Chapter 21 Tamsin
Tamsin
After she accepted my challenge, in my mind’s eye, I tried to turn Samantha Chan into a faceless opponent. I tried to forget everything else about her. I really did.
It’s not like I didn’t have plenty of distractions after beating Rook. Everyone loves you when you win. It’s easy to get addicted to the accolades: the praise, the attention, even the jealousy from up-and-comers or has-beens who haven’t collected victories of the same prestige levels.
And this, of course, isn’t just a win. This is Lysander Rook.
For weeks, I throw myself into social media and public relations and promotional obligations.
My victory is one of the greatest triumphs in magical history, or so the news cycle informs me.
So I lean into that. I talk about how hard I worked, how diligently I prepared to face the young terror of the magical world.
I even talk about my father, and why I left him—to a point, of course.
The rest, I leave to the rumor mill. People immersed in magical society are almost as hungry for gossip as they are for bloodshed. All I have to do is plant a few seeds with the right people, and suddenly, all anyone who’s anyone can talk about is what a crook Mateus Blackwood is.
I keep leaning into it. I tell my sob stories—only when prompted by the right people, and only sparingly.
Sympathy is a finite resource from the public.
If I spend too much time crying on livestreams about my awful father, people will stop feeling sorry for me and talking about how brave I am.
They’ll dub me annoying, or worse yet, opportunistic. They might even call me a liar.
I’ve been careful with my words, but I haven’t once lied to anyone about who my father is or what he’s done. I’d rather die. And I won’t risk my credibility. Not after everything I’ve done to earn my freedom.
I do nothing but talk for a few weeks. It’s fun for a little while, in a twisted sort of way.
But it’s also exhausting. Being the new darling of the magical world is, as it turns out, an awful lot of work.
Everyone wants something. Everyone’s eyes are always glued to me.
Every word out of my mouth gets scrutinized, overanalyzed, studied.
I think I understand a little better now why Lysander Rook could be such a jackass, if this was how he felt all the time.
I’m so tired. I’m more and more tired every day. And the more tired I become, the harder it is to focus on Samantha Chan, my opponent, and the more tempting it is to think about Samantha Chan, the girl I once kissed. The girl I might have once called my only friend in the entire world.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
When I do finally break, I binge. I spend three hours one afternoon doing nothing but scouring the magical Internet for any trace of what Sam’s been up to these days. I read all her posts on the forums, mentally tracking the dates. I think about texting her.
I think a lot about texting her, actually. Or messaging her on social media. Or even calling.
I don’t actually text or send a message, or god forbid, call her. I don’t know what I’d say. There’s a reason opponents don’t typically talk much before a duel, unless it’s for a press event. Just for kicks, I compose a few possible missives. None of them make it past the second sentence.
Hi, Sam, I’m looking forward to our duel. Just taking a minute to check in on—no.
Hey, Sam, how are you? Isn’t it wild that in just a couple months, we’ll get to try to kill each other for entertainment—no.
Sam, this is probably overdue, but I’m so sorry about—no, no, absolutely not.
So I remain silent. I don’t reach out to Sam, and to her credit, she doesn’t reach out to me, which I take as a sign that I’m doing the correct, mature thing by remaining silent.
Instead, I busy myself by keeping tabs on my estranged father.
In the beginning, I tell myself it’s just due diligence. I want to make sure he knows his place now. Samantha Chan may be an asshole of the first degree, but she was right about one thing: my father deserves no place in magical society. I refuse to see him get another kid killed.
Dad behaves, mostly. I track him down to one of the few remaining clubs seedy enough to put on illegal duels, but most of the magicians Dad lures into the ring are over-the-hill has-beens or meat-headed men in their twenties and thirties too stupid to know better.
He does, however, avoid putting children and teens in the ring.
I drop by that club from time to time, hanging back in the shadows to watch the sad little displays that my father now promotes to eke out his living. I never speak to him. Maybe he knows I’m there. Maybe not. I’m past the point of caring.
But I keep coming back, all the same. I come, I buy myself a nice nonalcoholic beverage, and I watch Dad’s comeuppance in action.
I don’t miss him. I don’t. I just do it to ensure that he stays in line. And, for the most part, he does.
Then, one night, a familiar silhouette slips through the door. I don’t need to look twice to recognize Samantha Chan’s gait, that careworn hoodie, the perpetual ponytail.
I don’t know what another magician from a legitimate dueling circuit would be doing in a place like this, but given that it’s Sam, and given that this is Dad’s haunt, I have a couple ideas. I don’t like either of them very much.
I think about calling out to Sam or approaching her, drink in hand. I consider, very briefly, asking her what the hell she thinks she’s up to.
Instead, I do what I’ve gotten so good at these past few weeks: I sit in the shadows and I watch.
Sam positions herself exactly where I’d expect her to: perched on the peripheries of the dueling ring, far enough from the action to avoid being overcrowded or unduly noticed, close enough to get a full view of the magic on display.
Then my father takes a seat beside her. Things escalate pretty quickly after that.
After a conversation that looks like it’s on the brink of coming to blows, Dad and Sam vanish from view. When I see one of the gaudily-dressed club announcers climb into the currently empty ring, my heart sinks.
I know exactly what’s about to happen. God damn it, Sam. You absolute idiot.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” bellows the announcer. “Have we got a show for you to close out the evening!”
Jeers and cheers alike fill the air. This is a crowd that’s grown accustomed to mediocrity. They’re rightfully skeptical, but they’ll watch anyone duel as long as someone’s blood gets spilled.
