Chapter 26 Sam
Sam
The dog and pony show of being declared victor happens in a blur. Someone raises my hand. Someone else makes an announcement on the mic. The crowd cheers, and cheers, and cheers.
Tamsin just stands there beside me, smiling that gorgeous, bloodstained smile, as we both cry silently like two idiots, sharing this moment as only two magicians at the end of a duel can.
Dazed, I search the faces in the crowd. In all my time as Rook’s second, I always thought of an arena crowd as a sort of collective, anonymous entity.
Some ancient god we needed to appease whose favor could make or break our fragile little lives.
I never bothered seeking out individuals in an audience, instead focusing on the forest over the trees.
Now, I find my attention caught by random strangers: the shining face of a dark-eyed, dark-skinned girl cheering her lungs out; the craggy, bearded features of a tall redheaded man politely applauding my victory; an older woman with violently green hair jumping up and down in the aisle.
They’re here for me. They’re here for us.
They’re here, ultimately, for magic.
A fourth face appears. I blink. Then I blink again, but even through tear-blurred eyes, I can’t mistake those features: the bright blue eyes and dark hair, the familiar lanky frame.
Lysander Rook smiles at me, his face shining alone in that crowd of thousands. As I watch, my old champion waggles his fingers at me—in greeting or goodbye, I can’t be sure.
I blink a third time.
When I open my eyes, Rook is gone. I scan the faces in the crowd, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Vanished, as if he was never there at all.
Tamsin gives me a nudge. “You good?”
Slowly, I turn back toward my opponent and meet her lingering smile. “Better than I’ve been in a while,” I tell her and offer my hand. “Come on. Let’s go face the noise at the presser.”
There’s this moment before she takes my hand when I remember the last time we held hands like this. The night in that diner parking lot, laughing and crying in the shadow of some stranger’s Toyota before Tamsin pulled me to my feet.
I think, dizzyingly, of old Mateus Blackwood’s club: the suffocating press of shadows and stench of sweat and piss and fear.
Tamsin’s father, bleeding and laughing beneath me as I rained blows down on his unprotected skin.
Tamsin’s hand, stretching out toward me and pulling me out of the ring, tugging me free of the vengeance-haunted, tragedy-cloaked existence I’d swaddled myself in like a baby’s blanket.
I once let Tamsin Blackwood drag me out of the nightmarish underworld her father created.
I once followed her out of the land of ghosts.
I followed the girl I’d wanted to destroy back into a life I might call my own.
In that moment, I’d let Jamie and Blackwood and Rook all go.
In that moment, all that mattered was me, and Tamsin, and the magic still waiting between us.
Now my fingers cling to hers, tighter than ever before. “Let’s give them hell,” Tamsin tells me.
I squeeze her hand. We will.