“I thought you were a witch.”
The girl’s voice was melodic yet grating, like a song sung in the wrong key. There was something about the stranger that was familiar, although Tamsin was having trouble placing her. She glowered at the girl in an attempt to overcompensate for her uncertainty.
The stranger seemed impervious to Tamsin’s scrutiny. She simply sidestepped the knife and brushed brusquely past Tamsin into the cottage without looking back.
“Yes, please, do come in,” Tamsin muttered darkly under her breath, closing the door behind the girl. She left the bolt unlocked.
The girl slumped into one of Tamsin’s kitchen chairs, red-faced and panting. Sweat dripped down her temple. “I suppose you know why I’m here, then.”
“I suppose I don’t,” Tamsin snapped, her guard on high as she glanced warily at the flowers littering the floor. She didn’t know who this girl was, why she looked familiar, or what she was doing in her house. Tamsin didn’t like not knowing things.
“My father has been afflicted by the plague.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Tamsin was not very sorry at all. In fact, she was rather relieved. This girl hadn’t come to finish her off. She was just another ordinary person desperate for a cure.
The stranger’s expression crumpled. She tugged at the end of her long braid so sharply that Tamsin’s scalp began to ache in sympathy.
“It isn’t a loss,” she insisted. “The tinker sells a plague preventer. Says it’s a cure. Which is why I’m here, actually—”
“Tinker teas will do nothing more than give you indigestion,” Tamsin cut her off. “If there were a cure to the plague, do you think anyone in this town would have fallen victim to it?”
The girl blinked blankly at her. “What does that mean?”
Tamsin drew herself up to her full height. Her reputation was supposed to precede her, yet somehow this girl did not seem very impressed. “That I’m very good at my job.”
“Very good at stealing eggs, more like,” the stranger muttered under her breath.
Recognition clicked into place. The last time Tamsin had seen this girl she’d been babbling pathetically in the marketplace, unable to put a price on her eggs. The relief was overwhelming. When the knocking had begun, Tamsin had feared a face-off with an angry witch. Instead she was holding court with a girl who peddled eggs. She let out a humorless cackle. The girl’s eyes darkened.
“Don’t know what’s so funny about stealing from a girl with a sick father,” she said, tugging again on the tail of her braid. “It’s criminal is what it is.”
Tamsin shrugged. “I gave you coins.”
“Fake coins,” the girl said sharply. “You owe me.”
Tamsin snorted with surprise. “I do not.”
A self-righteous expression spread across the girl’s face. “You stole from me. I demand payment. I’ll… report you.”
Tamsin raised an eyebrow. “To whom?”
The girl looked around the cottage, clearly grasping for an answer. “I’ll take it up with the Coven.”
Tamsin was growing annoyed. Yes, she had given the girl some buttons charmed to look like coins, but she had been doing the same to Ladaugh’s merchants for years. None of them had thrown a fit. None of them had had the audacity to show up to her cottage and demand payment. The townspeople might be giving her a wide berth at present, but at least that showed they still respected her. At least they knew—and feared—what she could do.
This girl had no such respect. Her small nose was wrinkled, as though she smelled something unexpected she didn’t know how to place. Her eyes roved about the room, sticking for several seconds on the ceiling before she forced her gaze back onto Tamsin, who was still staring at her with suspicion. She was terribly odd.
“The Coven would never listen to the likes of you. Just cut your losses and go.”
The girl’s gray eyes blazed with fury. “Would they listen to me if I was a source?”
Tamsin looked the girl up and down. The sheer audacity of her claim was almost impressive. “Well, you’re not, so that’s rather a moot hypothetical, don’t you think?”
“How do you know I’m not?” The girl jutted her chin out defiantly.
Tamsin stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Because you look to be my age. I knew every single person who studied at the academy, and I don’t even know your name.”
