Chapter 14 Sam
Sam
Tamsin Blackwood haunts me for days.
Not the girl herself, obviously. If anything, I’d say she’s taking obvious steps to avoid me.
Whenever I see her around the training arenas or in common spaces on hotel grounds, she always avoids eye contact and mysteriously finds a pressing reason to head in the opposite direction.
She hasn’t texted me since the day we kissed.
I don’t know if she’ll ever speak to me again.
This is a good thing. I keep telling myself this is a good thing.
But I can’t stop thinking about her. It’s the thought of her—the ghost of the Tamsin that lurks in the back of my mind—that’s become a problem. She distracts me from training with Rook, from planning his dueling strategies, from everything that’s actually important to me.
Rook picks up on it. Or at least I think he does.
His own performance keeps stuttering. My champion is normally a force of nature, even in training.
The best I can do is slow him down or prolong the inevitable—I know I can’t stop him, not when he’s at the height of his power.
A magician like Rook, when he’s in the arena, isn’t a person so much as he’s a young, angry god.
He hasn’t become a bad magician overnight. I don’t know if he could do that, even if he tried. But he’s been made mortal lately. I land blows on him that I shouldn’t. My hexes sneak past his defenses. His curses—still beautiful, terrifying constructions—miss me entirely when he casts them.
His heart’s not in the game. For the first time in our life together, Lysander Rook has fallen out of love with magic, and I don’t know why or how to fix it.
“God damn it!” he yells one day in training. The curse he’d cast—an intricately woven serpentine dragon constructed from pure, blue-white arcane energy—shatters like glass against the basic shield I cast his way.
Rook’s fist slams into the floor of the training arena. “What the hell is wrong with me?” he rages.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I dismiss my shielding spell and go to my champion where he’s hunched over on the ground, surrounded by dying sparks of arcane energy from his latest effort.
“Your magic is as brilliant as ever. It hasn’t changed.
You just keep doing too much of it too quickly.
I’ve always told you you neglect the fundamentals. ”
Stormy blue eyes snap toward me. I back up a step without meaning to.
Even crouched below me like a wounded animal, Rook looks poised to strike.
Sometimes, wounded animals are the most dangerous.
“This has nothing to do with the fundamentals,” he spits.
“I’m not going to beat Tamsin goddamn Blackwood with, what, that basic shielding spell of yours? ”
“It worked on you, didn’t it?” I stare my champion down. I can’t let him think I’m afraid of him. Not right now. Not with so much on the line and Rook already hanging by a thread. “Don’t overcomplicate this.”
Rook shakes his head. It makes him look like a prize racehorse that’s been spooked and is now refusing to move farther along the track. “I’m not overcomplicating anything. I’m trying to do my magic, my way, and something’s off.”
I dig in my heels, ready to argue the point further, when someone knocks at the training arena door. For one brief, oddly hopeful moment, I wonder if it’s Tamsin Blackwood. “Come in!”
The door creaks open to admit one Master Noah Silverstein. “Samantha.” He nods to me then Rook. “Lysander.”
“Master Silverstein.” My heart plummets into my belly as I remember my last encounter with our master instructor—and the threats he made. “What can we do for you?”
“I’d like to speak to you, Samantha.” He glances pointedly over my shoulder. “Alone.”
Rook chuckles under his breath. “More secret meetings between my second and my venerated master of the arcane arts. Dope.”
“Ignore him; he’s in a mood,” I tell Silverstein, whose bushy brows shoot immediately toward his salt-and-pepper hairline. “Come on, the training room next door is free.”
The old arcane master follows me in silence to the next room over, but he rounds on me as soon as the door shuts behind him. “All right. I’ve made my decision. You need to pull Lysander out of this duel.”
I force myself not to panic. I knew this was a possibility. I’ve known it ever since that coffeeshop conversation the morning after my disastrous, intoxicating night in Arcane New York with Tamsin.
That doesn’t make it less terrifying.
I fix Silverstein with the best look of indignity I can muster. “We are talking about the same duel, right? The one with boatloads of money on the line? The one where Rook stands to make a fortune and solidify his reputation as the most gifted magician of our generation?”
Master Silverstein closes his eyes. “He’s not well.
Rook, I mean.” He runs a hand over his face.
“I had my reservations about letting this duel go forward at all, but I overruled them. Rook’s always had his fits and tempers, but I thought he’d get over it.
