Chapter 18 Sam
Sam
I’m watching TV in the hotel suite that I supposedly share with my former champion.
I say “supposedly” because for the past week, we’ve never really been in the same place at the same time.
I’ve made it a point to only linger in the rooms when I know Rook’s at training.
Rook, for his part, has been lingering longer and longer in the training arena.
And when he comes home, he goes straight to his room and slams the door behind him.
I can’t blame him. I’ve been doing the same. And I have to believe, at the end of the day, that it’s for the best. I can’t serve as second to a champion I can’t trust myself around. A champion I want to hurt. A champion who, it seems, wants me to hurt him.
We can’t be what we were. Maybe we could have been, if only one of us was pissed off with the other.
If it was just one of us, the other could have poured out apologies and mea culpas and prostrated themselves to beg forgiveness.
But we’re both so incandescently, magnificently angry with each other that there’s no space for grace.
Not for either of us. Not now, and maybe not ever.
So my former champion goes off to that beautiful New York arena I’ve chosen as the site where vengeance will be taken against my dead brother’s killer.
And I remain here, in the overpriced hotel suite we barely share anymore, watching TV.
Refusing to be within ten feet of the place where Rook will hopefully, mercifully put an end to Mateus Blackwood’s legacy.
With luck, by this time tomorrow, Rook will have erased Tamsin Blackwood from the ranks of up-and-coming magicians—and, God willing, my stupid brain.
I flip from one streaming service to the next.
One offers up some spy thriller, starring an artfully grunged-up yet handsome white man who looks like every other handsome white man I’ve seen in Hollywood trailers lately.
Another broadcasts a documentary miniseries about the history of magic, detailing the politics that shaped the beginnings of the modern dueling arenas.
There’s a period drama offered on yet another service, boasting steamy romance full of unlaced corset close-ups and almost-kisses in grand ballrooms.
Of course, there’s also the option to stream the broadcast of Rook vs. Blackwood, the great duel between teen phenoms taking place tonight, the spectacle that sold out the biggest magicians’ arena in the country.
For a moment, my index finger hovers over the menu page on the screen. I could see my former champion. I could see him right now.
I could see Tamsin Blackwood. Her freckles, her constantly smiling eyes, the red highlights in her magnificent curls.
My index finger moves sideways and makes a selection. I settle on the documentary miniseries.
I try gallantly to get myself absorbed in historians’ arguments on who was more influential in the legalization of magical dueling as a recognized form of entertainment: Ellis Tanaka, one of the first magicians to step into the arena, or Jefferson Hewitt, the senator obsessed with all things arcane, who campaigned for the recognition of magicians as legitimate entertainers.
It’s actually a pretty well-made series, the kind of thing I’d find genuinely interesting if my entire life felt just a little less like it was about to crumble apart around me.
I stare at the historians being interviewed on the screen for a few more minutes, but I don’t really hear anything they’re saying.
I try flipping the program over to the steamy romance.
My eyeballs are immediately assaulted by the sight of a man with an impressive set of mutton chops eagerly groping a very well-endowed blond who’s been stripped down to her petticoats.
The blond moans with exaggerated ecstasy, right as I turn the volume up.
I hastily flip the program back to the documentary.
The historians are gone. Now they’re interviewing a bunch of modern magicians, active duelists competing on the current circuit.
I recognize one man, currently ranked number five, as a decorated close-quarters specialist that Rook trounced in a one-sided beatdown more than a year ago.
This guy is one of the lucky ones—he’s still a professional duelist, and all his limbs still work the right way.
“I really thought I had him,” the man tells the cameras.
His name is Rufus or Rudolf or something.
He’s handsome and well-muscled. Still young too—barely thirty, if I remember his stats correctly.
If he can survive the likes of Lysander Rook with body and mind both intact, he should still have at least half a decade of good duels left in him.
Rufus-or-Rudolf chuckles ruefully. “Pretty arrogant of me, thinking I could out-magic the magician of magicians, isn’t it?
But I figured if I could just close the distance, I’d have him.
He wouldn’t be able to cast any of those grandiose, long-range spells he’s so well known for.
” Rufus-or-Rudolph shrugs. “Turns out he’s pretty goddamn good in close quarters, too.