The girl scowled. “I’m—”
“No, no,” Tamsin said, holding her hands to her ears. “I don’t know, but more important”—she leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially—“I don’t care. Now stop wasting my time and get out of my house.”
The girl gaped at her. Tamsin idly untangled a knot in her hair. The verbal sparring had been entertaining if nothing else. A welcome distraction from flowers and leather-bound books. It had even given her a momentary glimmer of feeling—not joy, of course, but something. Now, however, she wanted the girl gone.
“Go on, then.” She gave the girl a small wave of dismissal.
“My name is Wren.”
Tamsin raised both eyebrows. “Good for you?”
The girl, Wren, pushed her chair away from the table with a terrible scrape. “Are all witches so awful?” It sounded as though she didn’t really want an answer.
Tamsin pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. Let the girl believe what she wanted. She wouldn’t be the first.
“Anyway, here.” Wren got to her feet and produced a letter from the back pocket of her trousers. “It was nailed to your front door. Don’t get out much, do you?” Her eyes lingered on Tamsin’s for a moment before sweeping across the dusty cottage.
Tamsin snatched the parchment from the girl’s grasp, her irritation fading as she caught sight of the sigil stamped into the sealing wax.
“Where did you get this?” Her voice was sharp.
Wren looked confused. “The front door. I already said…” She trailed off as Tamsin turned her attention to the words spelled out in black ink.
Due to the rapidly deteriorating relations between witches and ordinary folk, the Coven cordially invites you to join the hunt for the dark witch. Return Within to register. The one who locates the witch responsible for the dark magic will be rewarded a boon without limitations. Anything your magical heart desires.
Happy hunting.
It was signed with the High Councillor’s name.
Tamsin had gone a bit light-headed. Return Within, the letter read, but she couldn’t, could she? Not after what she’d done. She was banished, after all. Yet the note had arrived on her doorstep. Someone wanted her to return. It made sense, really. Tamsin was the only witch alive who had dabbled in dark magic.
The rest had been put to death.
She alone knew what it felt like to hold that raw, electric power in her hands. She alone knew how desperate a person had to be to use it. She alone knew what it was like to suffer the consequences.
Perhaps that gave her valuable insight. She understood. She could connect. And if Tamsin found the dark witch, all of Within would be indebted to her. She could stop the spell before anyone lost their life. She could redeem herself in the Coven’s eyes.
If the Coven forgave her, maybe one day Tamsin could forgive herself, too.
“Are you going?”
Tamsin shrieked, dropping the letter as she leaped away from the voice in her ear. She had completely forgotten about Wren.
“Why were you reading over my shoulder?” Tamsin brushed away a stray hair from her face, trying to regain her composure.
“Your face got all pinched.” Wren tried to mimic the witch’s expression. “I was curious.” She shrugged lightly, like she wasn’t nosy in the slightest. “So, are you?”
“No.” Tamsin pressed her lips together into a thin line. All the possibility of the moment had vanished. She didn’t deserve to be forgiven. She had been banished for a reason. Whoever had sent the call simply hadn’t been paying attention. It was a blanket spell, nothing more.
“But it’s dark magic.” Wren had picked the letter up from the floor and was jabbing it violently with her finger. “It says right there.”
“I know what dark magic is,” Tamsin snapped. She had to get this girl out of her house.
“Well, then, why don’t you want to stop it?” The girl leveled her gaze at Tamsin, almost as though she were staring into the heart of her.
“I do.” The words escaped Tamsin’s lips before she could stop them.
“Brilliant.” Wren’s eyes were bright. “We’ll go together, then.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I already told you,” she said, her brow furrowed with confusion. She took a long, deep breath. “I’m a source.”
Tamsin was starting to worry about the girl’s sanity. “No,” she said, taking a careful step backward, “you’re not.”
Wren crossed the room with surprising speed. She reached for Tamsin’s hand and interlaced their fingers. Tamsin began to struggle, tried to get the strange girl off her, but even as she flailed, something unfamiliar and warm spread through her, moving up her arm, nestling in her chest, fluttering in her stomach. For a moment, it felt like feeling.
