Page 94 of The Villains of Winter

LUCIEN STOOD IN THE UMBROUS edge of Elliott’s room. Rembrandt depths of darkness stretched across his features as he emerged between the jackets and the oars. The silvery moon poured a deathly illuminance through the linen curtains of the open window. Lucien bore his eyes down on Elliott in the caliginous dark in cold hatred.

Elliott bottled a scream, convincing himself it was an apparition, of course it was, as it had been month after month. Then, against all sense and reason, Lucien spoke to him. “You fled.”

“That’s not possible–” Elliott scampered backwards, sending pillows and t-shirts to the polished, teak floors of his dorm. Absolute terror choked him. “You can’t be real–”

It wasn’t until Lucien stepped further into the moon-lit dormitory that Elliott saw the depressions and corrugation of his lineament. The refinement of his impersonal, trimmed suit. The aged maturation in his tenor. “The news photographs depicted your return.”

Claude Montclair ran his analytical gaze over Elliott. His lips curled with distaste.

“You are not my son’s killer.”

Killer. The word leapt out at Elliott like a minatory creature, clawing through him with rapacious talons of guilt and condemnation. Killer. Killer. Killer.

“No one–kill him–” Elliott tried to lie, but the words wouldn’t come right. No one killed him. He sacrificed himself. Against his will, his eyes began to water. “I’m sorry–God, I am so sorry–”

“You are protecting a murderer.” Claude entered closer; he treaded over unfinished portraits, and he crushed sprightly green leaves from the open window beneath his pit viper-leather soles. If he believed Elliott could have bolstered the strength to sprint past him and try to telephone the police from the main hall, he wasn’t deterred. The law enforcement could be paid. “I attended the hibernal ceremony. I read every article in its entirety. However, what truly happened was not recorded in the newspapers. Was it?”

“–I didn’t mean for it–to happen that way–” Elliott blustered between sobs that racked his body in convulsions. “No one was supposed to die—but me.” All I wanted was for him to slit my throat.

Claude was disinterested in Elliott’s recount of the ritual. He didn’t care that Elliott couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t process his trauma, he couldn’t heal from Lucien on top of him. Strangling him with brute force.

Claude, instead, listened to the silence with his reserved, quiet breaths and Elliott’s rapid, airless breaths. Then, his resonant tenor rose into the dark.

“I was a senior elector twenty-five years before my son. I understand the resentment seeded within the prestige of its position. The envy it induces from the rest of the electors.” He unfolded something out of Elliott’s sight. An election paper. “Callum Han voted for the execution of my son.”

“Callum?–No–” Elliott fought to spill out the words between the tides of fright. “No. He didn’t. I told him to vote for him. It’s my fault.”

Claude was unconvinced, peering down at Elliott as though he were inconsequential. “Callum Han voted for my son’s execution. Then, he later ‘discovered’ my son’s desecrated body torched in fire. He immolated my son for his position. Han is the rector’s new protégé, eclipsing my son’s entire life with his own. That is what happened, do not lie to me.”

“No. It’s all my fault. You don’t understand.” Elliott cried out. He felt trapped in a nightmare. “Callum didn’t do anything. He didn’t know anything. I swear–”

Claude Montclair gripped Elliott’s hair in one clenched hand. In one thrust, he could’ve slit Elliott’s throat, however, Elliott was insignificant to him. He didn’t want the scapegoat, he was tired of speaking with half-qualified law enforcement, he wanted the executioners that took his son from him. He forced Elliott to gaze at the electoral paper with Callum’s signature and Lucien Montclair’s name written in his script.

“Lucien spoke to the electors about the cult.” Claude examined his reaction as the words registered within Elliott. “There were rumors of a political cult. My son informed my wife that the son of High Commissioner Wilde was a part of the cult, and then he was killed. She’s convinced James Wilde had him killed. However, I attained verified evidence of the real murderer. The cult colluded with Callum Han in the death of my son. Callum Han has been named the senior elector in his death. He has been bestowed my son’s position as the rector’s protégé after he followed through on his assassination. That is why you have been allowed to return under the false narrative that he was willing. You are obscuring the real culprit.”

Abruptly, there was a commotion at Elliott’s door. A body lurched forward in violent movement.

Callum Han was tied at the wrists, bound by thick hemp rope, bleeding from his head beneath buck antlers. As though he were the honorarium for the winter solstice.

His eyes were livid.

His corneas were stakes of wrath aimed at Claude Montclair.

Ill-acclimated to the dark, Claude was withered and furious, his eyes strained from the hours, weeks, and months reading over every report, examining every young man’s lineage involved, ferociously researching the conclusions of what might’ve happened to his son in papers, journals, record books. He squinted with poor eye sight at the figure hurling itself at him.

Callum rammed Claude’s forehead with his own. Their faces collided. Blood spurted from Claude’s hammered nose.

Callum bulled into Claude with the fury of a man forcibly put in bondage. Bound in his sleep. Elliott rushed in between them.

“Wait!–Stop–This is my fault–”

Callum shoved Elliott back. “Stay out of the way, Elliott. He came to kill me.”

Callum was restricted with his hands, profusely bleeding down his throat, his blood retted through his Ralph Lauren pajama shirt and his boxers. His bare feet trampled the papers and summer shorts on the ground. He searched for weapons in Elliott’s room–but Elliott had none.

Not even a baseball bat.

“Why don’t you have anything to defend yourself with in your room?” Callum demanded. Elliott couldn’t even trust himself with a pair of keys. But he couldn’t bring himself to mention that.