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

Marlena’s shrieks of frustration. Tamsin continued to whisper, the air around her shimmering like a shield. Her sister’s sparks ricocheted off the shining spell and smacked against the walls. Loud crashes split them into pieces. More and more of the night’s endless darkness poured into the room.

With Marlena’s attention focused elsewhere, Wren’s vision started to return. She glanced desperately between the sisters. Each face was determined. Their decisions were made. Wren’s arm ached, the bones shattered from her fall. She pushed herself shakily to her knees, her eyes on Tamsin. She had to get the witch’s attention. She had to stop her before the world broke in a way that could not be repaired. Before Tamsin did something she would always regret.

As she clutched the threads of dark magic she had pulled from the earth, something raw flashed across Tamsin’s face. Wren knew the expression well. She had worn it herself. It was grief, sudden as a summer storm and twice as destructive. This time, when Tamsin struck out, she would strike to kill.

But before Wren could call to her, Marlena darted forward, grabbed Tamsin’s hair in a white-knuckled fist, and slammed her sister’s head onto the ground. Tamsin let out a terrible scream, made worse by the fact that it lasted only seconds.

The room was silent, smoke drifting and shifting as ash scattered about their feet and wood crumbled above their heads. Wren could see nothing but the frantic waves of Marlena’s dark magic. She couldn’t see Tamsin, could not get a single whiff of herbs, saw no thread of magic, red nor black, emanating from her. She could see nothing but Marlena, standing alone in the middle of the room.

So Wren leaped at the girl, her ruined arm tucked tightly against her side, voice shrieking, hitting pitches even she herself could not hear. Her broken arm shouted with every minuscule jostle as Marlena writhed beneath her grip. The smoke caught in Wren’s lungs. She struggled to breathe, coughing loud, scraping sounds. Her legs threatened to crumple beneath her weight.

Marlena swore, her hands in Wren’s hair, tugging so hard Wren thought her scalp might rip from her head. Wren clawed at Marlena with her good arm, following her instincts, not her thoughts. Letting her senses lead, not her fear.

“Stop this,” she choked out, her anger nearly as hot as Marlena’s skin. “You’re going to end everything.” Fury hit her like a wave, like wind in a tunnel, as though she was sucking the life from her surroundings. The motion nearly bowled her over. For it wasn’t anger but magic, unfamiliar and heavy, that pooled in Wren. She reached out toward Marlena, not with her hands, but with that magic. And she pulled.

There was a snap.

Immediately, Marlena went limp and slumped to the ground. The world dulled, then suddenly became overwhelmingly bright, as though Wren had stared into the sun. A rush passed through her, like a howling summer wind. She was knocked to the ground yet landed softly, magic curling protectively around her.

Sound reverberated in her ears even as it echoed in a different pattern through the hazy room. The ache pulsed in her body, feverish and lingering. There was the unmistakable scent of sulfur, overwhelmed by the stench of rotting pears.

Dark magic clung to the room like cobwebs, casting thick shadows over everything. The air was heavy. Wren sucked in breaths, but it felt as though there were a pillow pressed against her face. The effort was so great as to be nearly impossible. There was another flash of lightning, and when the light faded, so had the darkness. It was still night, but the magic began to dissipate like a blown-out candle, the remaining threads of black floating lazily like smoke toward the sky. Stars appeared, their faint lights twinkling through the cracks in the ceiling.

The ground had stopped its shaking.

Marlena’s body was splayed across the floor. Silent. Still. Wren tested the back of her hand against Marlena’s forehead. The girl’s skin was no longer hot, her cheeks no longer flushed with life. Her breathing had all but ceased.

“Wren?” Tamsin’s voice was weak. “What’s happened? Where are you?”

Wren skittered away from Marlena’s limp form, her eyes wide and unbelieving. She had only meant to stop Marlena, not to destroy her. She pulled at her braid with shaking hands, but her scalp already ached from Marlena’s attack. Her usual centering method did nothing to calm her.

“I’m… here,” she called back, her voice catching in her throat, froglike and frightened. She surveyed the wreckage of the room, her eyes searching for a shadow. She cradled her broken arm like a baby against her. The pain had faded from a fiery burn to an endless dull throbbing. She wasn’t sure she could feel anything anymore. She had broken something in Marlena, something irreparable, if the witch’s limp body was any indication. She didn’t know how she could face Tamsin.

A shadow pulled itself forward, its steps shaky and unsure. Tamsin stopped in the middle of the floor beside Marlena’s body. Smoke curled about her sharp cheekbones. Her skin glittered like milk in the faint starlight. Wren caught a whiff of fresh sage.

But instead of shouting, as Wren had expected Tamsin to do, the witch pulled her to her feet and wrapped her arms around her so tightly she found it difficult to breathe. Together they stood among the wreckage, locked in an embrace as the world spun slowly on around them.

TWENTY-THREE

TAMSIN

Tamsin held on to Wren for dear life. And indeed it felt like the source was the only thing keeping her from falling to pieces, from shattering as easily as a teacup on the wooden floor. A tinny whistle buzzed incessantly in her left ear. There was a steady hammering at her temple where her head had met the floorboards. Her arms were scratched, bright red drops of blood wrapping her wrists like bindings. Yet the aching of her body was nothing compared to