Chapter 70: [PS Bonus Ch 2/2] Unofficial Match [5]
"You?"
Augustus yanked his arm free from Darius’s grip. The lightning still crawling across his frame sputtered once, then dimmed.
The pressure in the arena loosened by degrees.
Scattered exhales from the stands. Students who had been gripping railings and each other’s sleeves slowly released.
Darius didn’t look at Augustus immediately.
He looked up at the announcer, who had dropped her cloud to just above head height and was holding her clipboard against her chest like a shield.
"What is the meaning of this?" His voice carried across the arena without being raised. "An unauthorized match. At this hour. Without administration approval."
She lowered herself further.
"My deepest apologies, Headmaster. By the time I arrived they were already prepared to fight. I didn’t know the reason." She glanced toward the floor. Toward Alden. "But Student Alden had already admitted defeat. He clearly stated he didn’t want to continue."
"I see." Darius’s attention moved to Alden. His brows drew in.
Alden was on the arena floor. Clothes covered in dust and worse. Cheek swollen badly from the first strike. Blood had run from his temple and forehead and dried in streaks down the side of his face, and he was completely still.
Darius’s gaze moved back to Augustus.
Augustus clicked his tongue.
"Step aside, old man." His eyes hadn’t warmed. "We’re not finished."
"No."
The arena went quiet enough to hear the lights.
"You’ve crossed your limits, Augustus." Darius stepped forward.
"Attacking an opponent who has admitted defeat is a serious offense. Continuing the assault after that—" The quiet in his voice became something with weight behind it. "And bringing a student to the verge of death."
He raised one hand.
Mana gathered in his palm, thin and precise, and solidified into a document in the air before him. He caught it between two fingers and held it toward Augustus.
"You’re suspended from the academy."
Augustus looked at the document.
"Your participation in the examinations is terminated." Darius’s voice didn’t change pitch once. "You can leave."
Several seconds of silence.
Then Augustus looked up from the document to the face of the man holding it.
"You still have the nerve," he said, quiet and flat, "knowing exactly who I am."
"I know precisely who you are." Darius didn’t blink. "Prince Augustus Solaris. Crown Prince of this kingdom." He lowered the document slightly. "But inside this academy, you are a student before you are royalty."
His eyes sharpened.
"The rules apply to everyone. Commoner or royal. That hasn’t changed and it won’t."
Augustus’s jaw tightened.
"Stop with that self-righteous—" He stopped.
Something had surfaced in his memory.
Alden’s voice from before the fight.
’I have one additional condition.
For everything you said to apply... it only counts while we’re inside the academy.’
Augustus went still.
His eyes moved slowly toward Alden on the floor.
Alden’s fingers shifted slightly against the stone.
And the corner of his mouth moved.
Augustus’s eye twitched.
’You.’
His gaze locked onto that faint smile.
’You planned this.’
The smile disappeared as quickly as it had come, but it had already done what it needed to do.
Augustus stood in the arena with the suspension notice hovering before him. The realization that he had walked into a trap so simple it was almost insulting—and the man who had set it was lying on the floor, bleeding from the head and smiling about it.
His teeth pressed together.
’You bastard.’
In the front seats, Seris had gone very still.
She replayed the exchange from the corridor. Alden’s voice adding the extra condition, the one that Augustus had laughed off as pointless.
’It only counts while we’re inside the academy.’
At the time she’d heard it as a limitation, something small.
Now she understood exactly what it was. He was never going to win the fight. He wasn’t trying to. He was trying to make sure Augustus couldn’t stay.
On the floor:
Alden lifted himself onto one elbow. Slowly. Every movement confirmed that his body had opinions about what had just happened to it, and none of them were positive.
But his head was clear.
’Even if I’d beaten him — what would actually change?’
He looked at Augustus.
’He’s the Crown Prince. The Student Council President. Seris’s public fiancé. I could beat him today and he’d still be walking these halls tomorrow. Still have his position. Still have every reason and every ability to make things complicated.’
His fingers pressed against the floor.
’The conditions he named — they’re meaningless inside an academy he still controls and would still do things like that to Seris despite the conditions.’
’And on top of that, I have Gramps’s support. He hates Augustus because of his attitude, and I just gave him the perfect reason to suspend him.’
He looked at the suspension notice in Darius’s hand.
’But suspended?
Suspended means he leaves.
And if he leaves, his conditions become irrelevant. There’s no one here to enforce them.’
The thought settled in his chest with the quiet satisfaction of something that had worked.
’I lost the fight.’
His eyes found the document.
’I still won.’ Then his arm shook.
The elbow he’d been holding his weight on buckled without warning. He tried to catch himself, but he couldn’t.
His vision blurred at the edges.
’I really can’t anymor—’
His head dropped and body followed.
THUD.
The sound hit the arena floor and the stands reacted before anyone on the field did.
"ALDEN!"
Leon was first. He cleared the arena boundary before anyone could say anything about the rules.
Nicholas, Roselle, Legion — all of them moving at once.
"Get the infirmary — now!"
"He’s unconscious—"
"Don’t move him too fast!"
The arena that had been locked in a standoff thirty seconds ago became controlled chaos, students converging from the stands, voices layering.
Seris stood up.
She didn’t rush. She moved with the precise pace of someone who has decided where she’s going and is going there.
She looked at him on the floor while the others gathered around him.
Her face betrayed her, settling into an expression she hadn’t given it permission to make. It wasn’t composure. It wasn’t even the faint, ready amusement she usually wore like armor.
She didn’t put it away.
She just let it sit there, quietly, while Leon shouted for the infirmary and Nicholas pressed his hand to Alden’s temple and Darius handed the suspension notice to Augustus one final time without ceremony.
__________
A white ceiling was the first thing Alden saw.
Then came the smell—antiseptic, clean linen, and the distinct stillness of a room built for people forced to stop moving.
Alden blinked once.
His eyelids felt heavy and stiff, as if they’d been resisting for hours before finally deciding to cooperate.
He blinked again.
The ceiling came into focus.
He turned his head slowly. Every muscle below his neck filed a formal complaint.
’Where am I— Oh, the infirmary... right.’
He tried to move and immediately got a comprehensive inventory of everything that hurt, which turned out to be most of him.
"Damn."
His voice came out rough. Like it hadn’t been used in a while.
He stared at the ceiling and took stock.
His jaw was swollen, bandages around his temples, he could feel it.
He lay there for a moment.
"You’re awake?" Then he heard a voice from his left.
He turned his head.
Seris was sitting beside the bed. She looked at him when his eyes found her.
"...Seris?"