At first Tamsin thought it was the sheer unfamiliarity of touching another person, that the sensation came from holding the hand of a girl who was probably pretty. Before the curse, pretty girls had always given Tamsin fluttering feelings. But then understanding clicked into place. It was the way she’d felt with Leya when they’d worked together in lessons as witch and source. Tamsin was like a bucket lowered into a well. The source was the water, spilling over Tamsin’s every surface, filling her to the very brim with magic.
Wren had been telling the truth.
She was not only a source, but a strong one, albeit chaotically untrained. She housed the kind of magic that would allow Tamsin to walk through walls by simply nodding at solid stone. Tamsin might one day be able to manipulate the hearts and minds of ordinary folk with the barest flick of her wrist. With Wren’s aid, someday Tamsin might be strong enough to cross from one corner of the world to another with a single step.
Currently, that sort of magic was merely aspirational due to the havoc it would wreak upon a witch’s body, not to mention the danger it posed to an untrained source. Sources were made of magic, and releasing too much of it too quickly had the potential to throw their beings into chaos. They could overcompensate and overheat their organs. They might accidentally drain all their body heat and freeze to death. But with the right training and cooperation between witch and source, the possibilities became endless.
Icy shame flooded her like a bucket of water. Tamsin had no right to imagine the possibility of further power. In fact, she deserved to have much less.
She dropped Wren’s hand, and the sensation stopped. Tamsin studied the girl’s face, the symmetrical nature of it. A pink flush had spread across her freckled cheeks. Tamsin tried to imagine marching into the academy to ask for a hunting license with this strange, unknown girl in tow. The Coven would throw a fit.
In the early days of her rise to power, the dark witch Evangeline had targeted the sources first. Back then, sources did not live Within; they were not raised nor educated alongside witches. In fact, most witches feared sources, for they knew the whispers of the ancients—that sources held the potential to reach the heart of a witch’s power and cut off her access to magic altogether.
But there were pages missing from the ancients’ writings. Pages whose absence implied a secret that sources did not want witches to discover. Evangeline, who had never been afraid of anyone, set out to uncover what that secret might be.
She devoted years to scouring the world for the truth, seeking out those who were made of the magic she so desperately craved. Evangeline used her charms to gain a source’s trust, muffling her power until the source believed she was one of the ordinary folk, until the witch had flattered the source enough to learn that spells cast from a source’s magic left not a single consequence to a witch’s being. A source could provide a witch near-unlimited power.
Power Evangeline had had no trouble taking.
But of course, sources were still people. They needed rest, care, tenderness. Evangeline offered them none of those things. When their human limitations became too inconvenient, she disposed of them and turned to the earth, siphoning out its magic and sending the world into chaos. Thus began the Year of Darkness.
After Evangeline’s downfall, the Coven became militant about rounding up magical children. Sources, they now knew, were natural gateways to the use of dark magic. Where before, Within had been only for witches, now the Coven searched all four corners of the world for witches and sources alike. They housed them together at the academy, where they could keep an eye on them. Train them. Protect them. Study them.
Tamsin didn’t know how Wren had managed to slip through the cracks.
If they were to go Within, it would be quite the strange homecoming for both of them.
Tamsin shook her head wildly. She could not believe she was even entertaining the idea. “I’m not going.” She couldn’t. Her eyes fell on the diary, still open on her bed. She couldn’t set foot Within. Not after what she had done to Marlena. Not after what had happened to Amma.
“Please.” Wren was in front of her again, her gray eyes wide with emotion. Tamsin felt no sympathy for her. She couldn’t. “I have to end the plague.” The girl bit her lip, clearly grappling with something. “And I need your help to do it.”
