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

forever. Eventually, her body would give in to the pain, or the earth would open and swallow her whole. It was no use running away. Marlena needed to be stopped, but Wren could only sense magic, not fight it.

She was doing it again. Undermining her abilities before giving herself a chance to try. Wren was the one who had led them to Marlena. By using her senses. By taking her time. Trying not only to find the magic but to understand it. Perhaps if she thought of Marlena as just another sheet of paper in her journal, she could tease out the thread of magic still tying the sisters together. She could find a way to stop her—not like a witch, but like a source.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Marlena had stopped shooting sparks and was staring at Wren with a wary expression. Dust fell from the cracks in the ceiling, streaking her dark hair with gray.

“Like what?” Wren wasn’t certain what her face looked like, but she kept the expression in place.

“Like you aren’t afraid of me.” Marlena pressed her thin lips together until they all but disappeared. “I could kill you, you know.” But this time she didn’t sound so certain.

The earth beneath their feet gave another rumble. Marlena glanced around nervously.

“I know,” Wren said slowly, softly, the coaxing way she sometimes spoke to her hens. “But killing me is not a good idea.” She glanced up at the crack in the ceiling. She didn’t want Marlena to use her power. The room was in shambles, its structure just as precarious as Wren’s plan. At any moment it could collapse.

Marlena’s eyes studied Wren suspiciously. They were so like Tamsin’s it made Wren ache. “Why not?”

“Because I could help you.” Wren fought to keep the fear from her face.

Marlena’s lips quirked upward into the ghost of a smile. Her eyes glittered. Wren swallowed thickly. Magic scraped its way down her throat, leaving it as raw as if she had been screaming.

“And why would you do that?” Marlena eyed her in a way that made her feel exposed. The witch’s gaze lingered on all of Wren’s bruises and scars, all her tender places.

“Because I know what it feels like to be left behind.” Wren’s voice cracked, her breath hitching midsentence at the raw truth of her words. “I know what it’s like when your best isn’t enough.”

Marlena’s face darkened, but the magic swirling around her did not move to strike. “Is that so?”

“It is.” Wren took a cautious step toward the girl. Her heart beat faster than the flitting of a hummingbird’s wings. Her tongue was dry, the salty, sour taste of the air coating her teeth. Fear was an animal, uninvited and unbidden, leaving destruction in its wake. She would not give in.

The witch studied Wren for a moment before her fingers shot out and closed around Wren’s wrist. Marlena’s skin was as hot as a blazing fire. Her touch sent a wave of nausea through Wren, along with something darker. An emotion, desperate and heavy, settled itself in her chest. Wren forced her attention past the feeling, toward Marlena and her fiery skin, trying to find the girl’s magic without giving away too much of her own.

It was exhausting. Wren was pushing back her own magic, funneling it so that it dripped out of her rather than poured. She was also pulling herself forward toward Marlena’s power, keeping her senses alert, searching for the heart of the girl’s dark magic.

Marlena’s grip tightened, her fingers digging sharply into Wren’s skin. Wren cried out, losing hold of her concentration. Marlena’s eyes glittered wildly, her teeth bared in a feral smile. Then she sent Wren flying across the room.

Wren landed on her side, her elbow cracking against the floor, pain sparking through her body so quickly Wren could feel it in her teeth. She cried out, her body shaking as she curled into herself, trying not to cry.

“You must think me a fool,” Marlena said, towering over Wren. “Just like everyone else, you underestimate me. You should really give me a bit more credit.”

White-hot magic seeped into Wren until her organs, her skin, her heart, were all on fire. A scream echoed through the room. It took her a long time to recognize it as her own.

“Stop.” Tamsin’s voice cracked like the earth beneath them. She was on her knees, hair plastered to her sweaty forehead, her eyes dull and dark as she panted to catch her breath. Incredibly, Marlena obeyed her sister’s command, staring with confusion as Tamsin tore at the broken floor with her bare hands, ripping away the splintered wood and sinking her fingers into the earth below.

Wren tried to get up, but she could barely see straight through the pain. She was going to be sick, the dark magic overpowering every one of her senses. Her vision was beginning to fade. She was useless. She was just as useless as she’d always feared.

Tamsin started whispering, so softly that Wren could not understand what she was saying, only that she was calling to the earth, asking for its power. It wasn’t until the scent of sulfur caught in the back of her throat that Wren realized what Tamsin was doing.

She was summoning dark magic too.

It was so foolish Wren could hardly believe it true. Yet all the telltale signs were there: the stink of sulfur, the rumbling of the earth in protest, the inky black ribbons that clung to the witch like a shadow.

But louder than Tamsin’s determination, than even Wren’s fear, was the earth’s desperate cry. It had no magic to spare, and if Tamsin used its power against her sister, the act would result in something so terrible Wren could not even imagine it. All she had was the world’s fearful call, loud and insistent, inside her head.

If only there were something she could do. But she was housing too much sound: the scream of her own body, the clamoring of the earth,