Page 52 of The Villains of Winter

James handed the threadbare quilt over to Elliott.

After all, James wouldn’t sleep there for long. James needed to return to Banebury before Yule Eve. He decided that it was best that he returned to keep meticulous records of Æscwulf College–footage recordings, audio tapes, and extensive documentation. Anything that could give him leverage.

He couldn’t do that from a dim and distant farm in Kodiak, Arkansas.

James intended to document the professors that supervised as he deconstructed a new body, the benefactors that attended the cabal congregations, the provost that held the private convocations for graduate cabalists, and the line of frightened students expected to dissect human subjects for entry into political power. The clandestine cabal required a certain insensate psychological pathology to endure the task of ritual torture.

The students needed to be trained to keep silent on illicit matters, coerced into dark proclivities themselves. Exactly as their predecessors before them.

Extortion. That was the true oldest tradition of Æscwulf College. Not alchemy.

Alchemy was merely a pretense. The students endured blackmail that could be weaponized at any time in their political future.

In exchange, they were given an eternal fraternity with politicians, philanthropists, billionaires, celebrities, and public figures. Famous figures with even darker, more abhorrent secrets.

James would complete the anatomizations, the transmutation procedures, and reconstitution examination without issue. That didn’t concern him. Instead, James repeated his question from earlier after he realized Elliott hadn’t answered him. “Will you be alright if we’re apart?”

“How long will you be gone?” Elliott sat up on his elbows, squinting into the moonlit dust. In the corner, the flock of chicks rested beside an agriculture tractor; the hens laid multicolored brown, blue, and spotted eggs in their nests; the barn cat began to stir before the dawn. Elliott was certain he smelled like livestock. He could endure the barn. However, he dreaded being left on his own. He tended to incidentally get himself hurt from night terrors, screaming awake, tearing his vocal chords. Every time he was trapped in the throes of terror, he cut his hand open. He could barely remember how.

Earlier, Knox Pearson had frowned when James insisted on sleeping beside Elliott. An expression of cold judgment crossed his aged features at the sound of it. He didn’t tolerate the thought of Elliott sleeping beside a man because he needed to be watched at night. None of it seemed natural to him.

It would weaken Elliott to enable his trauma.

Knox understood the trauma involved. He’d gotten through it himself. However, James had enough muscle to wrest Elliott from the night terrors, keeping him from sleeplessly pounding his forehead into the wall to make the nightmares end. The image of Arthur Newton etched in his corneas.

If that was what it took to keep Elliott safe from injury, then James would do that.

“I will need at least a month and a half. Is that alright, Elliott?” The College will be angered by the burnt corpse. A new body will be required. James could handle the fury of the institution. Not that they would ever find out that he was the one that burned the body. “Is early February fine?”

“Can it be a week instead?” Elliott hated how fragmented his voice sounded. How much he needed him. His bicolored eyes were stressed. “I can’t sleep without someone for longer than a week. Not after we…Not since…”

Not since we killed Lucien. We left him for dead.

No, we weren’t even kind enough to leave him for dead.

Elliott wasn’t certain he could survive the night. His throat was raw, inflamed. He could still feel the full weight of Lucien on top of his lower abdomen in the iced snow.

His cheeks were still reddened and scarred from the cuts and scrapes of the frozen riverside. His cheekbone had fractured open the icebound surface when Lucien had attempted to drown him face first.

Elliott swallowed. “If I need you in a week, would you return for me?”

“I’ll always return for you.” James didn’t even need a minute to consider it. “I’d return every night, if you needed me.”

Elliott choked back a cry stuck in his throat. “I’m sorry that I–God–I can’t believe we did that to him–” He grasped his face in his shaken hands. Hands he couldn’t recognize anymore. All he saw was blood on himself. “How could we have done that to him?”

“Don’t internalize it, Elliott. The winter sacrifice is resolved. Every year it happens.” James ran his hand through the underclassman’s hair. “Don’t waste time with regret or remorse. Both regret and remorse will kill you in time, if you allow it.”

“How can you be so calm?” Elliott dried his eyes on his sleeve. He tried to sound stable. “You can talk to me, if you need to. You’re always there for me, James.” He spoke earnestly. “I want to be there for you.”

James grazed his thumb over the tender skin of Elliott’s palm. “I’m fine, Elliott. I promise. I’m happy you’re alive. All I care about is being here with you.”

“Even in a smelly barn?” Elliott chuckled. His eyes a bit wet.

“As long as I’m with you,” James responded, though he could’ve done without the troughs for swine and the endless clucks of chickens.

It was the first time in years they were going to be apart for an extended period of time. Even James wasn’t exactly sure what to do with himself without Elliott. In his freshman year, James used to leave open the first-floor window at Winterthur Hall, and Elliott would sneak through the window and he would fall into his bed, exhausted.

On the nights where Elliott was sleepless, he hummed and drummed all night, restless, keeping in constant motion. James would lift the comforter for him to rest closer beside him. Settled against his ribcage, Elliott would finally fall asleep. His snores warm against James’s ear at night.