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

Oh.

That was it, then, wasn’t it? What the witch had been trying to tell her. It didn’t matter how much she loved her father if the plague claimed his life the way it had already claimed his memory. Wren could hold as tightly as she wanted to her love for him, could claim it was all that she was, but that identity would no longer exist if her father did not survive.

There was no other way. For her sacrifices to matter, Wren had to give up the one thing she held dearest. Love had driven her every step of her seventeen years, so love would guide her again, until it no longer could.

Wren sighed, steeling herself. The answer was so clear as to be inevitable. It was hardly a choice at all. If her father no longer knew her, there was no place for her here.

Which meant she was free to go.

Free.

What a strange concept, after dreaming of the word for so many years. It almost meant nothing, so great were the possibilities it encompassed.

But then her eyes met the furrowed brow of her father, and she feared she might be sick. It was easy to speculate. It was another thing to do.

“Forgive me.” Wren cleared her throat, pitching her voice down, in hopes she would sound more certain than she felt. “Let me introduce myself.” She took a careful step back to give her father space.

Her eyes darted around the room. If she was going to travel with Tamsin to the Witchlands, she needed a way to get her things from the cottage without her father thinking her a thief.

“I am here to collect your taxes.” Her voice came out in a rush, the words crashing into one another. She took a shaky, steadying breath. “Our records show you have been ill. While we were generous enough to let you defer, we are no longer able to extend that courtesy. Your payment is now drastically overdue.”

Her father’s face paled. He still knew what taxes were, at least, though that knowledge did not make Wren feel better in the slightest.

“I…” His eyes glanced helplessly around the room. He knew nothing about the stash of savings Wren had scraped together. “I have nothing to offer you. No food in my cupboard save this onion.” His hands were shaking. Wren’s heart was breaking. She wasn’t going to be able to do this if she felt, so Wren conjured up the image of the most unfeeling person she knew and tried to emulate Tamsin.

She sniffed, drawing herself up to her full height. “In that case, I will take some of your belongings, items valued high enough to ease your debt. I trust you will not fight me on this. Queen Mathilde does not look kindly upon those who shirk their duties.”

Her father ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I, uh, suppose that will be fine.”

Wren nodded and moved deliberately around the room, trying to look at objects that featured in her earliest memories as though they were brand-new. She hemmed over a chair her father had built and hawed over the rug her mother had made, keeping her father’s worried face always in her line of sight. Once she was certain she knew what she needed, Wren asked him to point her to a burlap sack.

Wren filled the bag quickly. She had very few things: an extra pair of trousers, two clean shirts, a needle, thread, thick socks, a length of rope, undergarments, rags for her monthlies, and an embroidered tea towel. She saved the jug for last, her eyes scanning the mantel as though arbitrarily. After a moment of staged contemplation, Wren managed to shrug and sigh loftily.

“I suppose this will do,” she said, plucking it from its place and feigning surprise as its contents jangled. She moved swiftly to the table, where she shook out the coins, letting them clatter heavily onto the table. She began to separate the coins into two piles.

Her father’s eyes were as wide as saucers. He gaped down at the table as though he had never before seen so much money in one place.

In that moment, Wren understood that her father had never truly known the lengths she had gone to for him—the sleepless nights, her empty belly, the magic flowing uselessly through her veins. She didn’t know if the lurch in her stomach was from pride or sadness.

“These”—she pushed the first, larger pile toward the end of the table—“are to be reserved for our next collection.” The true tax collectors were due in less than a season. It pained Wren to realize that she did not know if she would be back by then. When she no longer loved her father, would she feel any duty to return?

“And these,” Wren said, hurriedly pocketing the smaller pile of coins, “ease the rest of your debt.” She kept her head down as she tied the sack up with a tight knot and hauled it over her shoulder.

As she moved toward the door, her eyes fell on her father’s boots. They were exactly where she’d left them those few mornings ago, when her greatest fear had been nothing more than a fever. Wren glanced down at her own ragged boots, then over to her father. The cloud above him was growing larger. Soon he would hardly remember how to tie his laces. He wouldn’t need the boots. She did.

“One last thing.” Wren smiled broadly, apologetically, as she gathered up the boots. “There we are.” Her eyes lingered on her father’s face.

“Good-bye,” she whispered.

Her father raised a hand in a halfhearted wave.

“I love you.”

Wren knew her words would confuse him, knew they would run right through him, but she needed to say them, needed to speak them one last time while they were still true.

For one brief moment, their eyes met. The emptiness of her father’s expression broke Wren’s heart into a million pieces.

She