CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ELLIOTT LAID HIS SKULL AGAINST the tree stump, his heart pounding.
He hadn’t realized he’d fallen in shock and hit his head on the pyre wood stacks below, until he felt the coarse, muscular hands of the woodsmen lift him to his feet. “The boy collapsed.”
His teeth stung with pain.
His mouth was gorged with blood.
The winter’s pick of the honorarium will be Elliott Archway. He couldn’t have heard that correctly. A stern pair of hands adorned Elliott’s head with rugged buck antlers. His memory refused to recall the true name proclaimed. Who was this year’s winter honorarium?
“There you are, boy, stay on your feet,” one of the heavy voices encouraged him in pity. The stranger held pungent smelling salts under Elliott’s nose, the spiciness and acerbity made his insides coil like pythons. “Keep your chin higher than your fear. My condolences for your fate.”
His fate…?
Slowly, his memory returned. The winter’s pick of the honorarium will be Elliott Archway.
No matter how desperately he tried, Elliott’s weakened knees revolted, refusing to cooperate and hold his weight. He could not stand, stunned. Distantly, he heard a furor of voices climb over each other.
“One of Mrs. Ledgerman’s orphans?”
“An orphan chosen this year…poor child.”
It was only Kitty’s screams that pulled Elliott out of his confusion. “Elliott! Don’t leave with them! Elliott!”
Distress filled him that Mrs. Ledgerman might strike Kitty’s face for shrieking in public and it was as if he was a fifteen year old boy again. He ran to protect her.
He untangled himself from the calloused knuckles of the woodsmen.
He fought through throngs of sympathetic bodies swarming for him, grieving masses that touched his prickling head in teary appreciation, stroked his cheek softly in tender-hearted care, or praisefully pulled him into their embrace for consolation.
He struggled out of their all-consuming grasps. He choked on a gasp. “Kitty!”
She sobbed for him in the arms of neighbors. She kicked for freedom. “Elliott! No!”
At the sound of her cry, nothing else mattered. His will was set on her. Thousands of townsmen were overwhelming him, fishermen with mightier strength, and he shouldered past them, thrashing and writhing, until he could center Kitty’s petrified face in his hands.
He kissed her. Pressing his lips on top of her hair.
At last, the droves of attendants parted for them in their final moment together. His words were suffocated.
“Please, don’t. Please, don’t leave.” Her eyes shone with furious tears. “Don’t let them end your life.”
“You will be alright, Kitty. You will be okay.” Despite his horror, he held his strength.
He couldn’t cry in front of her. It might’ve been her last image of him.
“You will grow elderly and wrinkled. You will own a rabbit farm and a kitten shelter for the both of us. I will be with you, even after death–”
“You can’t die. Please.”
There was no choice left. It was his fate. Elliott was considered a year older as an orphan. In their eyes, even though he was twenty, in order for him to be eligible for higher taxes in the Banebury bylaws he was twenty-one years old. Therefore, open for the sacrifice season.
“Please, no!” Kitty wept, wrapping herself around him as they were pried apart. “No, Elliott! No, please!”
“I love you with everything in me–Kitty–until my last breath–” He tried to speak through his anguish, but he was wrenched from her by the woodsmen who twined his arms in knotted ropes.
His hands were bound in front of him. Blood leaked into the hemp rope as he shouted for her. “I love you past the stars–”
Mrs. Ledgerman held onto Kitty, preventing her from clawing at the woodsmen. It was a crime to exact violence during the ceremony, particularly against the rector, the practitioners, and the woodsmen.
A rare sight of misery filled Mrs. Ledgerman’s aged, gray eyes. “Leave with dignity, boy.”
If Elliott put up a fight now, he would put Kitty in direct danger. He was not allowed to refuse his fate. He could not decline the sacrifice to Winterfyllet. He could be shot.
He did not want to be slaughtered in front of Kitty, the sight of it would break her.
Elliott Archway was this winter’s honorarium. It was decided.
He had to respect the tradition for Kitty’s sake. Even if his heart cleaved in grief for himself.
His chest heaved as he felt familiar hands gather his shirt in fists. Passionate golden eyes fiercely gazed at him and all at once, there was no longer a well-attended winter ceremony surrounding the two young men. It was only them.
