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We’re both crouched in snow and blood. I know the technicality of what I’m seeing. I know it’s limbs, blood, gore—but the reality of it is snagging in my periphery, caught on the thorn of my willpower. I know I’m squatting in people, but if I just refuse to think about it hard enough, maybe I can pretend it’s all ok.
Instinct tells me to lower myself to the ground; something about standing tall sends my guts spinning. I am too exposed here, and the darkness is a curtained vignette around me. It hides all manner of things that crave the warm flesh on my bones.
I realise I’m not going to move. I realise this is it. I am going to stand here and let the beast rip open my belly. In half a moment or less, Cassius Jones will be little more than an indecent smell and a red mark upon the snow. “Move!” Thaddeus yells. His rage makes me blink. I get over myself.
I stand panting, staring over the barrel of my smoking gun at the prone, limp thing at my feet. Three hollow claps are all Thaddeus gives me. They echo out over the snow. I turn to look at him, my vision slightly obscured by the flutter of smoke from the pistol. Three claps. The bastard. “Not good enough for you?” I say quietly. Bile rises in the back of my throat.
This dead teras will at least prove I have some ability, but I know Thaddeus has set up this meeting because he doesn’t think I can make it. I’m too weak. Too brittle. An embarrassment to his legacy.
but I know how easily he tips towards anger, and I don’t want to push him there; he wants me to bear the masculine apathy our father pushed upon us, but I feel too much to ever be very good at that.
There is no single story; like every myth, there are variations. Numerous accounts. All this to say that, in the end, does it really matter?
Some of that joy is innocent; I know my brother is glad for the knowledge, the lessons on how to defend himself, and I remember hearing Thaddeus crying with relief the night of his graduation, guaranteeing our safety in London so long as he was a practising Hunter. But the darker side is that Thaddeus loves the glory. The power he has over our family.
My mother grabs at my pants, hands desperately clawing at me. “Cassius,” she cries. She screams it like I’m dying. Like she is dying.
“I know!” Furious, I bolt to standing. My mother whimpers before me and I regret the anger. She’s been like this before, crumpled on the ground before the anger of men. My father. My brother. Now me. It feels like the ultimate betrayal. Perhaps it’s an anger I have inherited, but it’s no excuse. I sink down to the floor next to her and calm myself. “I’m sorry. I know. I know what I have to do.”
That night, I pray. I also wallow, in a sense.
I don’t know what I’m expecting, but I am not filled with relief. I want to be a saint at that moment. I want to be touched by God’s light. But I’m just a boy and I’m unremarkable. I am probably filled with sin. I am not like my brother. I am not like my father. I know I take after my mother. I know all of them think that I’m feminine and soft, and I know my mother is sending another prayer to God this evening, that I will wake up a brute. Whatever it takes to stay in this city. For some reason, that’s the thing that makes me cry.
Laudanum. Laudanum. From the Latin laudare. To praise. When the first bit of swimming delirium hits me, I praise God. I roll the Lord’s name around my tongue as I swim in His ecstasy, His freedom.
I like to imagine there’s something to it: if laudanum is holy, if its highs bring me closer to God, what’s left over when it's gone is something of the Devil. Perhaps it's me—the real me. The dregs at the bottom of your tea. When everything else is stripped away, here I am, a pile of shit to be scraped off your boot.
They see the Hunter insignia and Thaddeus is lifted from every grounding shackle I endure; my youth, my desires, my very nature.
Thaddeus is going to die, and then it’s going to be me. I see him sitting there resigned to it and I want to scream. If dying here is what fate has in store for me, then the Greeks have been right all along. Sophocles said fate has a terrible power. And with my father’s voice, I hear the quote. “You cannot escape it by wealth or war. No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it.” With Fate hanging over me like a guillotine waiting to drop, I run. As I run, I scream.
Leo walks forward and wordlessly steals my lit cigarette from my hands. His rough fingers brush against mine and he takes a long drag without looking away. I’m pulled to the endless blue of his eyes and immediately flush. Then he coughs and splutters, choking out, “Disgusting.”
Leo Shaw looks back at me before he goes. “Do keep your promise, Cassius Jones. Cannot wait to see you again.”
We make eye contact across the milling crowd. Dark circles, tear-stained cheeks, and a hungry look of fury bear down on me. I expect to be screamed at, but when I dismount, when she sees the state of Thaddeus, she just lets me walk into her arms. She doesn’t embrace me back. She’s not even looking at me. “Hunter,” she tells me, and my stomach drops. “You have to go for Hunter.”
How many of them are here for patriotism, I don’t know. What I do know is, more than ever, I am here for what London can give to me—not the other way around.
“What is this?” Leo asks me, nodding to the Dionysian masks. “A Hellenistic fan club?” Up close he is nothing short of godlike. Symmetry, warm golden tone beneath his skin, a gleam in his eye that conjures for me the whim of the fae. Stop it. Christ. “Or a cult,” I offer. I’m relieved when Leo smiles at me, even though he was an ass earlier.
He tilts at the hip, bending down to whisper in my ear. “Are you flirting with me, Mr Jones?”
I want to sling an arm around his neck, but I’ve never been so forward in my life. And, of course, there is the matter of why Leo Shaw wishes to be close to me. I am useful. I have an advantage. So instead, I twist and shoot him a grin before we head inside. “Welcome to the University,” I say, and his eyes do that thing again, softening at the corners, locked somewhere between amusement and disdain.
