Geneva
Willem fed him well: roasted duck—his turned on a spit separate instead of putting it in Willem’s stew with the rest of his meal. It was well salted and sprinkled with herbs. Willem did not offer him bread, but the smell was buttery and wonderful filling the room.
He shared with Elias a soft nightshirt and then led him to his bed. It was a large thing for a large man. Covered in wool blankets, the mattress lined in fur.
Willem settled beside him far enough for politeness but close enough for warmth. Elias’s heart beat out of his chest as he stared at the alchemist across the sheets in the darkness.
This bed felt more like the one he shared with his family at home than any other he’d laid his head on in months. Elias felt sleep tugging at him, but he was too nervous to take its hand.
Willem yawned and then cuddled himself into a crescent.
“Now, then. Between the two of you, which is more like a beast?”
What?
“I don’t understand,” Elias whispered back.
Willem sighed but not in exasperation. “You’re both mired in knots of rage and ignorance, selfishness, violence, base comforts, all. You act on instinct. A beast and a monster are not the same thing. Is a bear a monster? An adder? They are beasts.”
That wasn’t nearly the explanation that Elias expected or wanted. But Willem wasn’t saying anything else.
“I suppose I am?” Elias tried.
“A child killer with a doll by his heart,” Willem said, blowing out a breath. “It is pretty bad, my friend. But Victor did not once consider you had a soul or were loved, and he had also killed another man and so many animals.”
Elias frowned. “I have killed many more people than Victor, though. I . . . I may be worse than him.”
Willem closed his eyes. “Does that matter to you, who is worse?”
Elias thought about it. He had walked the world for months so sure in his heart that Victor was his very own villain that he could not possibly have come up with this question until he was far from Geneva.
And after, to ask it would be to regret revenge too recently had.
So it would not have occurred to him then either.
“In pursuit of justice, yes. In defense of my actions, yes. But in a space like this, among . . . alchemists. No. It matters whether the people I care about find me repulsive in my badness. If I have community and am embraced, who is worse between us does not matter.”
“And what of you to yourself?” Willem breathed.
“I . . . I have never liked myself anyway,” Elias admitted, though it pained him greatly.
William was silent for a while, then he reached miles across the bed to wind his fingers around Elias’s wrist.
“You were not so bad before this, I think,” he said, rubbing a thumb against Elias’s pulse point. “And you are kind, even in pain. Did you know a hurt mouse will still help a dying mouse? Even when they are just an hour apart from death, he will try his best.”
Elias thought for the first time in weeks about Franz. He let out a shaky breath.
“Does it matter to you?” he asked, vulnerable.
Willem huffed a laugh out into the dark. “Would you really like to know?”
Elias shook his head, then nodded. He felt so small and so far away.
“Hm. I think you and Victor are a man and a man’s shadow.
You switch who is to be the shadow and who is to be flesh.
Half of Victor’s soul is in your body, and it likes it so much better there.
Brogan took from you and some of what you are slipped over.
Victor may be kinder now because of it. I may like him more than I did when first we met,” Willem said, and it was the longest Elias had heard him speak at once.
“Which one of us is more the beast?” Elias demanded.
He needed to know.
Willem opened his eyes and they glittered in the dark.
“Neither. All of us are monsters, to someone,” he said.
It hit Elias as though he had been punched in the stomach. He contracted around the arm Willem still held firm in his grip, his knees nearly touching Willem’s elbow.
“I am so tired of crying,” he whispered.
“Do you want to be close?” Willem loosened Elias’s wrist. Elias nodded, but before he could come into Willem’s arms. Willem put a hand on his shoulder.
“Do not think again to pay in flesh for revelation,” he said sternly. “Have you learned your lesson of honeyed words and deceitful touches?”
“Yes,” Elias choked, overcome and embarrassed yet again.
“Hm.” Willem turned Elias over effortlessly, so they were front to back. Warm as the baths in Italy, close as siblings.
“Go to sleep, alchemist. Tomorrow will be hard.”
Unconsciousness tugged at him, like Willem’s words were a spell.
“Why do you and Brogan call me that?” he slurred.
“Shh.”
Before the darkness claimed him completely, he felt Willem’s teeth on the nape of his neck.