“Be careful about the bets you make. I once won my brother’s wife from him. I’m still not sure if that was a real victory.”

- Malko, the Gambler

“You should’ve seen his face!” Mako shouted, laughing raucously and pointing at Kollum. Selena couldn’t hold it in, giggling uncontrollably. Percy couldn’t help it and laughed along.

“W-well, yeah!” Kollum replied defensively. “He summoned a dragon! I mean, I knew about your Monarch, but two more dragons alongside that?! How crazy do you have to be to be able to bind all of those?! Compared to that… And I thought I was going to be able to offer you cards from my estate. Pah.” He hung his head. “Now I’m just hoping you’ll be friends with somebody as full of himself as me.”

Percy rested a hand on Kollum’s shoulder. “Hey, first of all, I got lucky. And she wasn’t drawing anything good the whole match. Also, yeah I’ll still be your friend! You guys are all I’ve got here!” The group chuckled at that, breaking Kollum out of his funk.

“I heard somebody say you were a scholarship student, Percy,” Mako added. “I guess we all should’ve expected something like that out of you.

“Yeah, but she was one, too!” Selena added. “That just means that when I beat Percy, it’ll be all the more satisfying.”

Mako laughed. “If you can beat a dragon, I’ll eat my pants.”

Kollum jabbed him in the ribs. “Hope you’re hungry,” he jibed. “Selena’s a scholarship student, too, though she doesn’t need it. In fact, she’s the best duelist I know!”

Mako frowned at that. “Wait, you guys have dueled before?”

Selena’s eyes went wide. “Kollum! You weren’t supposed to tell anyone that, you idiot!” she hissed. She grabbed his ear, hauling him away from the other students.

“Ow ow ow!”

“You listen here,” she whispered, releasing him. “You know our parents weren’t supposed to let us use their decks! Do you even know what will happen if you say something like that around any of the masters?”

“I don’t know,” Kollum said sullenly, rubbing his ear. “We’d get detention?”

The girl looked up and let out a breath, barely stopping herself from hitting him. “Worse than that. It’s almost a certainty that we would be expelled. And not only that, but you’d get our families in so much trouble with the royalty!”

“Why’s that?” Mako asked, popping his head over her shoulder. The two of them hadn’t been exactly quiet, despite Selena’s attempts to whisper.

She jumped at the sudden interjection. Percy wandered over after meeting Kollum’s gaze. Apparently, the secret they were talking about wasn’t so much of a secret anymore. He joined the group as Selena answered Mako, pulling all the boys into a group huddle.

“Okay,” she started to explain, “You guys can’t repeat any of this to anyone. I don’t care who your families are. No repeating this, got it? Good.” She took a breath, then launched into a rapid explanation, her voice far more hushed than before. Obviously, she’d learned her lesson.

“So, Percy, I don’t know your deal, but I know Mako doesn’t come from a noble family. He’s only here because of his patrons. And those who don’t come from nobility tend to have a very limited understanding of magic law. Well, all law, really. But that’s not because they don’t need to. That’s just blatant ignorance. Anyway, the short of it is that Summoners are forbidden from sharing decks with their kids.” She held up a finger. “I see that look on your face, Mako. I know you’re about to ask me to explain.” Selena’s green eyes gazed off into the distance as she bobbed her head in thought.

“Okay,” she resumed. “Essentially, you have to graduate from one of three academies in the kingdom in order to become a registered Summoner. That much, you know. In addition to that, since magic is restricted to registered Summoners, it’s just plain illegal to share it with anyone—that includes your kids.

“However, a while back the king discovered that a bunch of the noble families were sharing it with their kids, anyway. They wanted them to succeed at the academy, after all. They pay a lot for their kids to go to these places. So, to stop that, the king really punished those nobles, completely unseating them from their positions as Summoners and warning the others that he would do the same to anybody else caught doing that.”

“Caught educating your kids?” Percy asked incredulously. “That doesn’t really foster the best environment for the future leaders of the kingdom, does it?”

She smiled at him. “That’s exactly what my parents think. And Kollum’s. And a bunch of others. That’s why they all got together and started a… club, of sorts. We’d go to a secret location twice a month—it changed every time—and our parents would lend us some spare deck boxes with pre-bound Summons. Then, we practiced dueling.”

“Yeah,” Kollum added. “On top of that, we also made our own fake cards with blank pieces of parchment from Summons we knew and we practiced with those. But Selena beats me every time.”

She shrugged. “That’s also highly illegal—and dangerous so, don’t get caught doing that. And I tried telling you to think from your opponent’s perspective, but you just… don’t. I don’t know why.”

