Tamsin’s heel came down on Wren’s fingers. She yelped, letting go for one precarious second to shake out the pain radiating through her hand. Tamsin craned her neck down to see what she was doing.
“What happened?”
“I got distracted.” Wren’s fingers had turned purple.
“Something new and different for you,” Tamsin muttered.
Wren shot her a sharp look but continued her descent. It was quiet save for the fluttering of the breeze and the ever-present grumbling of stone. Lately even the sound of magic had turned dour. Where once stone had sung, now it groaned. Trees that had whispered now shrieked. Even water, which used to jangle merrily, like bells or copper coins, now rang out stiffly, like iron against an anvil.
After a few minutes, Tamsin stopped moving and peered down at her. “I didn’t steal any of that stuff.”
Wren blinked, not following. “Sorry, what?”
“The food and blankets we gave to the woman,” Tamsin said. “I conjured it. Brand-new, just for her. I never thought about where things came from before you. But this time I did. No one was left wanting because we helped her.”
Wren stared up at her, frowning slightly. “Okay?”
“I just thought, if you’re distracted because you’re trying to come up with another way to lecture me, you should know I didn’t steal it.” The corners of Tamsin’s mouth turned downward slightly before she shook her head. “It was more work—a lot more—but I did it. So I really, really don’t need another lecture, okay?”
“Hmm.” Wren made a soft, noncommittal noise. She couldn’t help but feel like Tamsin was trying to be kind. It wasn’t really working, but it did seem like she was trying. That was something. “Let’s maybe finish this conversation when we’re both on solid ground?”
“No conversation to have,” Tamsin said quickly. “Just thought you ought to know. Don’t look down.”
Of course that was exactly what Wren did. They had gone a long way, but the height was still dizzying. “Yep,” she said shakily, “I’m just going to focus on these rungs now.”
But it wasn’t so simple. She started to consider Tamsin, the way the witch lacked her usual bite. The way she had been almost kind. Wren knew Tamsin was keeping secrets from her—the leather-bound book, for one, and the way her eyes went cloudy sometimes, like she was looking far, far away, her sarcastic tone a clear defense mechanism for some sort of grief—but now she wondered if Tamsin had other secrets too. Secrets about herself, about the person she would be without her curse. The person she would be if she could love.
Wren shook her head. She was being ridiculous. She put the witch out of her mind, focused on keeping herself steady and balanced. Her arms were shaking. Her stomach growled. Still they descended. When finally her foot found solid ground, Wren was exhausted, from both steeling her mind and manipulating her body. Tamsin hopped down from the final rung, her boots smacking the cobblestones with a thud.
They had come out in an alley. The buildings around them were strange, a jumble of dark wood and light stone, pressed together and stacked upon one another like teetering piles of coins. Wren had never seen anything like them. The people of Farn practically lived on top of one another, whereas her closest neighbor was an entire cornfield away.
Tamsin, sidestepping puddles and discarded trash, led them under several low-hanging archways and down tiny steps built into the sloping hill. Wren followed, watching her feet. It was eerily silent. Despite the number of buildings, there seemed to be very few people in them. The people they did encounter were empty-eyed, huddled in corners, dressed in dirty rags, covered in their own sick. The black mark of the plague hung about the afflicted like blankets. Still, they shivered despite the late-afternoon heat. Their patches of lank, greasy hair, their brittle bones, their blank expressions, haunted her even after she passed.
Was that what her father looked like now?
Her stomach still squirming uncomfortably, Wren hurried after Tamsin, who had stopped a good thirty paces ahead, where the twisting alleyway opened up to the center of the city. Wren came to a halt beside her.
This must have been a marketplace once, a giant square filled with vendors and goods and wares. But now a great rift had run through the cobblestones to create a vast canyon. Wren took a careful step forward, still far from the edge but at a better vantage point. Far below lay the splintered remains of stalls and wooden carts, the carcasses of horses, and the bones of many, many people.
Giant black birds, their feathers gleaming blue in the late-afternoon light, circled overhead. Several perched on a horse’s giant rib cage, surveying their domain. One had a strip of flesh hanging from its beak. The stench was overwhelming, the sun so strong against the pavement that the heat shimmered before their eyes.
