Page 65 of The Villains of Winter

She handed him a parchment.

James studied the empty paper enclosed in a creamy, thick envelope. “It’s blank.”

“Ah! I’ve forgotten.” She wrote an A on the parchment. “You’ve passed. Well done.”

“Was the theater production my final examination?” James asked.

Typically, Ilaria crafted him a torture examination for his assessments. One year, she forced him to analyze hemotoxic, neurotoxic, cytotoxic, and myotoxic serpent venoms and rearrange them according to fatality. The boomslang was the most lethal of all, its envenomation caused internal and external bleeding out of every orifice. He’d seen live victims with bloodied eyes–the ears and mouths gorged with blood. The brain hemorrhaged uncontrollably, before several victims went into cardiac arrest in agonizing pain.

By the end of the examination, he had to match the venom to the live serpent. If he’d failed, he would’ve been bitten and potentially died himself. In the examination, he only thought of his mother who died of a brain hemorrhage.

Of course, Séverine had the antidotes that were reconstituted from milked serpents sent from a snake farm facility. However, she indulged in the flair of peril with great delight. She was over-dramatic to a threatening extent. She knew of his mother’s death. She exploited tragedy to her will often.

She’d never failed to give him a dire, dangerous examination before.

Until that winter.

“No, your final examination was not the play, I’m afraid.”

James’s eyebrows knotted as he shut his mid-century suitcase. “What was it?”

“Your greatest accomplishment of the winter was the murder of Lucien Montclair, wouldn’t you agree?”

James’s blood ran cold.

Professor Ilaria ran her slender fingers over his cheekbone. “I’ve spent hundreds of weeks in your company, my sweet-inflected protégé. I know when you’ve killed. I tasted it on you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

You have a spot on you, my Empyrean protégé.

“Let us not have pretense between us, you and I are far too familiar with one another.” Her voice softened. James’s eyes hardened with fury on her. “I was taken with you the moment I laid eyes on you. I could taste murder on your mouth that morning. A fleck of blood on the edge of your lip.”

Lucien’s blood. James couldn’t utter a single word. Merda.

James’s tainted blood always had the after taste of the dilutions and elixirs.

Lucien’s blood was not contaminated with alchemic materials.

She knew the difference.

Right then, Professor Ilaria laid a kiss on each corner of his mouth in his untidy, chaotic dormitory. She traced his hands with her manicured finger. “I was astonished that you were rather uncareful. A knife? After I’d gone to extensive lengths to teach you the intricacies of envenomation, toxicants, and banes that leave little to no traces?”

James maintained his answer. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ah, but of course you do. You were propelled by motus animi–motion of the soul. Emotion. You were furious and devastated with emotion, I understand. Elliott Archway needed you.” She’d spat his name out loud with slight antipathy and James felt his blood broil inside of him. “Elliott Archway was selected for the honorarium. You didn’t care that you spilled blood everywhere, did you? That you were bathed in it? You cared only that he lived.” She smiled with an intensified malice in her tone. “Rather, you were motivated by motūs animorum–impulse. Passion. Affection?”

James didn’t dare move, he’d murder her if he did.

“It was so natural for you to kill for him, to slaughter on his behalf, that you couldn’t bear to think straight. You should’ve come right to me.” She sounded stringent after the last syllable. “I very nearly failed you in the final examination for that slight.”

‘I am obsessive and possessive in turns of wretched measure.’ Professor Ilaria had written that line in the tragedian play for James Wilde. She was intolerant of sharing his attention.

She would’ve properly instructed him in premeditated murder. She deserved his attention. You don’t need me at all?

“I can’t get past the fact that you would be careless enough to use a knife. There were better methods, better protective measures. Then again, you never liked using protection, did you?” She inspected a pen. She bit her words into him with an even temperament. “If I hadn’t been watchful for you with the philosophy women, there would’ve been a batch of little James Wildes running about here. You’ve slept with several of the actresses as well.”

James clenched his teeth. “You convinced Lucien to target Elliott for the honorarium. Don’t distract from what you’ve done.”