Good enough to keep me out of that range as he pleases.
I felt like a kid trying to bum-rush his older brother and just being shoved aside with a palm to the head. ”
He looks directly at the camera. “Make no mistake: I’m a damn good magician.
But the Rook kid is in a class of his own.
And worse still?” The guy shakes his head.
“I don’t think he even cares how good he is.
It’s like he was born to do this, built specifically from birth as this vehicle for magic, whether he wants a career in the arena or not.
I guess religious folks would call him God-touched or something. ”
Rufus-or-Rudolf points at the off-camera interviewer.
“I swear I’m not exaggerating. Ask anyone who’s ever shared an arena with him.
Ask the best of the best. They’ll all tell you the same thing.
” He leans forward slightly, almost desperate, like he’s issuing the last warning he can to a victim in a slasher movie. “Lysander Rook is a monster.”
I turn the TV off. I almost throw the remote at it before I decide I’d better quit while I’m ahead and still evading retribution from the hotel owners for the mark Rook left on the suite walls during our fight.
That’s really what it was. A fight. Not a duel—a real fight. And whatever else I wanted, whatever plans I had for my then champion, in the moment of the fight, I could have killed him. It would have been easy.
Easy to do exactly what a man like Mateus Blackwood would do.
I shiver, hugging my arms, and staring at the now empty TV. The blank black screen stares back at me accusingly. I observe the faint outline of my reflection on its surface: a broken-down, hollow-eyed girl with stringy, unkempt hair. Still swallowed up by one of Rook’s old hoodies.
Still dressing in my former champion’s cast-offs.
Frustrated, I tug the hoodie over my head and toss it aside. I’ve got a sweater of my own around here somewhere. Maybe it’s time to change up my look. After all, after tonight, I’ll have changed up my entire life, one way or another.
While I hunt for the bargain bin cardigan I’m only half-sure I packed, I flip the TV back on.
Rufus-or-Rudolf is still going on and on about being terrorized by Rook in the arena.
Now they’re interspersing his commentary with actual footage of the duel in question.
Even now, a year later, Rook’s still mesmerizing.
I watch as my former champion corners Rufus-or-Rudolph on the big screen, almost lazily holding the more experienced magician at bay with little flicks of power from his fingers.
Every time Rufus-or-Rudolph looks to cut an angle, close in on Rook, Rook casts a different spell, somehow perfectly timing each counterattack before Rufus-or-Rudolph even knows what’s happening.
It’s brutal. Merciless. Humiliating. Yet despite everything else that’s happened between me and Rook, the dance between the two magicians in that arena is still so utterly beautiful to me.
Before I can help myself, I flip the TV over to tonight’s duel livestream.
I’m only going to watch a little bit. That’s what I tell myself.
Just enough to make sure everything’s still going to plan, despite my screw-up the other night.
Despite the imminent demise of my career—and let’s face it, the whole personality I’ve built—as Lysander Rook’s second, part of me still doesn’t know how to quit being the old me.
I have perfect timing—the duel’s just about to start. Rook shakes hands with Tamsin, perfunctory and businesslike. The cameras zoom in on her face as he clasps her fingers. Seeing her close-up like that on the big hotel room screen feels like a punch to my gut.
She’s beautiful. It’s hard to believe that I was ever able to see her as clinically as I used to, breaking down the pieces of Tamsin Blackwood into what she’d curated for public consumption: the cute little athleisure looks, the careful taming of her hair with bright girly scrunchies, the well-angled smiles for photos on her social media feed.
I could have given you an equation, if you wanted.
A formula for the consumption of Tamsin Blackwood.
Two weeks ago, I saw a collection of strengths and weaknesses and strategies that my chosen champion could exploit. And now all I see is a girl I miss even more than I miss my old life itself. And that’s the most damnable thing of all.
Rook and Tamsin take their places on opposite ends of the amphitheater stage.
Even behind the confines of the TV screen, I feel the onlookers practically vibrating with anticipation in their seats.
They want a show to remember. A night they can brag about to all their friends who missed out on the chance to see Lysander Rook and Tamsin Blackwood duke it out in a sold-out New York magicians’ arena.