“Don’t be,” I say, but I’m not looking at him. My eyes are on Leo Shaw who jumped up so quickly for me. I wonder if I’ve read anything between us correctly, and if he would ever subject himself to being labelled sodomite just for the chance to bed me.
“Mad bastard,” Bellamy grins. “What the hell did you offer for that?” All our fucking lives. A really, really bad day sometime in our graduated future. “Nothing to worry about now,” I say, and mean it, because we have to deal with trials before all that. And this is worth it for my brother’s dying wish. “Let’s go.”
Grief and the horrors of my mortal life apparently are best soothed by men.
I say this whilst still perched at the threshold. Leo turns back to me, and there’s that gleam in his eye, the one that makes me question whether what he shows me is ever the real him. “Will I hurt your feelings if I say yes?”
“Christ,” he complains after a swig. “Conversation with them is like pulling teeth. At least you’re tolerable, Mr Shaw.”
Now I can’t help myself. I look at him, but I bury half my face in my shoulder so I can pretend I’m braver than I am. “I would tell you flirting would get you nowhere,” I whisper, “but I’d be lying.” Leo’s breath audibly catches. But he doesn’t look away. Something passes between the two of us. Something more than an acknowledgement, and closer to a promise.
“Or perhaps I was playing you all along—and before you ask, it’s for nothing nefarious. I truly think whatever these trials are, we all might benefit from each other’s experiences.”
That man is dangerous, I decide. But that knowledge alone won’t be enough to stop my attraction.
The holy man in me, the one raised to fear my own existence, lures me down onto my knees. One or two students are already down and in prayer. But I do not go. I only whisper in my own mind, “Lord, whatever this is, preserve me. Preserve me for my mother.”
There is a sense of woe among us. The crowd of us are draped in so intense a veil of anxiety that we might as well become one great and fearful beast. The tension could slice through me.
“They have our blood, Peter,” he says loudly, loud enough the rest of the room can hear him. Many people grow quiet. There is something about his voice; it communicates a certainty that feels heavy and inescapable. “Doesn’t matter if you force your way out of here. They’ll find you anyway.”
That is the danger with teras and myth — there are a dozen variations in the world, and if you want to stay alive, you need to believe all of them at once.
What am I without Thad? Shame is in me, tugging at the corner of my mind, but underneath it all is a logical fury that is growing. It is the rage of a man who had come so close — God, I had come so damned close to real purpose, real drive and satisfaction— and here is just another wretched place. I want to lie down. I have that sinking feeling in me, where lying down forever feels attractive.
Bellamy turns his death glare to me and sneers. He opens his mouth—and says nothing. I am right. They all know it. He looks at me, and I see reflected the same pain in Victoria’s eyes. Our families have sent us knowing how easily we can die.
I have forgiven God for too long for the horror of this world. I thought London was a bastion he orchestrated. So why this? Why this?
I am here for people other than Cassius Jones. I am here for the family. To keep the Jones behind London’s wards. Safe. Solid. Cassius Jones is not a person. Cassius Jones is a means to an end. Another piece on the board. What I want doesn’t really matter.
I flash a look to Leo. Leo, this newcomer, who makes me curious. I track the glow of the fire along his jaw, the way it dances down his neck. Leo catches my eye. I snap my gaze away and light that cigarette. That was God’s fault, not mine. If Leo hadn’t looked so good lit up like that, I wouldn’t have been staring.
“That’s why I said solely, Bellamy. Pay attention.” He shuts his mouth. The ice clinks in Bellamy’s glass as he stirs it, avoiding eye contact. God, we will fall apart at the seams like this. This was only the first trial.
I wait for him to finish, to say, “Nothing is without purpose,” and draw the conclusion that even when we have no choice, we can own this. All of us here will fight, and either emerge victorious or dead, but he doesn’t speak again. I hear one choking sob and then he rolls towards the fire.
“I have to—go,” I say, stilted. I need a Bible and a cross in my hand. I need a priest to put an end to carnal wants and to remind me what I am doing here. “Where?” Leo says. Leo, with that honey-thick voice, and scent like something dark and aged: by God, he smells like church, like incense and old tomes. But if I keep thinking about that, I will stay. “To pray,” I say truthfully. “To pray. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And then I am gone.
The death means nothing to him. One less prospective Hunter, sure, but also one less mouth to feed. “What are you doing out here, Mr Jones? It’s raining. You’ll catch a cold.” “Trying to find God,” I say, more bitterly than I mean to.
I don’t even think about saying no to him. It is not an order, but it’s also not a question—I am to be this suicide’s executioner, and I don’t even know his name.
“What’s his name?” I say again, but I am relieved when once more the dean expresses his sincerest apologies for forgetting it. Good. Thank God. It would only make this harder. This is a game of chess. It is my turn to move. I put my finger on the trigger. I pull. Checkmate.
Once I might have debated that. But I don’t know anymore. I don’t know the truth of Thaddeus Jones, and I never will, because my brother is dead. And maybe he was a monster, in the end—maybe that’s the truth of how the University trains us—but he wasn’t always one. He was a good man. Sometimes. And I can stay a good man. Sometimes.
Ribs climb from between the windows and converge in a beautiful circular fresco of a dead scylla—which then ruins the whole beauty of it, because it reminds me again of this chapel’s flaw. Which is this: a massive centuries old scylla carcass is embedded in the room. It is a long dead creature, but it upsets me to look at, because it is forever locked in an open mouthed scream.
The sight of the scylla makes me think of nothing more than the nearness of death. Not the grace of God.
There is no forgetting this beast. This so-called Act of God.