But he hasn’t. Not this time. If anything, he’s getting worse. ”
“That’s bullshit,” I insist. “I told you before. He’s just…I don’t know, in a rut right now. I’ll get him out of it. I always do.”
“Samantha.” Silverstein sighs, shaking his head.
He starts to pace the room, which is a surefire sign that this whole conversation is one he doesn’t want to be having.
Which, of course, means he’ll be more determined than ever to see it through.
You don’t get to be a master of the arcane arts of Silverstein’s ilk by shirking what makes you uncomfortable.
“How much have you been paying attention to Lysander’s condition?” he asks the opposite wall as he paces. “Because I’ve been tracking it for some time.”
“I pay plenty of attention,” I say, stung. “Again, we talked about this. I’ve taken care of Rook for years.”
“You’ve taken care of his ability to perform magic,” says Silverstein.
“You’ve taken care of Lysander’s finest weapons: You ensure his knowledge of the latest hexes and curses best suited to his magical style, maintain the strength and mobility of his body, help devise the strategy he employs against each individual challenger he faces.
” The old master rounds the corner and looks back at me from the other side of the room.
Something like pity sits behind his gaze.
“You’ve ensured, in a nutshell, that he performs at the peak of his abilities in the arena.
I can’t fault you for that. It’s the task I charged you with, after all.
But listen, kid, just because Rook the magician is well doesn’t mean that Rook the human being is.
And sooner or later, if Rook the human being isn’t well, Rook the magician will falter, too. ”
“He’s fine,” I insist once more, but it’s harder to summon the same kind of confidence.
I think about the way Rook screams during his night terrors.
The look in those blue eyes when I wake him.
The purple shadows that stain the hollows under his eyes for days afterward, and how, during those days, his magic is always just slightly, slightly off.
“Is he?” Nothing accusatory laces Master Silverstein’s voice, but I feel the rebuke in my bones all the same.
He’s completed his lap around the arena at last, and arrived to face me, eye to eye, where I can’t escape his gaze.
“Remember, Sam. I knew Lysander Rook for a long time before I permitted you to enter his life. I know that boy better than most.” He shakes his head again.
“Hell below. I may be the only person on the planet who actually knows him better than you do.”
“I’m his second.”
“Because I made you his second,” snaps Silverstein.
“I made you his second because he needed someone like you. Someone who would push him. Someone who could see through his theatrics, his monstrous talent, his mood swings, and recognize the magician beneath. He needed someone who could shape that raw material into the best duelist he could be.” His eyes are oddly sad when they find mine.
“He needed someone who wouldn’t be afraid of him. ”
“I’m not,” I whisper.
“I know.” Silverstein smiles, but it’s small, and that odd sense of sadness hasn’t left his eyes. “No warrior is afraid of their weapon. But a good warrior also knows when to sheathe the sword. Let him rest, Sam. Rook’s not in a fighting state right now. Accept that.”
“Rook will go ballistic—more ballistic than he already has—if I try to pull him out of the duel now. He’s killed himself preparing for this! It’ll ruin him if he gives up at the finish line.”
“Lysander Rook is eighteen years old. He’s got a long career ahead of him. Forfeiting one duel won’t break him, but putting him in that arena right now might.”
“Forfeit?” I repeat faintly. Of course Silverstein meant for me to make Rook forfeit when he said to withdraw Rook from the duel—what else could it mean?—but the idea of a formal forfeit hasn’t fully registered until now. “No, no, we can reschedule, maybe, but no forfeit. Anything but that.”
“Sam.” Master Silverstein frowns. “Believe me, there’s no shame in a forfeit. It’s better to lose a battle and live to fight the war than to—”
“Oh, save it for Tamsin Blackwood!” I shout.
Silence rings in my ears. I’ve never raised my voice like that to Master Silverstein before. I force myself to continue before I can chicken out. “If anyone should be forfeiting, it should be Tamsin.”
“What are you talking about?” Silverstein’s eyes narrow at me. “What do you know that you haven’t shared with me, Sam?”
The world spins around me. Several decisions need to be made right now.
Mateus Blackwood schemed with his daughter to throw the duel against Rook.
I told Tamsin I’d keep her secret, but that was before Rook started screwing up basic curse work, before Silverstein threatened to pull my champion from competition entirely.