Twin Mages Book 2: Deception

Chapter 4: The Courtyard Confrontation

"You and Dez done anything interesting lately?" Leo asks at breakfast, looking across the table to his sister. "Actually, no. We haven't talked that much lately. I can tell that he's going through something, I just have no idea what it is." Lily slumps her shoulders, looking down at her waffles. Leo nods while swallowing a mouthful of his scrambled eggs. "Yeah, he's been acting different for a few weeks since Fox and Zeus escaped." Lily thinks about that night while playing with the seam of her black and gold cloak.

"I feel like we really should've been told about the dungeon. I'm sure Dez didn't expect to see Fox that night. None of us expected any of that." Leo finishes a drink of his lemonade, shaking his head. "We have to trust Zephyr and the Masters on this. If they don't think we're ready for that information, then we should trust their judgment." Lily is surprised with Leo's stance on this, not expecting him to feel that way. "So they trusted us enough to risk our lives to defeat and capture them, but not enough to tell us where exactly they are being held?" Leo twirls his fork around, pointing at the students surrounding them. "The student body is safest when a select few are trusted with that kind of information. You were told about what happened to Dez by Zephyr last year, and I wasn't."

Lily stands from her spot with her tray, growing increasingly more irritated with the conversation. "Yeah, and if I remember correctly, you tried to punch me in the face multiple times when you found out I was keeping a secret from you." Leo looks at Lily with wide eyes, surprised that she would bring that up. "Listen, Lil. All I'm saying is that the Masters have every right to reserve that information. They thought they could trust Fox, and look at what he did. He killed Taraji, almost killed Dez, and carved a moon and diamond into your shoulder." "Well, none of us would ever do anything like that, so I don't see any reason to not tell us." She walks away from the table, throwing her food away and exiting to the hall. Leo sits back after his sister is gone, thinking about what she said, before he is pulled out of his thoughts by Delilah. "Hey, Leo! Can we walk and talk? I'm on my way to class." Leo nods, standing. "Where's Marcus? You two are always together." "Oh, he went to go look for Dez. He had a question about one of his classes." The boy walks out of the Cafeteria with his pupil, the two of them chatting and laughing.

Dez is wandering the halls, exhausted from his nightmares. He hasn't had a full night's sleep in almost a month, and at this point is almost afraid to blink, terrified of the thought that he might see that man's face when his eyes are closed. He turns the corner to the Masters Hall, and is shocked to see a figure with a smoky vignette surrounding him. "Fox!" Dez darts down the hall, turning the corner past the infirmary into the Courtyard. He sees Fox standing in the center of the courtyard, with a group of twenty or thirty mages with their faces covered in dark violet hoods. Dez turns his gauntlets to glimmering steel as Fox laughs, knife in hand. "Oh, young Desmond Callahan! Do you honestly believe you can defeat us all?" Dez leaps forward, slashing one Mage down immediately, and tossing the body into a group of three others, toppling them over. Dez stares at the Dark Mage, screaming one word in rage. "Fox!"

Lily bumps into Kei as she exits the Cafeteria, and the two begin walking with each other. Lily decides to drum up a conversation, trying to distract herself from her argument with Leo. "Where are you heading?" Kei holds up a mission slip. "I got assigned to assist with fourth year combat training for the day. Gonna be beating up on a bunch of eighteen year olds today." Lily chuckles at the thought of a bunch of full grown men getting smacked around and chained down by Kei, who is the shortest and most delicate looking of the four of them. She is the definition of a firecracker. A lot of fight in a such a small person. "Yeah, I wouldn't wanna be in that class!" The two girls laugh, but are caught off guard when they hear screams and see a bunch of students running away past them. Lily and Kei look at each other perplexed, and then run forward to check out what's going on.