Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley (speed reading book TXT) 📗

FOR YOU, IF YOU NEED IT.

NEVER DOUBT THAT YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE.

ONE

TAMSIN

The salt was dull on Tamsin’s tongue. The mild spice had meant something to her once, had made a difference when sprinkled with a deft hand on her boiled eggs or her smoked fish. Now it tasted like everything else, in that it tasted like despair, like the whisper of a faraway fire. Like the rest of her stale, wasted life.

The woman was staring at Tamsin expectantly. Tamsin shook her head. “The salt from your tears is useless to me.” She forced the small brown pouch back into the trembling woman’s hand.

“But my nursemaid said… this is the same price she paid the witch in Wells.” The woman’s eyes looked ready to spill more salt.

Tamsin blinked, her face blank as a slate. “Go to the witch in Wells, then.”

She knew the woman wouldn’t. Tamsin was twelve times more powerful than the witch in Wells, and everyone, including the simpering woman standing before her, knew it.

The woman’s eyes grew wide. “But my child.”

She held out the unmoving bundle in her arms. Tamsin ignored it, turning toward the fireplace, which had been stoked to a blazing roar despite the midsummer heat. The flames danced merrily. Mockingly. The fire did nothing to shake the chill in Tamsin’s bones. She pulled her shawl tighter, swept her long hair around her, but it made not a single bit of difference. She was freezing.

The fire crackled. The woman wept. Tamsin waited.

“Please.” The woman’s voice caught at the end of the word, her plea transformed into a cough, a desperate whimper. “Please save my son.”

But Tamsin did not turn. The woman was so close—so close to uttering the three words Tamsin needed to hear.

“I’ll do anything.”

Tamsin’s lips curled. She turned, gesturing for the woman to hand over the bundle of blankets. The woman hesitated, eyes darting nervously over the objects assembled on Tamsin’s cluttered wooden table: hazy, sharp-edged crystals; bundles of sage and lavender tied with white string; thick, leather-bound books with creamy, black-inked pages.

Tamsin needed none of those things, of course. Witches themselves were the vessels, intermediaries siphoning natural magic from the world around them and nudging it in the right direction.

Still, in her nearly five years serving the townspeople of Ladaugh, Tamsin had found that most of them felt more at ease in her cottage when they had something concrete to focus on. Something that wasn’t her.

The baby didn’t stir when he was transferred from his mother’s arms to Tamsin’s. Tamsin used a finger to push aside the blanket obscuring his tiny face. He was a sickly yellow gray, the color stark against Tamsin’s pale skin. His little body was so feverish she could almost feel its heat. His temperature was much too high for his tiny heart to handle.

Tamsin murmured a few soft nonsense words to the child. Then she glanced up at his mother, almost as if she had forgotten.

“Oh. My payment.” Tamsin tried to situate her face in such a way to appear casual. Apologetic. “I’ll simply need you to part with some of your love.”

She considered the two children before her. Although the woman had braved Tamsin’s cottage out of devotion to her son, the emotional bond between mother and daughter had existed for two additional years. That level of unconditional love would last Tamsin much longer than a bond to a child barely three months old.

“The love for your daughter would be best.” Tamsin gestured to the little girl, who was examining the crystals with wide, thoughtful eyes.

The woman blanched, her face turning nearly as gray as her son’s. “You cannot be serious.”

Tamsin shrugged, rocking the baby gently. “I’m afraid those are my terms. Surely you’ve heard whispers at the market.”

She did her best not to waver. It was just as unconscionable a request as the woman’s face reflected. Other witches worked for the price of a baby’s laugh, for fresh bread, for a new pewter cauldron. Yet love was Tamsin’s price.

It was the only way to defy the curse that had been placed upon her nearly five years prior.

Tamsin could no longer love, and therefore was doomed never to feel any of the joys life had to offer. She could only get a glimpse of what she had lost by taking love from another. If she held tight—and the person’s love was pure—it was enough to give her a few moments of feeling. To experience the warmth of the world despite the cold uselessness of her heart.

The woman’s eyes had gone blank, and when she spoke, it was softly, as if to herself. “They warned me, but I couldn’t believe a young woman could be so cruel. So cold.”

“That sounds like a personal problem.” Tamsin shifted the baby to her other arm. She knew the townspeople talked about her, hurriedly exchanging whispers and angry words as they waited at the butcher’s stall for their paper-wrapped packages. Still, Tamsin knew the woman would pay. In the end, people always paid.

“I’d rather seek out a sprite.” The woman’s voice was ragged through her tears. “The river is only two days’ walk.”

Tamsin snorted. That was the trouble with ordinary folk. They loved magic, but they were frightfully flippant about the consequences. They’d trade a cow for a handful of magic seeds. They would offer up their voice to a mermaid in exchange for a smaller nose. They would seek out the trolls that lurked beneath bridges in the swampy Southlands, hoping to be granted a wish. But there was always a price for their impulsivity—the seeds bloomed flowers that sang incessantly, the new nose was always running, and trolls, who were notoriously indifferent to nuance, tended to misinterpret intention.

The only way to ensure that a magical request was balanced, legal, and properly interpreted was to barter with a witch. Since the Year of Darkness—a time still spoken of in hushed whispers despite the