteen minutes, he heard the horrific sound of Lucien’s shoes crunching over the dry snow, the glassy surface of the river’s edge. Elliott swallowed. Anxious.

He ran east, barreling towards the Eisenhower Woods. He found the elm he and James laid beneath to stargaze at night.

Lucien malevolently stalked him, the practiced predation petrifying him to his core. The hunter knew exactly where Elliott was, and after a few more heart-racing moments, Elliott decided to run for it again.

However, Lucien caught him. With ferocious might, Lucien hurtled him back down against the half-frozen river. Elliott felt his cheekbone almost fracture on the hard, ice-encrusted surface. Lucien mounted Elliott in the cold.

With Elliott’s hands bound tightly by rope, Lucien dominated him.

As Elliott strained, gargling, he tried to jab Lucien’s wound with his knuckles to punch the older student hard enough to get him off of him. Terror flooded Elliott’s system as Lucien forced him on his chest. He’d overturned Elliott too easily. Elliott tried even harder to elbow him, realizing Lucien would submerge his head into the water. Drown him alive. However, Lucien anticipated the attempt to reopen his wound and pinned Elliott’s wrists down. No!

Before Elliott knew it, his head was violently driven beneath water.

Elliott choked on shards of ice shoving into his teeth and mouth, and he cried out. Tears gathered in his eyes as he fought the strength of Lucien’s hands plunging his head deeper towards the freezing pain.

If he submerses my head any longer…he will drown me…

Elliott’s legs kicked out uselessly, completely disoriented to where Lucien’s limbs and torso were. His hands were trapped with hemp, and his lungs quickly filled with panic. He managed to thrash his body onto the dirt, but Lucien straddled him again swiftly, ignoring his pleas, and instantly gripped his throat. With all his diabolic effort, he contused Elliott’s windpipe.

“The heretic will die soon enough.” He grunted. “Before then, I will send you to your precious stars.”

Elliott writhed with the brunt of a steer, but Lucien was viperous, perversely determined to witness the light drain out of the orphan’s eyes. It hurt more than Elliott imagined to be strangled to death. It was the muscles straining in his throat and the bruising tendons, the sore veins taut for survival, the wild mayhem of impending murder.

His hands were knotted together. No matter how hard he scraped them against a razor-like fragment of ice, he couldn’t cut them open.

God, please, Elliott begged helplessly. Let him cut my throat instead.

Lucien was only meant to slit Elliott’s throat to perform sphagia. Bloodletting. Lucien had been given permission for the propitiatory war practice.

Instead, he was committing an even darker form of brutality.

Lucien was a swimmer with greater lung capacity. Even if Elliott tried to overtake him underwater, Elliott was outmatched. He was on the verge of passing out.

Suddenly, Elliott felt the wind of hard metal at his ears, like a spear singing through the air, and Lucien let out a strange bellow.

Elliott palmed the splintered ice for purchase, and he tried to catch his balance, crawling away to put as much distance between them as he could. Without warning, blood spurted onto the bridge of his nose and abdomen. Elliott only saw one thing–

A sharp object thrust into Lucien Montclair repeatedly.

​​ CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“ARE YOU HURT?” JAMES ASKED, or at least Elliott believed he’d asked, Elliott couldn’t hear much of anything other than the pulse of his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath, dragging ragged, broken gasps down his throat.

Was Elliott dead?

Did Lucien kill Elliott and he was merely imagining his survival?

It wasn’t until James knelt before him, removing a strand of smoke-brown hair out of his eyes that Elliott could hear sound again–the drift of wings upon the sparrows, the churning hiemal wind through the winter valley, the gentle tone of James Wilde saying softly, “Are you alright, Elliott? Speak to me.”

Immediately, abruptly, Elliott forgot all words in existence. He tried, in vain, to remember words and what they had once meant. Finally, he managed to leak out a syllable. “I–” Then words flooded. “Alright. I am–I am alright. Am I alive? Did he hurt you? How badly are you injured?”

“You’re alive.” James ignored the last part, though Elliott noticed he clutched his side. Instead, James focused on him with the heat of a thousand violent suns. “How could you be dense enough to strike a deal with Lucien Montclair behind my back? What were you thinking?”

It took drowsy Elliott a full minute to comprehend what he meant. All of Lucien Montclair’s accusations of James returned to his mind. The arcane. The alchemy. The torture.