Tamsin kicked at a stray flower petal. If nothing else, the foreboding she’d felt when Wren first entered her cottage had all but disappeared. The girl wasn’t threatening. But she was irritating. “Why is this so important to you?”
Wren wrapped her arms around herself like a cloak. “My father.”
A buzzing started in the back of Tamsin’s brain.
“You care for your father, do you?”
Wren looked at Tamsin with confusion. “Of course I do. I love my father more than anything in this world. He’s all I have.”
The buzzing grew louder. “And that’s why you want to stop the plague?”
“I have to save him.” Wren stepped forward, closing the space between them. “Please.” Tamsin took a step back. Wren took another forward. “I’ll do anything.”
The buzzing in Tamsin’s head stopped, leaving a perfect plane of quiet. There were suddenly two options, each of them appealing. Either she agreed to help the girl and was paid in love so good and pure it would last her years, or Wren would blanch at the asking price and leave Tamsin alone once and for all.
Either outcome would suffice.
“All right,” Tamsin finally said. “I’ll help you hunt the dark witch.”
Wren exhaled a sob so sharp that she collapsed to the floor, a bundle of elbows and knees. Tamsin nudged the ball of girl gingerly with her toe. “But I will require payment. And I have to warn you, I do not come cheap.”
Wren looked up at Tamsin with dewy eyes. “I don’t have much money.”
“I don’t take coins.” A sneer spread across Tamsin’s lips. She had the upper hand once again. It felt familiar. It felt right. “I deal in love.”
SIX WREN
But I don’t want to love you.”
The incredulous words burst forth before Wren had time to truly appreciate what she was saying. “I just think that’s a bit… odd, isn’t it?” she backtracked quickly, trying to abate the judgment radiating from the witch. “To force someone to fall in love with you?” Wren’s cheeks blazed with embarrassment. She was certain her face was as fiery red as her hair.
Tamsin sighed wearily, rolling her eyes so far back in her head that Wren could see only the whites. “I don’t want you to love me.”
“Oh.” That was a relief. Wren had heard stories of love potions, how they made a person highly suggestible, always at another’s beck and call. The idea of being controlled, especially by the likes of Tamsin, was nothing less than horrifying.
> “I want your love for your father.”
The totality of Tamsin’s demand hit Wren like a load of bricks. She had hinged her entire life on being her father’s dutiful daughter. What would happen if she no longer was? Who would she be?
I’d be dead without you, little bird. Her father’s voice echoed in her ear. Her entire life, Wren had known that to be the truth.
But what if it isn’t? Another voice drowned out the memory, this one darker, sharper. Wouldn’t this be the way to find out?
“Absolutely not.” Wren shook away the wicked thought. The cost was simply too high.
“You didn’t even consider it.” Tamsin’s voice had taken on a particular whine.
“Do you understand what you’re asking me to part with?”
Wren was incredulous. If she no longer loved her father, she would hardly care if he died from the plague or not. Their entire quest would be moot. Even if they did manage to somehow end the plague, wouldn’t her father then die from starvation once Wren felt no bond, no duty to continue to care for him? Her father’s life hung in the balance either way.
“Love is not something to be taken lightly.”
Tamsin laughed humorlessly, her expression wry. “I wouldn’t know.”
Wren frowned, even as understanding dawned upon her. The witch’s eerily icy detachment. The dullness behind her brown eyes. “You can’t love.”
“Well, you don’t have to sound so smug about it,” Tamsin snapped.
“You know, that actually makes quite a bit of sense,” Wren said, laughing through the panic that had settled in her chest. “I was having trouble understanding how a person could ask for something so cruel, but now I understand. You’re heartless.”
Wren reveled in the pained look that flashed across Tamsin’s face. Perhaps it was the proximity of the empty-hearted girl, or the fact that she was acting so flippant about taking the most valuable thing Wren had to offer, but she wanted the witch to hurt as much as she did. “What would you do with it, anyway?”
Sweet & Bitter Magic Page 6