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

Wren furrowed her brow. “Care,” Tamsin clarified, staring determinedly at her boots.

Wren fought to keep a smile off her face even as she rubbed at the goose bumps lining the backs of her arms. She didn’t want to scare Tamsin away with her emotions, especially since she knew Tamsin hadn’t meant her words the way Wren wanted her to.

She couldn’t mean them like that.

The witch led them up the side of a hill to level ground. They walked in silence together, Wren fighting the impulse to stop and collect bundles of wildflowers, their petals deep purple, bright blue, vivid pink. She didn’t want Tamsin to think her frivolous. She didn’t want to slow them down.

They did not speak again until they reached a roaring river, the water moving so swiftly and its magic so disjointed that it left Wren nauseated and shaky.

“Careful,” Tamsin said. “The stones get slick.” Then she was picking her way carefully across the flat stepping-stones that offered a path through the angry water. Wren exhaled sharply and followed, willing her feet to keep her upright.

On the other side was another forest, only this one was neither lush nor green. It was more the ghost of a forest, trunks and branches bare and blackened and burned. Ash settled on Wren’s tongue, the taste familiar. She felt a swell of pride, despite the dismal scenery. Her magic had led them there.

Wren was so distracted that she forgot to watch her feet. She tripped over a giant branch and sprawled out on the hard dirt, the wind knocked from her lungs. She scrambled for her lantern, which had fallen beside her, and held it up to investigate.

She immediately wished she hadn’t.

It wasn’t a branch she had tripped over at all, but bone. What had appeared to be gnarled, petrified wood was actually a giant set of antlers still attached to a sharp snow-white skeleton. There was a terrible stench of spoiled venison. Wren nearly retched right there in the grass.

And then, before their eyes, the bones began to move.

Tamsin yanked Wren to her feet. She was too startled to protest the pain that shot up her arm. The skeleton groaned, clanking and clattering as it rose to all fours. A song composed of three high, sharp notes reverberated through the trees. It sent a chill down Wren’s spine. It put her skin on edge.

“Okay, now listen to me,” Tamsin said, her voice so quiet it was barely a whisper. “I’m going to need you to stay calm.”

“I think we’re past that.” Wren had squeezed her eyes shut in hopes of staunching the tears that tickled at the edges. She had never seen anything so horrible. A deer without its skin—with nothing but the hard interior that gave it shape—wasn’t an animal anymore. It was a monster. “Is it dark magic?”

“Worse,” Tamsin said, her voice hard. “It’s one of Arwyn’s scouts.”

The name meant nothing to Wren, but the look of terror on Tamsin’s face said enough. She had no desire to come face-to-face with the sort of witch who would create such a gruesome creature. “Who’s Arwyn?”

Tamsin’s eyes flickered around the dark forest, the light from her flame casting strange, galloping shadows across the earth. “She’s one of the Coven. She’s, uh…” Tamsin trailed off, eyes lingering on the skeleton. “She’s the one who turned me in.”

Without thinking, Wren put a hand on Tamsin’s shoulder. The witch flinched slightly, but she did not pull away.

The horrible song echoed through the clearing again, much closer this time. The skeleton before them lifted its head in the air, rapt. Leather and oil clung to the breeze. The air rattled with the creaking and clattering of bones. Arwyn was coming, bringing a herd of skeleton spies with her. A large foot stepped on a branch, the snap echoing through the empty air.

Tamsin had gone white as a sheet.

“Come on.” Without thinking, Wren reached for Tamsin’s hand. It was a testament to the witch’s state that she did not protest; she merely allowed herself to be led. The trees were spindly and thin, hardly big enough to give them cover. But Wren wanted to keep hidden, wanted to protect Tamsin from the footsteps, the endless clacking that filled the air.

They crowded behind the largest trunk Wren could find, their shoulders pressed together, their hands still intertwined. Wren tried to steady her shaky breathing, but whether the root of it was fear or her proximity to the witch, she couldn’t tell.

“It’s all right,” Wren whispered quietly, even as the clacking got louder. Even as she knew her reassurance was a lie. Tamsin was battling memories, was haunted by her past at every turn. Wren wanted to save her, but she didn’t know how.

Then something nudged her other hand, something smooth and hard and cold. The white bone of a deer’s antler.

Wren screamed as the skeleton scout shoved her, sending both Wren and the witch tumbling out into the open. They landed in a heap, their faces close, Tamsin’s body pressed against hers. Wren hardly noticed the branch digging into her back. She was enchanted by the witch’s lips. They were rounded in a small O of surprise, so close Wren could feel her hot breath on her cheek. For a moment Wren forgot about the woods around them, the skeletons, Arwyn, the plague. For a moment there was only Tamsin.

The witch’s eyes searched hers, the air between them hushed and stilted. The magic between them thick enough to slice.

And then Arwyn cleared her throat, the bones of her skeleton lackeys clacking together as they settled.

“Well, well, well,” she said, her voice sharp as a winter wind whistling through bare branches. Her skin was as translucent as morning frost, her hair shorn down to her skull. Her green eyes glittered in the weak light of her lantern, just as icy as the rest of her. “What do we have here?”

NINETEEN

TAMSIN

They were done for.

Tamsin felt it in the way Wren