Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📕

over her shoulder at Tamsin, then stopped, clutching the rail with white knuckles. “I shouldn’t have looked down.”

“Novice mistake.” Tamsin clucked her tongue. “And I explained it simplistically because that seems to be the only way to make you understand.”

Wren’s face soured. “It isn’t my fault I don’t know things. You don’t have to be so patronizing.”

“Actually,” Tamsin said, keeping her own eyes on the back of Wren’s head so they would not stray to the ground far below, “it is your fault. You’re supposed to report to the Coven upon recognition of your talent so they can train you. Technically, you broke the highest law of the world Within.”

“Where?” Wren paused, frowning.

Tamsin, too, stopped climbing. “Within,” she repeated. Wren’s face remained blank. “The Coven’s land. Beyond the Wood.”

Wren’s face lit with understanding. “Oh. I didn’t know it had a proper name. Most people just call it the Witchlands.”

“The Witchlands?” Tamsin would not have been surprised to learn her eyebrows had become permanently attached to her hairline. “Is everything a story to the ordinary folk?”

Wren looked a bit embarrassed. “Mostly. Yes.”

Tamsin sighed as they continued to climb.

“You know, it is rather beautiful up here,” Wren said after several more steps. “It smells like salt, and that breeze…” She sighed contentedly as the wind whipped at them, blowing Tamsin’s hair in her face.

“So?” She tried to sound cross, but as she was extracting hair from her mouth, it sounded more like a mumble.

“And the sky. It’s so blue it’s practically clear. It’s almost as if we’re high enough above the world that the plague doesn’t exist. That the dark magic cannot reach us.” There was a hint of hope in Wren’s voice, as though speaking it could make it so.

Tamsin glanced around, a pang of longing in her chest. She often forgot exactly how much of the world her curse kept her from enjoying. Even colors were impossible to remember. In Tamsin’s eyes, they were merely climbing up the side of a gigantic rock. She gleaned no pleasure from the act, no enjoyment from the height, just a turning of her stomach when her foot missed a step. There was nothing beautiful here but Wren’s ability to be nauseatingly optimistic. Still, she kept silent. Wren’s words were something, even if they were simple and fleeting. They weren’t a feeling, but they were a reminder of one.

A person could feel. A person could hurt. Tamsin wished there were more nuance to her personal emotional spectrum. It was exhausting, being angry. Feeling bitter. Biting back. She pulled the diary from her hip and turned it over in her hands.

“Okay, seriously, what is that?”

Tamsin hadn’t noticed Wren stop walking. “Nothing,” she said quickly. But Wren didn’t budge.

“Your face looks strange.” She stared suspiciously down at Tamsin from her step.

“My face is fine,” Tamsin snapped. “Keep walking.”

“I’m not an idiot.” Wren’s words were a challenge. “I know you think I’m stupid, but I’m not. You’re hiding something from me.”

Tamsin sighed. For a moment she considered telling the source everything. Her entire history, everything about her sister, about her banishment, all of it. But if she did that, Wren’s feelings toward her would change. She would stop being in awe and start being afraid. With the world in chaos and the dark magic getting stronger, the only way Tamsin would survive this trip Within was to go with someone who did not know all the deep, dark parts of her. For their bargain to work, Tamsin could show no weakness.

“I mean it.” Wren watched Tamsin with cloudy eyes. “You can trust me.”

“Trust you?” Tamsin laughed, hard and harsh, but she felt no relief. “You don’t even trust yourself. You know nothing about your magic, nothing about my world. So don’t pretend you know anything about me.”

Wren dropped her hands and stared at Tamsin incredulously. “That’s only because you’re too self-absorbed to share a single thing with me. I’ve asked you so many questions, and all you’ve ever given me are half answers, brushed away because you think I’m a fool. Well, so are you.” Wren shook her head.

“Fine,” Tamsin said. “I’ll tell you.” If Wren wanted to call her a fool, she would act like one. “They’re love notes. From a secret admirer.” That got a laugh from Wren. Tamsin set her shoulders and brushed carefully past Wren. The group was nearly a hundred steps ahead of them. “Just because you haven’t fallen victim to my charm doesn’t mean other people don’t find me delightful.”

Wren hurried to catch up with her. “You’re lying.”

“That’s my prerogative,” Tamsin said over her shoulder. “I’m not one of the fair folk.”

Wren gaped at her. “You’re impossible,” she hissed. “I wish I’d never met you. I’d be better off with my father. At least he appreciates me.”

“Are you sure about that?” From what she could gather, Wren’s father was a selfish, simpering man. The kind of person who took but never gave. To hear Wren tell it, though, her father might as well have been a saint.

Wren narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Tamsin shrugged. “Don’t be so quick to think your sacrifices are appreciated.”

Wren’s face had gone red. “What does that mean?”

“You didn’t join the Coven.” It wasn’t that Tamsin was sorry she and Wren hadn’t been classmates—the girl was infuriating at best—but she couldn’t ignore the flash of interest that sparked behind Wren’s eyes every time Tamsin talked about magic. It wasn’t innocent curiosity. It was a raw, powerful hunger.

“I couldn’t.” Wren’s eyes were wide. “By the time I understood what I was, my mother had died. I was all that my father had left. I couldn’t just leave him.”

Tamsin arched an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“It was my duty.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why?’ ” Wren snapped.

Tamsin shrugged. “Why did you give up your life for your father’s?”

“That’s not what happened,” Wren said fiercely. “He would have died without me.”

Tamsin looked her over coolly. “I’m sure he liked to tell you that.”

Wren looked ready to cry. “I love my father.”

“Convenient, considering