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

world’s expectations go up in smoke. She opened a window to let out the stink. Her hair was the same color as the flames.

TWENTY-SEVEN

TAMSIN

Tamsin had never been one for sentimentality. Even before her curse had taken away the instinct to linger on fond memories, she had been more interested in what was to come than what had been. Perhaps that would have changed once she lost Marlena. But by then she could not feel, and so she could not linger. Could not dwell on moments past. Now, of course, everything was different, which was why she stood at her cottage’s front door, her palm pressed to the warped, peeling wood.

“Are you… all right?” Wren stared up at her with the crease between her eyebrows that Tamsin always wanted to pinch.

“I’m fine,” Tamsin snapped, old habits dying hard. She grinned sheepishly. “I’m fine,” she tried again, keeping her voice soft. “I just…” She looked down at her dusty boots. “I wanted to say good-bye.”

Wren’s mouth twitched. “Really?”

“Shut up,” Tamsin said, but tenderly. “I know it’s stupid, but…”

How could she put it into words? For years, the cottage was all she’d had. She had huddled by its fire to warm her uncooperative bones. She had stood in the middle of its floor, trading magic for strains of love strong enough to grant her the joy of a single sunset. Here she had done her best to make her life something worth surviving.

Now it was something worth living.

She reached for Wren’s hand, soft, small, and warm in her own. A spark passed between them like a secret smile. The tension in her shoulders lessened. She caught a whiff of the summer air. Sweet like sunshine. Like Wren’s laugh. Like the way the skin next to her eyes crinkled when she smiled.

It was still strange, the warmth that crept across her skin, the desire she had to tip her face toward the sky. She spread her arms wide, taking Wren’s hand with her.

“What are you doing?”

Tamsin opened her eyes. Wren was staring at her with concern.

“The sun.” Tamsin gestured upward. “Don’t you feel it?” She caught sight of Wren’s raised eyebrow. “Oh, don’t you start. You’ve picked every wildflower we’ve passed. The ocean sings to you. You hear trees breathe.”

Wren grinned guiltily. “I may have a tendency to get distracted sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time,” she added quickly, swatting Tamsin’s shoulder playfully.

“You’re the worst,” Tamsin muttered, dropping her arms but not Wren’s hand.

“You love me.” Wren’s smile threatened to break her face, it was so wide.

“Someone’s quite confident, aren’t they?” Tamsin teased a strand of hair out from behind Wren’s ear, still surprised by its new, shorter length. It suited her. Stopped her from hiding. Wren even stood up straighter now.

“But you do,” Wren insisted, scrunching her freckled nose. It was clear she expected an answer.

“I do.” Tamsin smiled, pushing open the door to her cottage.

Everything was exactly as she had left it. Nothing had rearranged itself in her absence. Her things were all tucked safely away in the cupboard. Flower petals lay forgotten in the hearth, their edges brown and curled. The room was stale with shadows and dust. Tamsin pried open the shutters, letting the light flood in.

“It’s smaller than I remember.” Wren paused in the doorframe, her eyes lingering on the ceiling, tracing ribbons of magic Tamsin couldn’t see.

“Is it?” It was hard to look at the room objectively. She had lived so many of her worst years there, angry, cold, and alone. Fumbling with the idea of what it meant to be a witch without a home. A girl who could not love.

“Or maybe you’re more. I don’t know.” Wren pulled out a chair and plopped down into it. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“That’s okay,” Tamsin said, settling in across from her. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“We don’t.” Wren drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Vera is expecting us back soon.”

Tamsin pursed her lips. “I didn’t mean literally,” she said, rather darkly. “I was trying to be sweet.”

“Oh.” Wren’s eyes widened. “Oh no, I’m sorry. I ruined it. You said…” She paused, biting her thumb as she thought. “You said, ‘We’ve got all the time in the world,’ and the correct response should have been…” Wren narrowed her eyes, looking at Tamsin in that way she did, where she saw through her skin, deep down into the heart of her. Wren’s lips quirked up into a soft smile, and she batted her eyelashes. “Do we?”

“Oh, hush.” Tamsin rolled her eyes, but still she reached across the table and wrapped Wren’s fingers in her own.

She was always reaching for Wren. Always entwining fingers, pressing palms, meeting lips. But it was all so new, so unbelievable, that if Tamsin went even a moment without contact, she started to fear that the next time they touched, she would no longer feel a spark. That one day she would wake to find it had all been a dream. Moments were so fleeting. So fragile. All Tamsin could do was hold on to the things that mattered and hope that was enough.

Tamsin reached for Wren, and, inexplicably, impossibly, wonderfully, Wren reached back.

They sat, tangled up together in the cottage that had housed her on so many of her worst days. Tamsin considered making tea just so she would have something to do. But it wasn’t about doing; it was about lingering for one final moment in the place that had been home. About knowing she would never return.

Was it silly to mourn a place that had ultimately been temporary? Did that lack of permanence make it somehow less of a home? But then again, on that bed she had grieved for her sister, her life, the distance between before and after. At that table she had screamed her fury, explored her anger because it was an emotion she could revel in. On that rug she had paced, trying to tire