Chapter 15 Tamsin
Tamsin
Samantha Chan is chasing me down.
I run, which is absurd. We’re not in an action movie or a romantic comedy, for that matter. But the last thing in the world that I want right now is a conversation with Rook’s second.
Rook’s second, who’s been playing me for a fool this entire time.
So I run from her. We must look like idiots, sprinting out of the training arena and through the fitness center like we’re testing our cardio for everything it’s worth.
Other exercisers exclaim in surprise as we shove past them.
I’m a half-decent runner, but Sam’s hot on my heels.
She’s in better shape than a second has any right to be.
I wait until we’re out in open air, in the outdoor space between the fitness center and the hotel proper, before I finally stop and round on her. Sam’s running so fast, she practically collides with me. Instinctively, I reach out to steady her.
For a moment, panting hard, Sam just stares dumbly at my hand where it’s braced against her bicep. “Tamsin,” she gasps. Then she utters the most cliché phrase of all time: “I can explain everything.”
She definitely goddamn can’t. I drop her bicep like it’s a hot brand and fold my arms. “I would absolutely love to see you try.”
Sam’s jaw works for a moment before she tells me, “I do care about you. I like you. I’ve liked you since we met. I wasn’t lying about that. I never have. You have no idea how hard that’s been for me.”
“Poor you!” I exclaim. “Wow, I’m awfully sorry to be so inconveniently…likable, I guess? Thanks for the most backhanded compliment of all time?”
“Tamsin, that’s not what I—”
“Almost as sorry as I am for the crime of having been born with the surname Blackwood. You know, a thing that I obviously had total and complete control over.”
“None of this was ever about you!” Sam bursts out. “It’s about what your father did to my brother.”
“And I was just collateral damage, is that it?” I refuse to cry. Not now. Sam doesn’t deserve my tears. “I was just an extension of my dad, right? Like an extra limb: an arm or a leg that you could chop off to hurt him, never mind what it would do to me?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Desperation clings to Sam’s voice and colors every inch of her face.
I’ve never seen Rook’s even-keeled, calculating strategist look so utterly undone and out of her depth.
Good. I should relish this. “You and I were never supposed to have a…friendship. A relationship. Rook was just going to beat you. It’s not wrong for a second to want their champion to defeat a challenger. ”
“Except that’s not the only thing you wanted, is it?
” My voice is thick, but my tears haven’t spilled yet.
It’s the one piece of dignity I can cling to.
“You didn’t just want him to beat me. No, no, that wouldn’t be enough.
You wanted your boy to, what was it again?
Right, ‘destroy’ me. You instructed your champion to leave me ruined and broken beyond repair, and he was all too happy to comply…
up until he started getting all screwy in the head, that is. ”
I laugh outright at the look on Sam’s face. “And yes, Samantha, before you ask, I did hear that part of the conversation. It must be nice for your champion to have a master of the arcane arts who cares more about his health and mental well-being than his own second, huh?”
“Telling Rook to break you was the only way,” whispers Sam. “I wish it were anyone but you, Tamsin. Listen, I care about you—”
“Oh, you care about me, huh?” I repeat mockingly. “That’s why you’ve been using me this whole time.”
“I told you, I never meant for things to go down like that! It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple!” I shout. “It is! God, just say it, Sam. You at least owe me that much. If you’re going to be this big of a scumbag, you should at least be honest about the reasons why.
” I spread my hands. “Maybe you do really think that you care about me. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you weren’t just pretending to like me for the sake of your grand plan.
Maybe some of that emotion was real. Maybe you could have really, truly grown to care about me the way you keep insisting that you do.
” I bark a sad, desperate little laugh. “But does it really matter?”
“It does!”
“No, it doesn’t. Because the truth is, no matter how much you might have grown to care about me, you’d always care more about a boy who’s been dead in the ground for almost half a decade.”
Sam’s mouth snaps shut. Her face goes sheet white. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not.” I shrug. “But it’s still true.
It doesn’t matter who you hurt—me, Rook, even yourself.
Just as long as you get what you want. And what you want, more than anything else, is revenge against my father.
” I shake my head. “You’ve got to appreciate the irony.