“I’ll meet you in the end–” James’s eyes were filled with ache and determination. “Hold on for me.”
Hold on for him? Elliott didn’t understand. This is the end.
“Do not die on my behalf.” Elliott’s voice was an order but he trembled. He knew James Wilde wouldn’t listen to him. Elliott wove his injured palms into James’s rugged hands. He couldn’t stop shaking. “Do not die for my sake. Alright? Do not drink yourself to death. Do not starve yourself–”
“Elliott–”
“The letter–”
“Elliott, never mind the letter.” James pressed his mouth against Elliott’s forehead. He rested his temple against Elliott’s temple. “Never mind the letter, alright? Hold on for me in the Eisenhower Woods. Promise me that.”
Elliott didn’t know what he meant. Hold on for him?
In the end, there was little that Elliott wouldn’t promise him. “I promise.” Elliott’s voice was strangled. “Keep Kitty safe for me. Vow to look out for her. Please.”
“You don’t need to even ask, Elliott.” Afterward, James whispered the words that always took Elliott’s breath right out of his lungs and flooded him with warmth.
“I care deeply for that soul of yours. Anima tua anima mea est. You understand that I will protect it? I will always protect what is mine.”
Elliott nodded. “Of course. You’re the best friend I ever had.” His heart disintegrated in his chest, knowing even in the final minutes of execution, James would not return the words. Nevertheless, Elliott smiled brokenly. “I love you past the stars, James.”
“Hold on for me.” James slid his hand into the nape of Elliott’s waves. He settled Elliott’s head against his shoulder and Elliott was grateful for it, because for a full minute, he was a mess of tears and snot. He wept like a child for his fate. He did not want his peers to see it.
He did not want that to be the last sight of him.
How could Elliott not have realized he would be chosen to punish James?
Of course, Lucien never intended to kill James for stabbing him. A sadist like him would’ve wanted to hurt James more than death itself through Elliott. James would mourn him the rest of his life. Tortured.
Elliott merely handed himself over on a platter.
The cruelty was unspeakable.
The barbarity of being sent for death by his own peers bent him over.
Yet, even in his agony, Elliott would face death for James. James was safe from being selected for the honorarium, that’s all that mattered. If Elliott was useful for that one purpose for the upperclassman, then he was steadfast in the result.
As if summoned by the finality of his thoughts, Lucien Montclair emerged with the bident of the provost with eyes of victory. He took hold of the restricted ropes with an artificial simper of humanity. “Do you need a moment?”
Elliott kept his voice straight. “Not at all.”
“I am a man of my word, aren’t I?” Lucien twisted the knife deeper in the wound regardless of valor and respect, spreading his smug expression throughout the rest of his pale features. “James Wilde is safe like I agreed to you.”
James’s lips parted. “Elliott, you didn’t…Tell me that you didn’t barter a deal with him?”
Elliott couldn’t bear to look at him, not after the woodsmen fenced around him to twine his rope around the senior elector’s hold to lead him into the Eisenhower woodlands.
The weary crowds dispersed for the recitation at the AEscwulf College amphitheater, thankful to be spared another winter. Young children already slept in their parents’ arms and the elders visibly ruminated about their laments of the past.
The elders had seen decades of youths enter these woodlands never to return. By the time Elliott was cold and gone in the dirt, the feasts would be held in celebration of his life. In honor of his sacrifice.
His body would be exhibited at the end of the play.
Then, next year, a new student would be sent to the woodlands. All for the exaltation of Winterfyllet.
James had to leave to perform The Paean of the Villains of Winter, but he remained in place.
James barricaded their path. “Tell me he’s lying, Elliott.” Before Elliott could respond, James swerved to glare at Lucien with implacable fury. “You are a damned liar.”
“Do you really believe I’m lying?” Lucien savored his words, as if it was absolutely delicious for him. “Ask Elliott, when he came to me on your behalf out of the goodness of my heart, I agreed. Didn’t I, Elliott?”
James was shaken in shock.
Elliott walked on as townspeople threw petals and leaflets of gratitude after him. Women grasped his cheeks and kissed where James’s scent was left. His masculine scent of cypress disappeared from him.
Elliott could no longer inhale him, only the darkness of terror.