Chapter 13: Apology?

Caelan’s hair was practically standing on end from the static. "And now he has the nerve to stand directly in our path?!"

Beside them, Elara’s expression hadn’t changed.

But the temperature inside the carriage suddenly dropped from a comfortable twenty degrees to roughly minus forty.

Lucien slowly pulled his dressing gown tighter around himself.

His brilliant plan was dead.

Completely, utterly dead.

Beside them, the temperature inside the carriage plummeted from a comfortable twenty degrees to roughly minus-forty in the span of two heartbeats.

CRACK.

The beveled glass of the window developed a spiderweb of pure, crystalline frost.

Elara snapped her grimoire shut with a sound like a guillotine dropping. When she lifted her head, her pale blue eyes were glowing with a terrifying, luminescent blizzard.

"Astraea’s rules prohibit lethal duels within the central courtyard," Elara said, her voice dropping into a flat, monotone whisper that was somehow ten times more terrifying than Caelan’s screaming. "However, accidental frostbite resulting in the permanent amputation of both kneecaps is classified merely as an ’unfortunate academic misadventure.’ I will handle the kneecaps. Caelan, you may melt his belt buckle."

"Deal!" Caelan yelled, kicking the carriage door open with enough kinetic force to tear the bottom brass hinge completely out of its wood mounting.

"WAIT! STOP! CEASE AND DESIST!" Lucien screamed, but it was far too late.

The heavy ducal carriage shuddered to an abrupt halt, the four massive coursers whinnying nervously as the ground beneath their hooves began to either crackle with electricity or freeze into slick sheets of black ice.

Caelan exploded out of the carriage like a launched missile, his boots hitting the sunstone pavers with an explosive CRACK that sent a ripple of dust washing across the front ranks of the watching crowd.

Behind him, Elara stepped down from the folding brass stairs, each of her delicate, silk-shod steps leaving a blooming, six-foot circle of hoarfrost that hissed ominously against the warm stone.

"VALEMONT!" Caelan roared, drawing his massive two-handed practice broadsword from his back with a metallic hiss that resonated off the marble spires.

Lightning snaked down the length of the canvas-wrapped blade, turning the air acrid with scorched ozone. "You have ten seconds to explain why you are blocking House Everhart’s transport before I turn your ridiculously expensive uniform into a conducting rod!"

The hundreds of spectating students gasped in collective, breathless ecstasy.

"It’s Duke Everhart’s heirs!" a noble girl squealed from the safety of a second-story colonnade. "Caelan is going to duel Cassian Valemont right in the arrival plaza! Someone fetch the disciplinary prefects!"

"Don’t fetch them!" another student hissed, frantically pulling out a notebook. "The betting pool on this semester’s faction war just opened! Five to one on the Lightning Vanguard!"

Cassian Valemont did not draw a weapon.

He did not blink. He did not even twitch.

As Caelan charged forward, trailing sparks of violent yellow plasma, Cassian simply stood there, his jaw set in stone, his dark blue eyes burning with an agony so intensely cinematic, that he looked like an tragic hero about to recite an epic monologue in a royal amphitheater.

And then, before Caelan could close the distance, Cassian did something that caused the entire floating continent of Astraea to seemingly suffer a collective stroke.

He dropped his arms to his sides.

He took a slow, deliberate half-step backward.

And he bent his waist, folding his upper body into a rigid, ninety-degree bow of public contrition.

The silence that followed was so defeaning that one could distinctly hear a pigeon clearing its throat on the roof of the administrative spire forty yards away.

Caelan halted mid-stride, his broadsword frozen over his right shoulder, the lightning dancing across his blade sputtering out with a pathetic, confused fizz-pop.

"What... what are you doing?" Caelan sputtered, looking down at the top of the Valemont heir’s head in utter bewilderment. "Get up! Draw your blade, you coward! Why are you bowing like an apologetic sommelier?!"

Cassian did not rise.

He remained locked at ninety degrees, his voice projecting across the sunstone plaza with the deep, resonant, bell-like timbre of a trained orator whose vocal cords had been blessed by the sun goddess herself.

"I am waiting for Lucien Everhart," Cassian declared, his tone heavy with catastrophic remorse.

From inside the carriage, Lucien, who had been desperately attempting to crawl under the velvet bench to hide among the luggage, let out a whimpering, strangled squeak.

"Lucien Everhart," Cassian continued, his words echoing off the marble arches with agonizing clarity.

"The man who paid the price for my arrogance, who bled in the dark ruins while I pursued an empty objective. I know he is within this carriage. And I will not lift my head until I have offered him the apology that is owed by my soul."

The crowd erupted into a flurry of frantic, horrified whispers.

"An apology?! The Cassian Valemont is bowing to an unawakened extra?!"

"He’s been standing out here since sunrise! I thought he was waiting to challenge the third-year sword master!"

"He waited six hours just to apologize to a boy with eighteen mana?!"

"Is this a blood feud? Or... wait, why does it sound like a public confession?!"

Inside the carriage, Lucien closed his eyes, clutched his temples, and felt a burning desire to chew his way through the carriage’s floorboards and free-fall three thousand feet down to the capital below.

The impact with the pavement would be messy, certainly, but it would be infinitely less painful than the social catastrophe currently unfolding outside.

’Cassian Valemont, this freaking, absolute sociopath!’ Lucien thought with venomous, hysterical despair. ’Your moral values are broken! Your sense of honor is a public menace! Who the hell waits in front of the main academy gate to apologize to a background character in front of so many gossiping nobles?! Just send a fruit basket! Send a polite card that says ’Sorry about the monster claw, get well soon’! Why must you turn everything into a Shakespearean tragedy?!’