Bile rose in the back of Wren’s throat. She was suddenly and violently sick across the cobblestones. “Get me out of here,” she said sharply, her breath catching, her vision going spotty as she struggled to fill her lungs with air. “Please, I can’t look anymore. I can’t.”
Tamsin rolled her eyes. “Very well. Should’ve guessed you’d have a weak stomach.” But she ushered Wren away, offering up a corner of her cloak. “To mask the smell.” Wren took it. While the cloak had a musty scent to it from so many days on the road, there was still a hint of Tamsin’s magic, the bite of fresh herbs.
Wren focused on those herbs, listing as many as she could in order to distract herself from the horrors she had seen. Rosemary. Dill. Thyme. Sage. Tarragon. The birds’ black feathers glinted blue in the sun. Wren gasped and shivered, stumbling after Tamsin, not knowing where they were headed, not caring in the least so long as they got far, far away from the hole in the ground and the rank, rotten smell of the dead.
ELEVEN TAMSIN
Had Tamsin not been so focused on corralling a simpering, spluttering Wren, she would have noticed the men. There were two of them in the alley ahead, each nearly twice the girls’ size in both height and mass, their skin so pale it was almost translucent. One was bent over a corpse, rummaging through the poor man’s pockets. The other was picking dirt from beneath his fingernails with a knife.
Tamsin stopped. Wren, her face still buried in Tamsin’s cloak, rammed into her, causing Tamsin to stumble and swear. The men looked up with interest. The one in front was tall, with long hair so fair it might have been white. It was braided into thick ropes that were tied beneath his chin like a second beard. The man behind him had brown hair down to his waist, his beard just as long.
“Why are we stop—oh.” Wren’s eyes narrowed as she took in the scene before her.
Tamsin grabbed Wren’s wrist sharply in warning, sparks of magic pooling in her palm. Wren had the propensity to act rashly in the name of morality. These men were stealing from the dead. Wren could hardly be trusted to keep her mouth shut. And indeed, as she realized what was happening, Wren’s expression shifted from confusion to contempt. “What are you—ow!” The shout was directed at Tamsin, who had dug her fingernails deep into the girl’s flesh.
“Oh, come now,” the fair-haired man said, his accent clipped, his tone mocking, “I don’t bite.” He flashed them a glittering smile, made more unnerving by the exceptional whiteness of his teeth. Teeth that blinding were out of place against the man’s rough, rugged appearance. His clothing was smudged and fraying, his boots caked with dirt, and he wore a series of increasingly vicious-looking knives tucked into his black belt. The dark-haired man wore a grubby, matted fur and carried a giant bow slung over his shoulder.
Tamsin swallowed thickly. The blond man handled his knives too tenderly to have stolen them, which meant he was from Orathe, the wintry village in the North. Orathen hunters were well known for both their violence and their superstitions. Not the sort of men a witch wanted to meet in a darkening alley—for the sun was now setting, drifting behind the stone buildings of the city and bathing the streets in shadow.
“You shouldn’t be out on the streets alone,” the dark-haired
man said. “You need someone to protect you. Lucky for you, we take all kinds of payment.” He smiled wolfishly, revealing similarly garish teeth.
“No, thank you.” Tamsin kept her voice clipped and detached. “We’re fine.” She took a step backward, pulling Wren along with her. The man’s beady eyes narrowed, and he crossed the cobblestones quickly. So quickly that Tamsin knew it would be useless to try to outrun them.
“What,” he said, his breath hot and putrid even from a distance, “too good?” He eyed Tamsin with disdain.
The blond man sauntered toward them. “Maybe your friend here feels differently.” He held out a grubby hand, his nails caked with dirt, his skin stained with blood. Wren visibly recoiled. The man’s face twisted with fury, and he moved to grab her.
Tamsin flicked her wrist. The man’s long blond braids fell into a heap on the cobblestones. Braids that would have taken him years to grow, countless kills to earn. The man stumbled backward, his eyes wide—first from panic as he realized his hair had been shorn, then from anger as he realized it was Tamsin who had done it.
“Witch!” he roared, reaching for the largest knife in his belt. Beside him, the dark-haired man had removed the bow from his shoulder. Tamsin blinked quickly, trying to clear away the floating spots of light that had appeared in her vision as a consequence of the spell.
