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

to call forth dark magic in the first place. They were figureheads of power without follow-through. Magical law was neither dictated nor enforced, so witches roamed free, taking advantage of ordinary folk and one another alike. The Six had lived with magic so long that they’d forgotten it could corrupt. Could inspire chaos. Could destroy.

After Evangeline, the Six had ceded control of Within to the Coven. They were called in on the rarest of occasions to aid when the Coven could not. With Vera distracted by Tamsin, and the rest of the Coven out hunting the dark witch, it was up to the Six to interrogate Wren, a girl without a mark who had walked through the Wood. Tamsin wanted to be there with her. But what Tamsin wanted did not matter when faced with her mother.

Of course Vera had been waiting for her. Tamsin had been foolish to believe she could return Within and somehow evade all the people she so desperately wished to avoid. The High Councillor knew everything that happened Within. Naturally, she would know who was coming through the Wood.

Back in the hallowed halls of the academy, Tamsin was nearly suffocated by her memories. She could not escape her past, not even in her present as she followed her mother higher and higher up the spiral stairs. The Wood had reverberated with Amma’s screams. Had shown her the shimmering outline of Marlena’s body dropping to the floor.

Then she had been faced with Leya, her smug smile and the glittering eyes Tamsin had loved back when she’d had a heart. She deserved Leya’s venom. They had parted ways poorly. Tamsin had asked Leya to sacrifice everything but had offered her nothing in return.

She had been so consumed with Marlena that she had forgotten how to care about anyone else.

Vera touched the handle of a gray stone door and whispered a quiet word. A lock clicked, and the door swung open, revealing her private chambers. The antechamber housed two more doors, both made of wood. To the left was Vera’s office, where she worked and disciplined. To the right was her bedroom, with its enormous four-poster bed and gold tub. Tamsin and Marlena had slept in her chamber as toddlers, but once their magic made an appearance, they were assigned beds in the dormitories with the other students.

Instead of settling into her personal chamber and offering up any of its numerous plush armchairs, Vera ushered Tamsin into her study, motioning for her to sit in the straight-backed chair reserved for those facing Vera’s ire.

“I’ll be with you shortly,” she said, flashing her daughter a smile that was only teeth. And then she shut the door firmly behind her.

The room was smaller than Tamsin had remembered, the air stale. The tall shelves were still crammed with books; her mother’s raven-feather quill still stood on the wide desk. Vera’s favorite cloak, made of velvet black as midnight, hung from a peg near the door. But the chairs had been moved several inches to the left, the brick of the fireplace replaced with stone. The tapers Vera burned were now made from white wax rather than the black she had once preferred. Small things, hardly noticeable. But Tamsin noted them all.

Five years had changed the room, the way she, too, had changed.

She shifted in her chair, the sharp edge of Marlena’s diary digging into her hip. She pulled out the little black book, turned it over in her hands. Tamsin had never imagined she’d be here again, suffocating in the tiny tower room, facing every terrible decision she had ever made. She ran a finger across the ragged edges of the diary, her heart sinking as it fell open.

Not again. Not now. Not here.

But she couldn’t not look. The curve of her sister’s handwriting was like a spell coaxing her closer, drawing her nearer.

You’re not going to believe this (of course you won’t; you’re only a diary), but someone Within is using dark magic. The rains, the fires, the quaking, Amma’s death. It’s all the consequence of a spell. Someone’s stupid, selfish decision, their need for power, is the reason my best friend is dead. I’m so furious I’m shaking.

Vera’s falling to pieces. She’s been locked in her study; she’s stopped showing up to classes. It doesn’t matter what we learn if the world’s going to end. And even if the world doesn’t end, Vera’s world might. She thought that Evangeline was the worst of it. She and the Coven have been working so hard to build a new world, to gain the trust of the ordinary folk again. But it’s already coming undone, and under her reign.

The only blessing is that the dark magic has not spread past the Wood. The world Beyond does not yet know what is happening Within. So naturally, Vera summoned Arwyn home to put an end to this once and for all. That’s right, the most terrifying member of the Coven is back, with her emerald-bright eyes and her smile as sharp as knives.

I don’t envy whoever is responsible for this mess. Whoever they are, Arwyn will track them down with her eerily attuned nose and her awful skeleton army. And then, once the dark witch is found, they’ll have to face the wrath of my mother, a woman terrified of losing her position of power.

I wonder if they’ll put her to death.

And I say “her” because I know who did it. Well, I think I do, anyway. We may not be very close these days, but I can still tell when Tamsin is hiding something. And she’s a wreck. Sleeping all the time, her power fading in and out. She looks haggard, like she’s suddenly aged a hundred years. She’s guilty about something. This is the only explanation.

My sister is the reason my best friend is dead, and to be honest, I’m having a difficult time convincing myself that she doesn’t deserve what’s coming to her. Amma is dead because of something Tamsin did.

But