a champion too, but he has no reason to agree to that. I suppose there’s group duels too, but—”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re avoiding my question.”
Aegis sighed. “I haven’t had a chance to test out my new Spellbreaker tattoos. But as far as I can tell, I admit my odds of winning are… questionable.”
I looked askance at him. “So when you told Cly you’d have everything under control way back when… ”
“I may have overstated my case.” Right now, Aegis looked an awful lot like how he used to look whenever he got caught in an untruth. “I was hoping to reassure her enough to keep her going to classes. I can handle Acubens Nightfeld, and we weren’t likely to run into a fourth-year like Arcturus during the ordinary course of classes. Nor was he likely to attack us outright like Acubens.”
“So you gambled your well-being just to make Cly feel better. Christ, that’s worse.”
“It was for the good of the House,” Aegis insisted. “We couldn’t afford to look like we were running away after two days. We’d have lost whatever respect we still had from other mages.”
I stood, frustrated. “Always for the good of the House. You know, you didn’t use to be a lying schemer. You’re still not very good at being one. But you’ve insisted on learning.”
We walked in silence for a while. The path was deserted at this hour, the breeze chilly with autumn.
“So,” I said, “there’s no way I can back out of the duel now?”
“None with a price you’d be willing to pay,” said Aegis.
#
“What?” Cly screeched, turning on Aegis. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
Aegis stared at the ground, shoulders set, ready to take any amount of punishment. I couldn’t take it.
“It’s not Aegis’s fault,” I cut in. “It was Acubens Nightfeld’s fault for being a creep, and Arcturus’s fault for somehow thinking his brother’s a helpless little angel despite having lived with him since childhood. And yeah, maybe I could’ve found a way to explain things and back down gracefully, so it’s my fault I didn’t try. But stop blaming Aegis. I mean, he isn’t even my bodyguard.”
I got a mug thrown at me for that, but it was empty, and that last bit seemed to reach her. “Well, you’ve mucked things up, haven’t you,” Cly sneered.
I set down the mug unbroken. “Yes,” I said simply.
“So fix it! Win the duel! We’ll be absolutely disgraced if we don’t. Otherwise,” Cly added, eyes glittering cruelly, “I’ll send your mother to you in pieces.”
#
I didn’t sleep much after Cly’s ultimatum, my mind churning with plans and all the ways they could go wrong. But by the time the sun rose, I knew what I had to do.
In the morning, Aegis and I paid our visit to the Nightfeld brothers. They lived in Yew Building, which looked the same on the outside as all the other dorms, deep red brick trimmed with white stone. The layout inside was the same, too, except for a few pictures and pieces of decor in the hallways. I got a sense of deja vu as we went up and found their rooms: Yew 205-1 and 205-2, the suite designed for a student and their bodyguard, occupying the same space in this building as our rooms did in ours.
“I can’t believe you,” Acubens yelled, loudly enough that I heard it right through the door. “I can’t fucking believe you.”
The door to 205-1 swung open with magical smoothness at a knock. “Come in,” came Arcturus’s cool voice from inside.
All of the school-provided furniture inside was instantly recognizable, but somehow the room still managed to look more like an office than a dorm. Arcturus sat at a desk piled high with organizers for paper and parchment, with a few added filing cabinets of his own around his chair. His bed was so austere and neatly made—the covers lay so flat against the top surface that I half-suspected a block of wood underneath, instead of a mattress—that it seemed like it could be used as a desk too. The only break in the air of seriousness was Acubens, stretched out on the sofa, covering his face at the sight of us.
The first thought that went through my head at the sight of him was that fucker, and for that I was deeply relieved. My lapse in sanity had only been temporary. “Has Acubens told you what really happened last night?” I said.
Acubens growled behind his hands, and I felt a pleasant swell of schadenfreude