CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
At last, Perseus emerged from the pines.
Relief filled Niall’s countenance as Perseus embraced him, but Niall choked with horror.
Perseus cut his throat, unmercifully, there was no time left to plead to be spared.
With a firm shove of a hand, Perseus sent him over the cragged cliff of the Marlborough Mountains.
His ruddy cheeks purpled with effort as his legs kicked around for purchase on the ground.
Niall Eastman had to have a closed casket from the height of the plunge.
Afterward, in front of everyone, Perseus delivered a speech in honor of his friend.
He commended Niall’s bravery to volunteer.
Perseus shook loose a cigarette stalk. “For my wife, I spent four million dollars on the wedding ring; I fucked her first. I needed to know if she was worth the effort. I wouldn’t even do half of what you did for a friend.”
“You might as well be Lucien. The archetype of Baneburians.”
“Don’t pretend you’re better than other men.
You can pander to civility, and virtue signal all you want, but it’s human nature and basic instinct.
You’re violating every function of law and order for a working class kid who can’t afford to pay you back on a labor income.
” A darkened carmine hue blazed as Perseus lit the end of his cigarette.
James responded, “That is the entire reason I want to enter politics. To make a difference to everyone, not just the people who line my pockets with money.”
Even though smoking was strictly prohibited in the lowest sector of the Exeter Athenaeum, Perseus’s nerves were shot.
He was now complicit, he could see in James’s volatile eyes that he had butchered the fellow third year student.
He’d seen James murder men before, he knew his expressions by the terrifying sight of them.
In December, Perseus had been the one to call the police to report the burnt remains, and he was now likely considered the last one to have seen Lucien Montclair alive.
And he couldn’t say a word against it without implicating the existence of the cabal.
“You’re very frighteningly impressive as a liar.
” Perseus inflated his contaminated lungs with nicotine.
“I almost believed your little integrity speech, right now, despite everything. I thought to myself that you might be more moral than all of us. Then I remembered you beheaded the last honorarium. I suppose that wasn’t a friend of yours, Finch or Elliott, therefore that execution didn’t matter to you, did it? ”
Beneath Perseus’s breath, James heard him mutter, Γ?γνεται γ?ρ ?καστο? ?ρ?ν κα? ?κο?ων. Like father like son.
“It mattered. I killed him humanely before the decapitation.” James kept his gaze even with him. Wulfram had insisted on the decapitation lesson. “I’m not better than other men. I know I am far more vile than most men ever will be.”
Perseus’s mouth scowled around the curl of smoke. “All of this happened because of your mentor, didn’t it?”
He knew of that? Perseus expelled the smoke through his nostrils. “It was a mistake for your mentor to be a woman, I’ve always said that. You’ve slept with her as well?”
“You seem extremely interested in my sexual history, Perseus. Are you asking me to come to bed with you?” James responded, lighting a cigarette of his own.
“We wouldn’t be sexually compatible,” Perseus retorted with an intake of the cigarette. The antechamber was hazed with charred smoke. “We’re both dominant by nature. I would never submit myself under you and you would never cede yourself to me.”
It would take a feat of nature for that to be any different.
“No, I haven’t slept with her. She is not interested in carnal matters with me. Her affection is attached to her telestic practices.” Professor Ilaria truly believed herself to be a Delphic priestess, therefore she regarded her virginal purity with utmost sanctity. Parthenos.
She was untouched by men.
Perseus was not convinced. “Old Hellmouth told me that she bathes you for ceremonial lustration.” Perseus didn’t understand that her particular obsession with James was a belief in his godhood, not a lustful desire for his body.
She worshipped him and she expected him to worship her.
She abhorred his seed everywhere. She wanted him pure as a worshiper should be.
She would’ve preferred him to be a virgin for all of his life.
That was the dark truth. “Hellmouth warned me that she masterminded the hibernal ceremony. That she preyed on your emotions. He’s right, you are too easily corrupted with emotion, James. ”
Hellmouth knew of her antics?
James replied sharply, “Hellmouth initiated you into cannibalism. Did you resist corruption that night?” James recounted the troubled expression on Perseus’s face the night Helmut Wulfram instructed him to devour the subject’s lungs for a lesson in retaliatory cannibalism.
Niall Eastman. His childhood friend had overheard a private cabal conversation.
Wulfram forced Perseus to read Seneca’s Thyestes for the barbarous mythology of Atreus cannibalizing his own nephews in vengeance for the stolen throne committed by his brother.
Let there be nothing that stands between you and retribution with an enemy.
Not friendship. Not even blood. The pair called him Hellmouth ever since.
“I am no less susceptible to corruption than you are, Swann.”
Perseus surrendered with a final exhale of smoke. “Listen to me, James. We need to look out for each other as the same men who have endured similar experiences. We need to vow not to become corruptors like our mentors when we are the mentors. We could improve everything.”
James’s eyes glowered through the chemical fumes. “On the contrary, we are not the same men, we are diametrically the opposite. You voted for my best friend and you directly lied that your vote had been for me. Your word means nothing to me in a vow.”
Perseus extinguished his cigarette into an antique quill receptacle preserved from the Elizabethan era. “Lying to save one’s self hardly counts as a lie. However, I apologize for the betrayal.” He reached for James’s hand. “Truce?”
It was the first time Perseus Swann apologized as a known traitor.
Perseus’s infamous smile of treason was eerily convincing.
He’d fooled James once. He’d fooled Niall once.
However, at that moment, Perseus didn’t intend to betray James in the slightest. He’d always considered James to be the only pledge of his caliber. Perhaps his only friend.
Which was significant in the reason why Perseus would have never voted for him. Perseus never wanted James to die.
However, James inherited his magnetic smile. “Consider it all forgotten.”
“Then it’s settled.” Perseus piqued a brow. “Before I forget, Elliott doesn’t know about our affiliations, does he?”
“Of course not.” James would silence a million reporters to keep it that way.
“There’s still time then.” Perseus set his eyes on the serrated arrow on the wall. “You need to plan to kill him if he ever learns the truth. Figure out how you will murder him.”
James didn’t dignify that statement with a response, but Perseus went on without deterrence.
“Elliott will kill you, if he ever discovers helpless people are dying. He won’t murder out of anger, but out of innocence.
He will think he can stop the operations.
” Perseus cautioned him. His words were tense, nearly prophetic.
“If it will keep you from killing someone else–he will kill to save lives. That is the kind of person he is.”
Elliott didn’t have the heart to murder anyone.
James did have the heart for murder, but not with Elliott, which is why he didn’t dare think of that outcome. It was inconceivable. “Elliott will never find out.”
Perseus reminded him, “My childhood friend was innocent. His only mistake was that he overheard a conversation between Wulfram and I. He had no concrete evidence, no footage, not a shred of material, but his face went pale as a moth. I nominated him for the hibernal ceremony that winter.”
I did what was necessary.