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

witch. You should have seen her face: Her eerily sharp teeth were practically falling out of her mouth, she was smiling so wide. And then who does she throw down onto the floor but Tamsin.

I was right. But in another sense, I was so terribly wrong.

Of course, Vera flew into a rage, hauling her up and out of the hall as fast as her heels could carry her. The rest of the room fell to whispers. What could Tamsin be doing with power like that? She was going to join the Coven someday, everyone was sure of it. She was an ideal candidate: talented, devoted, eager, selfless to a fault. She would have given her life to be charged with protecting the world Within. Instead it looks like she gave her life to protect me.

That’s right. The dark magic she did? It’s the reason why I’m alive. Without asking me, she pulled magic from the earth and bound my life to her power. So not only is Tamsin responsible for the rains, for the fires, for Amma, but I am too. Tamsin did this to save me, which means that I’m complicit. I’m a part of this whether I want to be or not.

And I hate her for it.

Vera brought me up to her office once she’d finished with Tamsin, and for a while she just stared. It was strange, like she was trying to memorize my face, which is absurd since it’s the same as Tamsin’s. But then she told me that she had to break the bond. It was her “duty” or something official-sounding. I wish I could say I was surprised. I know that Vera loves me—loves Tamsin, too, of course—but she loves Within more.

I don’t even resent her for it. I truly don’t. I wish I knew what it was like to love something so much you’d let your own daughter die. She didn’t say so, of course, but I could see it in her eyes. When they remove Tamsin’s power from me, I’m going to die.

Mortality is strange, in a way. Before, I was always faced with long stretches in a white infirmary, and since I knew there was always the possibility of dying, I was always afraid. But now that my life has an end date, I can’t seem to make myself feel… anything at all.

Tamsin stared down at the wrinkled page. She had taken the biggest risk of her young life, had pushed away her best friend, lost the respect of her mother and her teachers, all so she could save her sister. And now it was clearer than it had ever been that she’d made a mistake. Marlena wasn’t grateful for what Tamsin had done. She hated her for it.

Tamsin rested her head in her hands. In no scenario could she have hung back and simply watched her sister slip away. The two of them were bound by a bond stronger than dark magic. If the roles had been reversed, wouldn’t Marlena have done the same thing to save her?

The horrible truth came to her in the form of a chill, racking her whole body with a shiver so outsize that her elbow knocked her teacup onto the floor, where it promptly shattered into a hundred pieces. She swore and fell to her knees, carefully collecting the pieces in her palm.

“I thought you were a witch.” Tamsin tensed at the sound of Wren’s voice, but she did not look up. She continued to collect the shards of rose-patterned china.

“Tamsin.” Wren nudged her softly with the toe of her boot. “Come on. It’s time for you to tell me the truth.”

Tamsin sighed and got to her feet, dumping the shards of porcelain unceremoniously onto the tabletop. “I don’t see what else there is to tell,” she lied.

“You have a sister.”

Tamsin fought the urge to correct Wren’s tense. She was so used to thinking had.

“I was going to tell you,” she said quickly. “But things are complicated.”

Wren frowned. “Either you have a sister or you don’t.”

Tamsin very nearly laughed. “Exactly. That’s why it’s complicated.” She exhaled, the mere fact of her breathing seeming to earn her several annoyed looks. She’d known that other witches resented her, some for the fact that she’d used dark magic, others for the fact that she was still living. Still, thus far the reaction to her return had been frigid at best.

She summoned their things, their bags appearing by their feet. “I’ll say good-bye to Hazel, and then we’re going to go.”

“Go?” Wren’s eyes darted around the room. “Why?”

“We’ve overstayed our welcome here.” Tamsin heaved her pack over her shoulder, nodding toward the huddle of school-age witches, who were whispering hurriedly behind their hands, eyes fixed on the pair of them.

“Where are we going, then?” Wren fussed with her bag, her face pinched.

Tamsin ran a hand through her hair, dread souring her tongue. “Somewhere I can tell you the truth.”

“Let me get this straight.” Wren’s voice was muffled from behind her sleeve, her expression impossible to decipher as they moved carefully through the darkness. “The dark witch is your twin sister, who you thought was dead but isn’t thanks to the dark-magic bond between the two of you?”

The ground was soft and wet beneath their feet. The scent of sulfur permeated everything, had flooded their nostrils the moment they’d opened the door to leave the Wandering Woes. Wren had covered her nose, but Tamsin hadn’t bothered. There was no escaping it. She wouldn’t be surprised if the stink of rotting eggs clung to her skin for the rest of her days.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, that’s right.” But telling Wren the truth hadn’t made Tamsin feel better. In fact, it had made her feel worse. In the end, it all pointed back to Tamsin.

“All right,” Wren said, squinting at the witch, lips pursed. “But I don’t understand what this has to do with that little black book in your pocket.”

“What?” Tamsin was so surprised her foot squelched dangerously close to a