CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
Elliott pretended the senior elector did not exist. That he hadn’t said a word.
James was not a cult pledge. He was not an alchemy practitioner; he wasn’t an examiner of the arcane; he was a normal philosophy student.
If anything, James despised any abuse of power, James’ would never disarticulate the human body of a student for dark, esoteric research.
He didn’t strive for power that intensely.
Elliott’s mind fought back the words James had uttered in agony.
I am sick. I am depraved. I am abhorrent.
“What do you think all those Hellenistic lectures on pain, madness, and chaos theory were about? You think we studied Aristocles for historical enrichment and culture?”
“AEscwulf is a secular college. It’s no longer pagan.”
“AEscwulf is an alchemy institution reconstituted into a prestigious college.”
“You’re lying.”
Lucien’s sickening smile stretched. “I’m not.
The ancient philosophy students sacrifice their own bodies to alchemy as well.
Did you forget that I read the rector’s letters?
” His words were punctuated with malice.
“Their elixirs, their alchemist studies, their human disseverments, their vivisection remains are preserved in containers and jars. Their telestic practices–all of it has infected them over the years. James will not live long, his body has likely become ill by now.”
I am sick. I am sick. I am a heathen.
All at once, Elliott thought of the chalk smeared over James’s tomes in his philosophy assistant private study and the cacography of indecipherable cursive scribbles Elliott didn’t comprehend. ?πιστ?μη–μυστικ?, ??ρ?.
“He would never do that. He would never be part of someone’s murder…” Again.
Elliott hyperventilated. It wasn’t true. James would’ve refused. His heart rabbited. James had integrity. He wouldn’t intentionally kill someone for his political aspirations. None of it was true.
James Wilde was a dangerously charming, excessively handsome politician.
He was explosively popular in the College.
He was meteorically rising through his socialist career.
He was an ambitious young socialist. Of course, he had enemies.
The country lied about the benefits of socialism in order to protect capitalist interests, it made sense that James drew envious eyes and deceitful tongues that spread lies in attempts to tarnish his golden character and his socialist beliefs.
“At Raedwine, James disavowed the ritual. You heard it yourself.”
“Yes, because it finally directly concerned him. He’s a hypocrite. He cared because it was his friend.”
“You don’t know anything about him.”
Lucien licked a snowflake from his lip with a smirk. “You will never find out the real him. We have arrived.”
Elliott saw a flash of obsidian. “You will cut my throat?”
“I am afraid I will drown you first.” His smile darkened. “I will delight in the sound, Elliott Archway. Farewell.”
Before Elliott could drag in another breath, Lucien snatched him by his collar and thrust him into the ice of the river, until his skull cracked the surface. Lucien thirsted for vengeance for his stabbing at Raedwine, and he seized the moment.
Elliott managed to break free and run. Hold on for me in the Eisenhower Woods.
Elliott sprinted into the birches, spearing past the pines, panting as he hid against a gargantuan fir tree for five minutes. Ten minutes.
After fifteen minutes, he heard the horrific sound of Lucien’s shoes crunching over the dry snow, the glassy surface of the river’s edge. Elliott swallowed. Anxious.
He ran east, barreling towards the Eisenhower Woods. He found the elm he and James laid beneath to stargaze at night.
Lucien malevolently stalked him, the practiced predation petrifying him to his core. The hunter knew exactly where Elliott was, and after a few more heart-racing moments, Elliott decided to run for it again.
However, Lucien caught him. With ferocious might, Lucien hurtled him back down against the half-frozen river. Elliott felt his cheekbone almost fracture on the hard, ice-encrusted surface. Lucien mounted Elliott in the cold.
With Elliott’s hands bound tightly by rope, Lucien dominated him.
As Elliott strained, gargling, he tried to jab Lucien’s wound with his knuckles to punch the older student hard enough to get him off of him.
Terror flooded Elliott’s system as Lucien forced him on his chest. He’d overturned Elliott too easily.
Elliott tried even harder to elbow him, realizing Lucien would submerge his head into the water.
Drown him alive. However, Lucien anticipated the attempt to reopen his wound and pinned Elliott’s wrists down. No!
Before Elliott knew it, his head was violently driven beneath water.
Elliott choked on shards of ice shoving into his teeth and mouth, and he cried out. Tears gathered in his eyes as he fought the strength of Lucien’s hands plunging his head deeper towards the freezing pain.
If he submerses my head any longer…he will drown me…
Elliott’s legs kicked out uselessly, completely disoriented to where Lucien’s limbs and torso were.
His hands were trapped with hemp, and his lungs quickly filled with panic.
He managed to thrash his body onto the dirt, but Lucien straddled him again swiftly, ignoring his pleas, and instantly gripped his throat.
With all his diabolic effort, he contused Elliott’s windpipe.
“The heretic will die soon enough.” He grunted. “Before then, I will send you to your precious stars.”
Elliott writhed with the brunt of a steer, but Lucien was viperous, perversely determined to witness the light drain out of the orphan’s eyes.
It hurt more than Elliott imagined to be strangled to death.
It was the muscles straining in his throat and the bruising tendons, the sore veins taut for survival, the wild mayhem of impending murder.
His hands were knotted together. No matter how hard he scraped them against a razor-like fragment of ice, he couldn’t cut them open.
God, please, Elliott begged helplessly. Let him cut my throat instead.
Lucien was only meant to slit Elliott’s throat to perform sphagia. Bloodletting. Lucien had been given permission for the propitiatory war practice.
Instead, he was committing an even darker form of brutality.
Lucien was a swimmer with greater lung capacity. Even if Elliott tried to overtake him underwater, Elliott was outmatched. He was on the verge of passing out.
Suddenly, Elliott felt the wind of hard metal at his ears, like a spear singing through the air, and Lucien let out a strange bellow.
Elliott palmed the splintered ice for purchase, and he tried to catch his balance, crawling away to put as much distance between them as he could. Without warning, blood spurted onto the bridge of his nose and abdomen. Elliott only saw one thing–
A sharp object thrust into Lucien Montclair repeatedly.