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

“What are you doing?” Tamsin whispered roughly.

“His mother’s hurt. We have to help her.”

Behind her, the witch grumbled. “We really don’t. For all you know he’ll lead us to a group of looters who will use our bodies for firewood.”

Wren turned, anger boiling in her veins. “Have you no compassion? No sympathy for anyone but yourself?”

Tamsin stared at her blankly. “No,” she finally said. “I’m cursed. That was sort of the point.”

“Fine.” Wren let of a groan of frustration. She should not have expected better from Tamsin, but of course she had. She always looked for the best in people, even when they gave her reason not to. “Go away, then. But I’m going to see if I can help.” She turned to follow the child, who had scampered away, past the giant ovens and the overturned produce baskets. The kitchen floor was littered with rotting onion skins, broken chicken bones, and giant piles of dust so thick and gray they might have been the corpses of mice.

Wren hurried after the child, who had taken a hard right. Something loosened in her chest when she heard Tamsin’s footsteps behind her. The witch was still grumbling, but she was there. Wren turned in time to watch the child disappear through a trapdoor in the floor. Tamsin grabbed her wrist.

“You can’t be serious.” Tamsin gave her a sharp look. “This is stupid, even for you. You don’t know who or what might be lurking down there. It’s too dangerous.”

Wren didn’t care. All she could think of was the emptiness in the child’s eyes, the way hunger had stripped him down and made him weak. Wanting. She had been that way too. Wren knew what it was to feel hunger—not just the growling of the stomach but the pang of guilt, the fear that she deserved the sick, impossible feeling. The light-headedness. The hopelessness.

She could not turn her back now. Not when she knew so intimately what that child was up against. Wren pulled her wrist from Tamsin’s grasp and followed the child through the trapdoor.

The stink was much worse below, pungent and hot and stale. Wren tensed at every scuffle, every sniffle, every sob. The dark was so deep that she could see nothing, not even in her mind’s eye. When a tiny blue flame flickered to life, she momentarily lost her bearings.

Tamsin hopped down the final rung of the ladder, the light she held illuminating the distaste upon her face. “Hey.” The witch’s voice was hard. “Stop that.”

Wren looked down. The child had pressed a kitchen knife against her hip, the point poking her skin through the thin fabric.

“He wouldn’t…” But Wren trailed off at the determination on the child’s face.

“What do you want?” The voice that came from the shadows was hoarse and thin, like the croaking of a toad. Tamsin lifted her light higher. Wren braced herself, but it illuminated only the face of a woman, defeat written across it in the purple bags beneath her eyes, in the greasy strands of hair, in the dirt that clung to her clothes.

“I’m Wren.” She smiled cautiously. The woman didn’t look fearsome, nor had the child moved to break her skin with the knife. “I just wanted to see if I could help.”

The woman shifted, at great personal cost. She let out a moan, deep and guttural, like a sow ready to birth. It was then that Wren saw the comparison continued. The woman’s belly was swollen, apparent even through her many layers of grimy garments.

“Can’t help me,” the woman groaned, a hand resting against her stomach. “Nothing t’be helped now. Leo, come.” Her accent was sharp, like the women in the caravan they’d passed in Ladaugh, her vowels quick and hardly apparent.

Wren felt the child shift, the pressure disappearing as he retreated. She took a hesitant step closer. “Are you in pain?”

The woman grunted. Or laughed? Perhaps neither. Maybe both. “I don’t know. All I know’s this babe was due three weeks past. She’s still in there, kicking. Won’t come out. Not now, perhaps not ever, thanks t’this plague.” She glanced darkly at her stomach. “Can’t say I blame her.” She looked up at Wren. “No, lass, just leave me be. Nothing t’be done. Any rate, she’s safer in there than out.”

The woman’s resignation was so absolute that Wren didn’t know what to do. “Here.” She fumbled in her bag for a few coins. “Take these, at least.” Wren’s body shuddered as she held them out, her brain rebelling against her heart’s offering. But the woman smiled sadly up at her.

“Ah, lass, you’re not from here, then. Coins get you nothing. There’s nothing t’be got. The queen is gone, left us to die.” Her face darkened. “Never mind that I gave up all my years to cook her food. Scrubbed her potatoes, I did, baked her pies with little birds on the crust, and all I’ve got to show for it is this miserable life. Don’t trust a queen, girl. Not even when her face gleams like the sun at the taste of one of your roasts. Never learn to love someone untouchable. They’ll only disappoint you in the end.”

Wren’s throat tightened, and she felt her heart clench at the woman’s words, although she could not determine what about them, exactly, affected her so. “No,” she said finally, her voice cracking despite her best efforts. “You will not die.” She turned to Tamsin, who was wringing her hands helplessly. “Stop that,” Wren commanded her, trying to get ahold of herself. “Get this woman some food. Leave her with endless fire and blankets to keep warm.”

Tamsin widened her eyes in protest, trying to communicate without speech. Wren sighed.

“Mother, I cannot help you deliver your child, but I can make sure you are well taken care of with food, and blankets, and fire. Do you protest if these items come from a witch’s hands?” She stared down at the woman, who blinked blankly at her.

“Lass, I cannot move. I care not where