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

turned on her heel and made her way around the small cottage to the shack behind. The door smacked the small bed as it opened. The room was practically a closet.

“Where’s the other bed?” Tamsin detected a hint of panic in Wren’s voice.

“Don’t worry,” Tamsin said, taking a tentative step into the small space. Her shins collided with the bed frame. “I’ll just conjure another one. We could put it… here.” She pointed to a space, barely large enough to fit the two of them standing up.

Tamsin closed her eyes and tried to focus.

“This is ridiculous—you’re going to kill us.” Wren put a hand on Tamsin’s arm to stop her, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Tiny sparks floated from her hand. She hurried to extinguish them before the bedspread caught fire. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Tamsin snapped, embarrassed. She always had control of her magic. She really was behaving like a child. “We can just…”

They both stared at the small bed. Wren tugged on the end of her braid.

“What side of the bed do you sleep on?”

Tamsin stared at her uncomprehendingly. “I sleep on a bed. There are no sides.”

Wren exhaled loudly. “Fine. I’ll take the side by the wall; you can squeeze in here.”

Tamsin blinked several times in quick succession. “We’re going to share this bed?”

“Unless you want to sleep on the floor.” Wren pointed at the stone surface covered in dirt and dust and mold.

“Why do I have to sleep on the floor?”

“Because you’re full of secrets. If you bring them all onto this bed, there won’t be any room left for me.” Wren started to laugh—strange, hiccupping giggles that nearly caused Tamsin to laugh too. Instead she was sobered by logistics. How they would both fit. How she was supposed to lie so that she wouldn’t disturb Wren, wouldn’t touch her unnecessarily, wouldn’t impose on her space, wouldn’t make her uncomfortable.

When Wren finally stopped laughing, she scooted herself toward the wall, leaving Tamsin a sliver of space on the bed. The witch settled herself carefully onto the worn mattress and slid beneath a fraying quilt.

“Don’t I get a pillow at least?” A chill had crept into her bones despite the fact that she was wrapped in the thin blanket. She was facing Wren’s back, her whole body tense, trying not to touch her.

“Secrets,” Wren reminded her, causing Tamsin to sigh in frustration.

“I’m sorry,” Tamsin whispered into the darkness. “I just didn’t want you to stop looking at me the way you do.”

Wren shifted, turning toward Tamsin. “Like what?”

Their faces were so close. “Like maybe I’m not as terrible as I always thought.”

“You’re not so terrible,” Wren murmured, her eyes drooping, her words thick with sleep.

Tamsin rolled over before Wren could change her mind.

Lying there in silence, listening to the wind whistle through the cracks in the walls, they worried their separate worries. They feared their separate fears. Tamsin felt something else, too. Just a flicker, like the sparks she had shot from her fingers. She hadn’t been so near another person in years. Certainly not someone as good as Wren.

For Tamsin begrudgingly had to admit that Wren was not only a better person than she, but also someone who made her want to dissect her words, to think about her actions.

Wren made her want to be better.

“Tamsin?” Wren’s voice was soft in the darkness. Tentative. She sounded breakable.

Tamsin tensed, certain that if she spoke, Wren would ask her to move to the floor. She couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Tamsin needed the warmth radiating from the source’s skin. She needed to believe she was truly smelling lavender each time Wren shifted beside her.

Wren, forever describing sunsets and explaining smells, gave Tamsin a glimpse of the world the curse had taken from her. Wren’s touch offered the warmth that had once been so elusive. Tamsin needed Wren, much as she didn’t want to admit it. And so she lay still and did not reply. When Wren did not speak again, Tamsin exhaled softly, letting her mind run circles around itself, letting it wonder and letting it want, until the rise and fall of Wren’s breathing became a lullaby that sent her off to sleep.

EIGHTEEN

WREN

Wren woke with her back against the wall, her cheek on Tamsin’s shoulder, their legs tangled together. Inevitable, she told herself, when two people share one small bed.

Still, logic couldn’t tame the fluttering in her chest.

Tamsin smelled of salt and sage, her skin surprisingly warm for one so cold. Wren reached up to brush Tamsin’s hair from her face, and her fingers hit the ribbon around the witch’s neck. The butterflies in her stomach stopped their fluttering. Wren was indebted to the witch, to every cruel, cold facet of her. Perhaps Wren didn’t even care about Tamsin so much as envy her and her cavalier attitude, her absolutely infuriating propensity to keep secrets, her refusal to consider the feelings of anyone who wasn’t herself.

Wren fingered Tamsin’s silky curls as she pushed them out of her eyes. It was true that Tamsin was brash and complicated. Still, there was no denying there was something soft about her, something sweet that she took great pains to disguise. There were moments, glimpses of a grin, the sparkle of her dark eyes, when Wren saw again the person behind the curse—the girl Tamsin was but couldn’t show. The girl Tamsin might have been if she could have loved.

When Tamsin spoke about her sister, it was clear how much she still cared, curse be damned. Last night, even, as they had maneuvered through the awkwardness of sharing a bed, it was almost as if… No. Wren wouldn’t let her imagination run away like that. She had always been a dreamer. An idealist. Even now, Wren was fairly certain she could live forever on those tiny glimpses of Tamsin. That even the barest hint of the witch’s true heart would be enough to sustain her.

Pathetic, she told herself as she extracted her other arm from