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

“I did what I had to do. I saved her when you wouldn’t.” Tamsin still remembered Vera’s pinched frown, the hard look in her eyes as she refused Tamsin’s plea. “She might not have been powerful, but she was still worth saving.”

Vera sighed. “You were always so focused on what was right in front of you that you could never see the bigger picture. You loved Marlena so much that you forgot about the rest of the world. But all she ever wanted was the world. And your actions nearly destroyed it.”

It was all so impossible Tamsin could hardly wrap her head around it.

“I don’t understand. If Marlena is asleep, how is she the dark witch?” She looked down at the diary, still clutched in her white-knuckled hands.

“She finally woke up.” Vera glanced at the floor. “Your sister awoke and escaped from the north tower the morning of your seventeenth birthday.”

Tamsin shook her head uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean, ‘escaped’? How?”

“I don’t know.” Vera looked pained. “She shouldn’t have been able to do it. I used blood wards to keep her locked inside. It would have taken an ordinary witch months to undo the number of enchantments. But she was just… gone.”

Vera pushed herself away from the desk, her shoes clacking against the stone floor. “There was only a tiny thread of dark magic between the two of you, just enough to keep Marlena alive. I didn’t expect her to wake up. I certainly didn’t expect her to use it for her own purposes. To flee the academy. To cast her own spell.” Vera settled herself carefully behind her desk, her hands folded atop several scattered pieces of parchment.

Her own spell. Surely that couldn’t mean the plague had come from her sister. Evangeline’s sickness had targeted those without power. Marlena knew what it was like to suffer at the hands of magic, had been outspoken about the dark witch’s intolerance and cruelty toward ordinary folk. She would never have cast a spell that subjected others to the same terrible fate.

“She wouldn’t.” Tamsin shook her head. “She couldn’t. She doesn’t have the stamina. It doesn’t make sense.”

“And yet…” Vera sighed wearily. “I tried to suppress the plague, but the magic behind it is too furious. Too raw. I could not keep up.”

Tamsin had never before heard her mother admit a limitation to her power. It revealed the sheer magnitude of their predicament. The urgency, the necessity of what they were facing. The reality of what one ill-fated decision had grown into.

“After Evangeline, we formed the Coven so that we would never have to witness such brutality again.” Vera massaged her temples, her eyes squeezed shut. “We only recently were able to repair relations between witches and ordinary folk. This plague cannot continue. The spell must be broken.”

Vera shifted slightly in her seat. “I fear it will soon be too late to return the world to the way it was. The Coven is exhausted. The queen wants a witch to burn for this. If anyone gets wind of the truth, I have no doubt that the rest of the Coven will strip me of my title and kill you in order to break the bond of dark magic that still exists between you and your sister. Without your power fueling her, Marlena will lose her life too.”

Her mother was gazing at Tamsin with an emotion she could not name. “It is your bond that keeps your sister living. You must find a way to break it. You must stop her spell.”

“Me?” Tamsin spluttered. “But if I break it, she’ll die.” It took everything she had to choke the words out.

Vera leaned across the desk. “Maybe. But maybe not. If you work together.”

“How?” Tamsin despised the desperation in her voice. “Marlena hates me.” The truth of it twisted in her gut like a knife.

Vera smiled sadly. “She doesn’t hate you. You’re just different people. And you were never willing to admit that.” She straightened the stack of books beside her. “Find your sister, Tamsin. Make your peace. End this,” Vera implored, “for all of us.” And then she rose from her desk and swept toward the door, giving Tamsin a curt nod. She was High Councillor Vera again. Tamsin’s mother was gone.

It was strange the way the light still fell at the same slant through the tall windows, the moon pooling on the floor beneath her feet. Tamsin stepped carefully, her skirt whispering against her ankles as she crept down the corridor the way she had so many times before. Only this time she was not sneaking out of bed to meet Leya, a flame concealed beneath her cloak. The two of them would not sprawl on the floor of the library, concealed by the dusty stacks, sharing secrets—and, occasionally, soft, searching kisses. There had been a delicious hope to the darkness then.

Now the west wing was empty, the dormitory doors flung open, revealing haphazardly made beds, lonely shoes, wrinkled robes. The inhabitants of those rooms had left in a hurry, likely sent back to their families in the wake of the new darkness. Marlena’s darkness. It took some effort to even think her sister’s name in such a context. It made no sense.

Tamsin paused, eyes catching on a room’s four abandoned beds. She and Marlena, assigned to the same lower-form dormitory, had both claimed top bunks. Tamsin had wanted to see her sister at all times. Marlena had wanted to be closer to the sky.

She leaned against the door frame, slumping slightly against the smooth wood. Five years. She had gone five years believing her sister was dead. Five years and she had never suspected. Never doubted. And all the while, Marlena had slept, locked in a tower behind a shield of spells.

Would she have wanted Tamsin to rescue her? Or would she have been grateful to be left alone for the first time?

Either option made her feel ill. Either way, she had failed Marlena by being