Chapter 62

"Chancellor Sheppard, sir! As the academy's chief practical examiner, I truly believe we cannot place the blame entirely on... on Rowan, or on Alexis."

The moment Crowler spotted the corner of the small camera peeking out from Rowan's pocket, his position reversed itself with the speed and completeness of a man who had just stepped on a rake.

He planted both hands on the desk and addressed the bald chancellor with urgent sincerity.

"Please. Give them another chance."

Chancellor Sheppard blinked.

He hadn't actually committed to expulsion yet.

His exact phrasing had been carefully hedged, leaving room on both sides.

He'd been working up to a gentler resolution, not delivering a verdict.

Alexis and Syrus, who both had some familiarity with Crowler's character, stared at the reversal with open bewilderment.

Something had changed his mind in the span of about four seconds. Neither could quite figure out what.

"Well, since Professor Crowler feels that way too," Sheppard said, accepting the unexpected ladder down from the ceiling without comment, "perhaps we can resolve this through a duel instead."

He had never genuinely intended to expel anyone. The truth was that certain events were approaching, and the academy needed students with real ability.

Several of the people standing in his office happened to qualify.

And one of them was Atticus Rhodes's younger sister, which made the whole expulsion idea a non-starter from the beginning.

"A duel?" Rowan raised an eyebrow. He didn't particularly object.

He was also already forming a reasonable suspicion about what was coming next.

"Who's the opponent?" he asked.

"I've taken the liberty of inviting two legendary duelists who specialize in tag dueling," Sheppard said pleasantly.

"So you'll need to face them two against two. Win, and we'll consider the matter closed."

"Tag duel?"

Alexis, Syrus, and Jaden all looked thrown by this.

"Of course," Rowan murmured, more to himself than anyone.

The broad shape of the situation was familiar. Originally it had been Crowler who arranged this, dragging in the legendary duo to deal with Jaden and Syrus.

The bald chancellor had taken over the role, and the number of participants had grown, but the skeleton was the same.

"Chancellor," Jaden said, raising his hand with some awkwardness. "There are five of us. What happens with the odd one out?"

He counted off on his fingers. Rowan and Alexis, then him, Syrus, and Chumley. Five.

A tag duel format ran two against two.

"Alexis's situation is somewhat different. She had a legitimate personal reason for being there, so perhaps we could..."

Sheppard was still working out the sentence when Alexis cut across him.

"No. I want to participate." She glanced briefly at Rowan, and the refusal came out before she'd quite decided to say it.

"Ah." The chancellor looked faintly inconvenienced. "In that case, the remaining spot..."

"Give Chumley the exemption," Alexis said, after a moment's thought.

"He's the one who should sit this out."

Rowan nodded. That tracked.

Chumley's ambitions ran toward card design, not competitive dueling. His actual in-duel performance lagged noticeably behind even Syrus, and that was before factoring in the part where he'd forgotten set monsters existed.

Bringing him into a tag duel against legendary opponents would be adding a variable that pointed downward.

"If that's what Alexis prefers, then so be it." Chancellor Sheppard nodded.

"The two legendary duelists arrive tomorrow. Once they're here, you'll pair up however you like and duel. Pairs are final once set. And each pair will need to win their own match. There's no sharing the result."

Translation: two separate duels, two separate outcomes. Losing meant expulsion, regardless of what the other pair did.

Rowan privately suspected that if someone actually lost, Sheppard would quietly revise the consequences. But the format was the format.

Out in the corridor afterward, Chumley had barely finished thanking Alexis when Jaden turned to Rowan with the enthusiasm of someone who had been sitting on this for the entire walk out.

"Rowan! Team up with me. We'll take on one of the legendary duelists together."

"Bro! Don't leave me behind!"

Syrus launched himself at Jaden's arm with both hands and the expression of a man watching his lifeboat pull away from the dock.

He'd produced two dramatic curved tears and was dragging hard enough to visibly impede forward motion.

"Syrus, let go, let go! I know, I know!"

Rowan watched this with a quiet sense of appreciation.

A touching scene, truly.

"Ha." Alexis pressed her lips together against a laugh, then arranged her expression into something more composed and turned to Rowan with an air of mild resignation.

"Since those two have apparently already sorted themselves out, I suppose that leaves the two of us as partners against whichever legendary duelist Sheppard's brought in."

"You've phrased it in a way that makes it physically impossible for me to say no," Rowan said, spreading his hands helplessly.

Though honestly, between pairing with the enthusiastic idiot and Syrus versus pairing with Alexis, the choice wasn't particularly difficult.

The real question, Rowan reflected, was whether the old saying about mixed pairs working better than same-sex pairs had any actual empirical basis.

He was prepared to treat this as a research opportunity.