“Known best as the one-time second to the legendary Lysander Rook, fresh off her engagement at the New York Magicians’ Arena, I am honored to present our guest and challenger: Miss Samantha Chan!”
Shocked exclamations fill the air—alongside a few skeptical murmurs.
Sam silences them by emerging from the crowd, still clad in that well-worn black hoodie, and climbing into the ring.
Her facial expression is utterly blank as she strips out of the hoodie, revealing a plain white tee hanging square and baggy over her modest curves.
She rolls out her neck slowly and shakes out her hands.
She offers neither smile nor frown to the onlookers.
She could be washing the dishes for all she seems to care about the task at hand.
“And who better to face off against Miss Chan than our very own legend, the great Master Mateus Blackwood!”
My father grins at the crowd as he joins Sam in the ring.
In contrast to Sam’s apparent indifference, Dad bathes in the immediate adulation of the crowd.
He raises his hands, begging for a crescendo as his audience cheers him on, and they’re all too happy to comply.
These are the outcasts from magical society, after all.
The handful of die-hards who still believe in my father’s legend.
The announcer beats a hasty retreat as the bell rings. Immediately, Sam springs into action. Arcane power wreathes its way around her knuckles as she closes the distance across the ring. My father throws up a shield, but Sam smashes right through it.
She’s on top of him in the blink of an eye, mounted high on Dad’s chest as he struggles to throw her off.
The crowd barely has time for its cheers and gasps of shock before Sam’s savaging Dad with all the fervor of a wild animal.
Magic crackles along the length of her back, down her arms and through her fingers.
With methodical viciousness, she rains magically enhanced fists and elbows down on my father’s head.
Dad covers up with his arms, elbows tight, and tries to conjure another shield. A sputtering ghost of arcane power flickers briefly between his face and Sam’s fists before it crumples beneath her onslaught.
“Yield,” gasps my father. “I yield—”
Sam shuts him up with another fist across his mouth.
“Don’t you remember?” she demands, voice pitched loud enough to be heard by the rapt crowd.
“This is your den. Your rules. There’s no yielding here.
We stop when I’m ready to stop.” Magic crackles between them as she hits him again. And again. And again.
Of course. This is one of my father’s clubs. No real rules, no semblance of safety regulations. Sam is going to kill my father here in this ring, the same way Alexei killed Jamie Chan four years ago. That’s why she came here. That’s been her plan all along.
I move like a woman possessed. I’m cutting through the crowd faster than I’ve ever moved outside an arena. “Stop!” I scream. “Sam, stop it!”
Sam doesn’t stop.
Someone tries to hold me back when I reach the ring. A crackle of my own arcane power frees the stranger’s fingers from my sleeve. I climb under the ropes into the ring and narrowly avoid slipping in a puddle of bloody sweat. “Stop!” I scream again.
Sam finally looks up. Shock paints her face white beneath the glaring overhead lights. “Tamsin?”
My father stirs at the sound of my name. “Tam,” he whimpers. “My girl, you’re back. I knew you’d come back.”
Sam isn’t even listening to him. “It’s really you,” she says. She sounds half dazed, like she’s still convinced she’s in a dream.
“It’s really me, all right.” I stumble over to the pair of them and grab Sam beneath the crook of her shoulder. With a grunt, I haul her off my father’s bloody body. “Enough is enough,” I hiss at her.
Behind me, the crowd is booing. I ignore them, too, shaking Sam by the shoulders. “What the hell are you thinking?” I demand.
Sam struggles weakly against my grip. “Let me do this, Tamsin. Let me finish. I need to finish.”
“Finish what?” I shout. “Beating my father to death with magically enhanced strength?”
“It’s the only way!” cries Sam. “I thought it would be enough to win the war of reputation. I thought it would be enough to see him expelled from magical society. But it’s not. Nothing is ever going to be enough, except, except—”
“Except by becoming another Alexei Adamovich,” I snarl. “Or worse yet, another Mateus Blackwood. Because you’re well on your way to becoming exactly like my father. You really want to be an honorary Blackwood? After all that effort you put into destroying us?”
Sam looks like she’s just been hit herself. She backs away from me, silent.
“My girl,” moans Dad. He’s still curled up in a corner of the ring.
“My Tamsin.” He struggles to his feet. He spits a tooth out as he stands, blood streaming down his face.
Both his eyes are blackened, but he still manages to grin at me.
“I knew it,” he crows. “I knew you’d see sense one day.
I knew my daughter would come back to me. ” He stumbles toward me.
I catch my father before he can fall. For a moment, he hangs there in my arms, trapped in my embrace.
I close my eyes. “Thank you,” I whisper against his ear.
I cling to his bloody body, and I’m not faking it when tears begin rolling down my cheeks.
It’s never taken much for Dad to make me cry, even when he doesn’t mean to.
“For what it’s worth, I really am grateful to you,” I continue.
“For better or worse, you’ve made me who I am.
You’re always going to be a part of me.”
“I know,” Dad whispers back. “And you can always come home to me, Tamsin. I love you.”
I cling a little harder. “I love you, too,” I tell him. “I think that maybe I’ll always love you, whether I want to or not. I think that might be my curse, you know, as a Blackwood—as your daughter. Loving someone I hate so much.”
I finally force myself to detach from him. My father stumbles again. He’s looking at me with confusion in those bruised-up eyes. “Tam?”
“I love you, Dad,” I repeat, more firmly this time. “But you will never see me again.”
I spit at his feet.
Then I grab Sam by the elbow and haul her out of that ring for good.