Chapter 87

If there was one piece of credit Jordan could give to their assaulters, it was that they didn’t gloat about their victory.

Well, besides Elida. But the smirk she wore as she had Liz strip off her gear and hand it over seemed to be for Liz alone. By Jordan’s appraisal, Elida genuinely didn’t care about rubbing the victory in to anyone else. To her, everyone else’s involvement—including her own team’s—was incidental. This had been between Beaumon and Parda-Halt.

Jordan had known they’d be getting mixed up with something political, coming to Tenet. While maybe spared the full intrigue of a court, the campus was swarming with all layers of nobility, and from other countries, even. That she, Natalie, and Sofia had decided to team up with a Beaumon meant political consequences would be coming for them.

Just, she hadn’t expected it to be so soon, and in such a dramatic fashion. What were the odds that the Beaumon’s arch-nemesis had bumped into them on their first long delve out? Astronomically low, she would have figured, but here they were.

All things considered, their team wasn’t in horrible shape. All of them had been taken out of the fight, HP dismantled and left stunned, but no accidents had happened—and accidents did, on occasion. HP wasn’t the most reliable resource when it came to ensuring someone’s safety, even if it usually saved your life, as long as you had the points to spare.

But beyond some cuts, bruises, and bumps, their team hadn’t taken any grievous injuries. It was the kind of beating a night’s rest would take care of, thanks to their classes. Jordan had honestly been beaten up worse in spars.

The emotional—and situational—damage was much worse.

Elida and her group took, as she had implied they would, nearly everything they owned. Not just their earnings from the hours delving prior, like Jordan’s quiver and Liz’s wand, but the gear they’d spent putting together for the past week. Elida’s teammates at least had the good grace to look awkward about it.

“We’ll leave you your weapons,” Elida said. “Besides Lizzy, of course. And your supplies. So you can fight your way out. If you five got killed, it would look bad on us.”

The humiliating event was at least short-lived. Jordan and her team were forced to peel off their relevant gear and hand it over, and the items went tucked into the opposing team’s monster cores, but with that done, Elida and her group departed, punctuated by a dainty wave of the red-head’s fingers. She had eyes only for Liz as her group departed down the trail of the Wispwood. The smirk was so blatant—and well-earned—that it grated even Jordan’s nerves.

And so her team sat in a scattered circle, in a motley arrangement of mundane armor and plainclothes, stripped of their belongings—and more importantly, their pride.

A cloud hung over them, and nobody spoke.

Even Jordan wasn’t immune to the sour mood, and she usually could brush past this sort of thing. But this was a more infuriating event than usual, because she held the lion’s share fault for the defeat. She had been the quickest to be downed, and the moment she’d failed to keep Elida’s attention, the enemy rogue had decimated her way through the rest of Jordan’s teammates.