“It’s hard to do!” Kollum said, turning to Percy. “Listen, when I get access to my estate, I’m going to be adding a lot more powerful cards to my deck, and then I won’t have to worry about that.”

Percy didn’t say anything, but he certainly didn’t agree with the boy. If the children of nobles had “estates” of cards, probably some sort of allowance of cards their parents gave them, then every other student would be in the same situation as Kollum. And that meant that he wouldn’t be any better off than he was now.

Come to think of it, what am I going to do once everyone upgrades their decks? Was that why Reina wanted a rematch? Does she also have an estate of cards to choose from?

“It doesn’t matter how hard it is,” Selena said. “You know what my mother used to say.”

The other boy rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Something like, ‘You can still win if you’re losing.’”

“It’s, ‘Even in the face of defeat, victory can be achieved. Just understand your opponent and see their mistakes before they make them,’” Selena corrected.

“So basically what I said.”

“You said something about registered duelists,” Percy mentioned. “Does that mean that there are unregistered duelists?”

The other three gave him looks that told him that what he’d asked was a very stupid question.

“Percy,” Mako said, breaking the silence. “Haven’t you heard of the Dark Summoner?”

Silvaroth huffed, but didn’t say anything. Percy imagined he was shaking his head.

---

Thankfully, the awkward huddle was broken up when Mrs. Balligan called Selena’s number. That number turned out to also be Kollum’s number, so half of the group had to leave to go duel each other. Mako and Percy moved to sit as close to the duel as they dared, ending up with front row seats. Evidently, word of Selena’s Monarch had spread around. And nobody wanted to sit anywhere near a Summoner using Plumeria. Mako and Percy were confused by this.

“It’s because of that Monarch’s history,” a familiar voice said from behind, interrupting their conversation. Percy turned to see the blue-haired girl he’d dueled against earlier approaching. Reina took a seat next to them, gesturing to Selena as she drew her cards. “Plumeria was Selena’s mother’s Summon.”

“Was?” Mako asked.

Reina nodded. “She perished while defending the kingdom’s borders from the Dark Summoner. A Summon without a Summoner is released from the magic binding it.”

That’s an option, Silvaroth mused, chuckling to himself.

“So that’s why she was so insistent about getting Plumeria during the exam,” Percy realized.

“The exams are still going,” Reina pointed out. “But I understand your meaning.”

Kollum and Selena’s Monarchs had formed, and Selena drew a card. Evidently, she was in flux, which meant she got to go first. Percy pulled out his tome, pointing it at each of the Summons behind the two duelists.

First was Kollum. Behind him was a large oak tree, bigger than any Percy had ever seen before. It glowed with a golden aura, reaching up to the sky with soaring branches.

#010: Hjelnard, Ancient Tree

“Oh, interesting,” Reina commented as she read the page over Percy’s shoulder. “This is a match-up that many Summoners would pay to see.”

“Why’s that?” Mako asked, beating Percy to the question.

“Well, Plumeria there is actually a servant of Hjelnard,” the girl explained. “And I don’t think I’ve actually ever heard of them dueling each other before. Plus, Summoners like to gamble. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe cause it’s fun!” Mako shouted. “I’m betting on Kollum! If I lose, I’ll eat my pants!”

“So, how many pairs of pants do you have?” Percy asked. “Because you’re making a lot of promises I’m not sure you can keep.”

“Oh yeah?” the other boy challenged. “Why’s that? You wanna bet against me?”

Percy looked over at Plumeria, who stood behind Selena, her feathery mane ruffled by the wind. Her staff was absent, but she didn’t seem bothered by the fact.

“I’ll bet on her,” Reina said. “You would too, if you’d seen what she can do.”

Percy raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen Plumeria fight before?”

Reina stammered, brushing a few stray blue hairs behind her ears, “Oh… um… Well, uh, I just meant that I’ve heard about her before, but that if he knew anything about her, he wouldn’t be so hasty to gamble.”

“Whatever!” Mako said. “But if I win, you have to…” He thought for a moment, looking around for inspiration. His eyes settled on the woman standing behind the podium next to the field. A grin crept up his face and he chuckled darkly. “Oh, I know what you’ll have to do.”

Percy was suddenly glad he hadn’t decided to bet against Mako. Reina’d seemed unfazed.

“You’ve gotta sneak into Mrs. Balligan’s room. And no coming out until you find something interesting.”

“Hey, guys, wait a minute,” Percy said. But the two ignored him, shaking hands and staring each other down intensely.

“I look forward to seeing you eat your breeches, Mako,” Reina said.