You hate him so, so much. But at the end of the day, you and Dad are exactly alike. ”
Sam’s breath hitches like I’ve just knocked the wind from her lungs. Her eyes go huge. She doesn’t cry, though. The look on her face is worse than crying. It makes me—at least part of me—want to walk my words back.
The bigger part of me—the enraged, betrayed part of me—relishes the sheer scale of hurt washing over her features.
“I’m going to report you to the promoters and the commissioner,” whispers Sam. Her words are clipped. “You’ll be disqualified for what your father’s tried to pull with the betting odds.”
A strange thing happens in that moment. My brain processes Sam’s threat for what it is: Instead of having her boy break my body, she’ll break my reputation. She’ll paint me in dishonor. She’ll make me eat the words I uttered so carelessly to her in that diner before I knew who she really was.
And then, a voice that sounds very much like my father’s whispers in the back of my mind: And with what proof will she back those words up?
I laugh again. I sound hysterical even to my own ears, but I’m past the point of caring.
“Go right ahead,” I tell Sam. I spread my hands wide.
“Report me. Report me and Dad both. I’m sure the promoters will be very interested in the recorded evidence that you obviously saved of that night we talked at Agatha’s, right? ”
Sam frowns. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Wow, for someone so hell-bent on a long game of revenge, you sure are stupid.” I sneer at Sam. “Did you record our conversation? Do you have a witness to my so-called confession?”
The expression dawning slowly across Sam’s face tells me everything I need to know.
I give her a triumphant smile, the same smile I give an opponent in the magicians’ arena when I’ve got them backed into a corner with seconds left on the clock.
“You don’t, do you? Which means you have… well, gee, nothing at all on me!”
“They’ll want to hear your side of the story,” Sam says. Desperation has reentered her voice. It’s music to my ears. “They’ll make you swear under oath that you and your father never plotted to cheat the betting odds.”
I shrug. “So I’ll lie.”
I feel a little cold inside as I say it. Lying has never come easy to me. It always makes me feel rotten, no matter my reasons. But in this moment, I’ve never been more certain of my willingness to do it.
Apparently, Sam’s not the only one taking a leaf out of Dad’s playbook.
I’ve got more of his blood running through my veins than I ever realized.
Maybe that’s what really bonded me and Sam.
Why we liked each other so readily, so easily, despite our circumstances.
We were really just two sides of the same Mateus Blackwood–shaped coin.
Two lonely, hungry teenage girls inadvertently painted in my father’s image by the blood he’s spilled over the years.
It’s an ugly thought. But unlike Sam, I refuse to be frightened by ugly truths.
I take my sweet time closing the space between me and Sam.
To her credit, she doesn’t back away from me.
Then again, maybe she can’t. Maybe shame—or fear—has rooted her to the spot.
“Look, Chan, I do feel a little sorry for you,” I tell her.
“So I’ll grant you one boon. I’m going to keep my promise to you.
I’m going to give your boy a real duel.” I make sure to show her all my teeth as I smile.
“But you’d better tell Lysander Rook to be ready for the fight of his life.
Because if he’s not, he’d better resign now. ”
I lean in close, until Sam and I are practically nose to nose. Close enough for me to plant my mouth back on hers. I can practically taste her tongue on mine.
I put my mouth up to the shell of Sam’s ear, and I’m rewarded with a shudder that runs through her entire body.
“Give your boy the choice, Sammy,” I whisper.
“You owe him a choice, at the very least. He can resign now, and I can collect my prize money and get the hell out of this town, and none of us ever have to see or speak to each other ever again.”
“Or?” Sam hazards, her voice shaking.
I shrug. “Or I can be the one who leaves him destroyed and broken beyond repair in the middle of the New York Magicians’ Arena. Let Rook choose his own fate. Either way, I’m getting paid.”
I give Sam a mockingly friendly little shove on the shoulder to signal an end to our conversation. She stumbles back a few steps. This time, I don’t bother steadying her. I don’t owe her shit. And I have nothing left to say to her.
If Samantha Chan sees me as nothing more than an extension of Master Mateus Blackwood, then by hell or high water, I’m going to give her exactly what she expects. And if Lysander Rook becomes the collateral damage, so be it.
It’s nothing more and nothing less than what Sam was going to make him do to me, after all.