Page 110 of Villains Series

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY

ELI arrived at Lockland nearly a week before the start of the spring semester.

He hadn’t picked just any school—if Charlotte’s father was picking up the tab, Eli intended to stretch the bill. Lockland was one of the best-ranked programs in the country. Now, he crossed the intimate campus, savoring the quiet stretches of lawn. It was a solid week before classes were due to start, and the place was luxuriously empty.

But his heart sank when he reached the dorms. He’d been hoping for a solo suite. Instead, he found a different setup: two desks, two beds, one window halfway between them. One of the beds was empty. On the other, a lean figure had stretched out, one arm behind his head, the other holding up a book.

At the sound of Eli’s approach, the book fell away, revealing a slim face, wolfish blue eyes, and lank blond hair.

“You must be Eliot.”

“Eli,”

he corrected, setting his backpack on the floor.

The other boy swung his legs off the bed and stood. He was an inch or two taller than Eli, but all angles, edges.

“Victor,”

he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Vale.”

Eli cracked a smile.

“Name like that, you should be a superhero.”

Victor gestured down at himself. He was dressed in black jeans and a black polo.

“Can you really see me in spandex?”

The blue eyes flicked toward Eli’s single suitcase, the box balanced on top.

“You travel light.”

Eli nodded at Victor’s own side of the room.

“You came early.”

Victor shrugged.

“Family is best in small doses.”

Eli wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he said nothing. The silence stretched between them, and then Victor cocked his head in a lupine way and said.

“Are you hungry?”

* * *

VICTOR speared another piece of broccoli.

“So, what are you studying?”

They were sitting in a large dining hall on campus, the restaurant stations along the wall each a capsule of a food culture.

“Pre-med,”

answered Eli.

“You too?”

Victor stabbed a strip of beef.

“And what brings you to the discipline?”

His eyes flicked up and Eli felt … exposed. It was unsettling, the way that pale gaze bored into him. Not curious so much as cutting.

Eli looked down at his own food.

“Same as most,”

he said.

“I guess I felt a calling. You?”

“It seemed like an obvious fit,”

said Victor.

“I’ve always been good at math and science, anything that can be distilled down into equations, cause and effect, absolutes.”

Eli twirled pasta on his fork.

“But medicine doesn’t adhere to absolutes. Life isn’t an equation. A person is more than the sum of their parts.”

“Are they?”

asked Victor. His expression was steady, his voice flat.

It was maddening—Eli was so used to disarming people, coaxing them into feeding him emotional cues, giving him something to play against.

But Victor showed no interest in playing.

“Of course,”

pressed Eli.

“The parts themselves—muscle, organ, bone, blood—make a body, not a person. Without a divine spark, without a soul, they are only so much meat.”

Victor clicked his tongue in disapproval.

“You’re religious, then.”

“I believe in God,”

said Eli steadily.

“Well,”

said Victor, nudging away his plate.

“You can live in the heavens. I’ll take the earthly sphere.”

A girl appeared, dropping into the seat beside Victor.

“What have we here?”

She mussed his fair hair with an ease clearly born of habit. Interesting. Victor didn’t strike Eli as the type to welcome casual contact, but he didn’t pull away, only favored her with a bored smile.

“Angie,”

said Victor.

“meet Eli.”

She flashed him a smile, and Eli felt like a mirror turned toward the sun, relieved to have a source of light he could reflect.

“We were just discussing God’s place in medicine,”

said Victor.

“Care to weigh in?”

“I’ll pass.”

She plucked a piece of broccoli from his plate.

“It’s rude to steal food.”

“You never finish anything. Didn’t your parents teach you to eat your vegetables?”

“No,”

said Victor blandly.

“they told me to tap into my inner psyche and realize the truths of my potential. Vegetables never really came up.”

Angie shot Eli a conspiratorial glance.

“Victor’s parents are self-help gurus.”

“Victor’s parents,”

said Victor.

“are hacks.”

Angie laughed, a small, affectionate sound.

“You’re such a weirdo sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

asked Victor.

“I’ll have to try harder.”

Those blue eyes flicked to Eli.

“Normal is overrated.”

Eli tensed—a small, inward clenching that didn’t reach his face. Normal is overrated. Spoken like someone who didn’t have to work so hard at it. Who hadn’t needed normal to survive.

Victor cleared his throat.

“Angie here is the brightest light in our engineering department.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Victor’s too proud to fish for praise, but he’s top of the pre-med class.”

“But you haven’t heard,”

said Victor soberly.

“Eli here is going to give me a run for my money.”

Angie eyed him with newfound interest.

“Is that so?”

Eli smiled.

“I’ll do my best.”