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

that’s my payment.” Tamsin sighed, brushing her long hair around her shoulders. “But just because you love him doesn’t mean he loves you back.”

Wren let out an incredulous laugh. “You know, I felt sorry for you, not being able to love. But now I wonder if maybe you’d have been this way anyway. You don’t care about anything or anyone. So you can pick and pick and pick at me and my father and my decisions, but at least I know I love someone. At least I have someone I would do anything for. Someone I would give up my life to protect. Can you say the same?” Wren’s voice hit a register so high she might as well have been shrieking. But her words sliced Tamsin at the center of her useless, dark heart.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, voice shaking. Her hands were clenched into fists, the world wobbling at the edges.

Tamsin was so used to viewing grief and sadness as an extension of love that she had nearly forgotten she had the capacity for it at all. But now, here, she wasn’t hurt because she cared about someone. She was hurt because she didn’t. Because she couldn’t. Because the useless, driveling girl standing before her had abilities that Tamsin did not. To see magic. To love her family. To shame Tamsin for choices Wren knew nothing of.

“Who hurt you?” Wren squinted at the witch, her voice barely a whisper, nearly lost in the wind that had begun to roar.

Tamsin said nothing.

Wren looked at her a moment, disappointment etched across her face, before pushing past her, taking the stairs two at a time to catch up with the rest of the group.

Tamsin let her go, and the diary fell open in her hands. She looked down at Marlena’s loopy scribbles. The answer to Wren’s question was complicated. There were a great many people Tamsin blamed for her pain. But the fact was that, in the end, the person she blamed the most was herself.

My sister is keeping secrets. Not that it’s anything new for her. Did you know that she found her power nearly three years before I did? And she refused to tell anyone so we could enter the academy at the same time. She wanted so badly for us to do everything together that she didn’t even tell me for over a year. It’s lucky Vera wasn’t the kind of person to dress us in matching outfits, but I know Tamsin ached for it. Every time I changed my hair, she’d change hers, too. If I started wearing green, she’d enchant all her clothes the same shade. She was so desperate for us to be the same that she never stopped to consider how fundamentally different we were.

But that’s beside the point. Right now, something’s going on, something weird, even for her. She keeps looking at me all teary and shifty-eyed, and her lips are chapped and cracked. It’s a telltale giveaway that she has a secret. Tamsin’s such a goody-goody she always wants to be honest and pure, and the only way she can keep herself quiet is to bite her mouth shut. And she just hovers over me. No matter the hour, she’s always popping her head in to check on me, like she’s making sure I haven’t died.

Not that she’s the only one. Healer Elthe is looking at me like I’ve come back to life. You should have seen it: The moment I opened my eyes, she gasped and clutched her heart like she’d seen a ghost. Apparently, I was unconscious for close to a week, my pulse so faint it was nearly nonexistent. Everyone fully expected me to die. Instead they’re getting ready to discharge me. That’s right: I get to leave this terrible, sterile place!

So yes, here I am, back among the living. Fundamentally not dying, which, I know, is unusual for me. Yet my sister continues to bite her tongue. She’s keeping a secret, something bigger than she’s ever held, and it’s eating her alive. Amma told me she’s been fighting with Leya. And they never fight. Honestly, it’s disgusting how in tune they are. Apparently, Tamsin’s been sitting alone, always tapping her foot on the floor or her quill against the table, so agitated that she doesn’t even participate in lessons anymore. Within’s golden child has suddenly come undone. But by what???

She hasn’t even bothered to scrub her fingernails. They’re caked with dirt. I mean, honestly… you’d think she’d care a bit more about appearances. But maybe that’s just me.

Tamsin and Marlena had been twelve years old when it happened. In a particularly tense lesson, the students had been tasked with battling the blue flames of an enchanted fire. Marlena’s attempt sent her crumpling to the floor. When Tamsin abandoned her own flame to aid her sister, the fire grew tenfold, injuring several students and incinerating the instructor’s desk.

“You are superior,” the High Councillor told her as Tamsin sat, chastised, in the woman’s stone chambers. “Even in the womb, you sensed your mother’s power, and so you took it for yourself.” The High Councillor’s eyes danced with something frightfully close to pride. “But,” she warned, “if you continue to trouble yourself with Marlena, you will never live up to your full potential. You made a decision then. You must honor it now.”

Nearly a week passed, but still Marlena did not wake. Healer Elthe was growing more concerned by the day, her lips pressing into the thinnest of lines each time Tamsin showed up to inquire about her sister. Although the healer wouldn’t say it aloud, Tamsin knew the truth: Her sister was going to die.

Marlena had always been weak, compromised by even the faintest use of magic. But Tamsin’s twin was not the kind to sit idly by. She always forged ahead. Pushed harder than she should. Ended up in the infirmary just as often as she slept in her own dormitory, all while Tamsin