Wren tugged urgently on her hand, but it was useless. They couldn’t outrun the men who were glowering down at them with their weapons drawn. It wasn’t until Tamsin felt a rush of magic flowing up her arm that she realized Wren wasn’t trying to pull her away. She was trying to help. Tamsin’s vision cleared. The fair-haired man, who had located his preferred knife, stopped cold, his eyes on Tamsin’s and Wren’s intertwined hands.
“What’s this?” His snarl turned into a sneer as he examined Wren with disdain. “You’ll let a witch touch you”—he practically spat in Tamsin’s direction—“yet you recoil from me?” He took one deliberate step forward. Careful. Contained. The moment before the kill.
“My people are dying because of you and yours,” he said, his full range of fury now directed at Tamsin. He held his knife casually, in a way that belied his skill. “Your death won’t change that,” he said as Tamsin and Wren took a collective step back, “but it will certainly make me feel better.” He flashed them another blinding grin, and then he lunged forward, the tip of his knife aimed at the base of Tamsin’s throat.
Tamsin hardly had time to think. With one hand tightly wrapped around Wren’s, she spoke a long string of words, the harsh consonants sharp as they rolled off her tongue, and the magic flowed through her as surely as blood through her veins.
The ground beneath the blond man’s feet shuddered and cracked. Both men were jerked downward, their hulking figures falling through the cobblestones and hitting the bottom of Tamsin’s makeshift pit with thuds so heavy the ground trembled a second time. The men were trapped in a smaller version of the gaping fissure in the square, just large enough for their two hulking bodies and just deep enough that, even if one climbed upon the other’s shoulders, they would be unable to get out. Wren hurried to the edge and peered down into the darkness, but Tamsin hung back.
Without the warmth of Wren’s magic, cold came sweeping back into her bones. The adrenaline had already begun to wear off, leaving her with the slimy, sticky feeling of wrongness. Once again she had behaved rashly, choosing action over consideration. Once again she had used her power to hurt.
The men below were silent. Tamsin choked down the bile rising in her throat. Soon Wren would turn around and look at her with unmasked horror. She would realize the enormity of Tamsin’s power and the fact that she did not deserve to use it, not when it continued to destroy the lives of so many.
Tamsin squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t bear to see that particularly pained grimace splash itself across Wren’s round face. Before, she had been just another witch to Wren. But that was about to change, and for some strange reason, she didn’t want Wren to see her for the monster she truly was.
“I helped, right?”
Tamsin’s eyes flew open. Wren was staring at her eagerly, her expression wide and hopeful.
Tamsin’s stomach clenched. “I used your magic, if that’s what you mean.” She braced herself for the look of horror sure to come when Wren realized that she had aided in the takedown of the two men.
Instead Wren beamed, the smile lighting up her entire face. “That was incredible. I mean, I’m tired, but also I feel… exhilarated. Oh, you have a bit of blood.” Wren reached for the corner of Tamsin’s cloak and used it to dab away the streak of red from the nick on Tamsin’s neck. “I was always taught not to hurt anyone, but surely they deserved it. Is it wrong that I’m feeling this way? What is this that I’m feeling? Why am I talking so much?” Her face was flushed, her shoulders rising and falling with each quick intake of air.
Tamsin eyed the girl warily. Something was different about her. She looked taller somehow, her face vivid and visibly striking in a way Tamsin had never before noticed. She looked settled. Present. Alive.
It was entirely the opposite of what Tamsin had expected. But the joy was there, written on Wren’s face plain as day. A feeling so far from Tamsin that all she could do was marvel at it.
“What?” Wren’s smile slipped slightly. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Tamsin said, more confidently than she felt. If Wren wasn’t deterred by her action, if she felt something good, then maybe that meant Tamsin wasn’t as terrible as she currently felt. Maybe that meant that her actions had been justified.
“Agency looks good on you,” she told the girl honestly. “You look taller.”
“What?” Wren spluttered, pressing a hand to her cheek.
Tamsin narrowed her eyes uncomprehendingly. “Why are you flailing?”
“I—” Wren gaped at her. “You just gave me a compliment.” Her tone was accusatory.
Tamsin took a step back. “I did not.” She hadn’t meant to, at any rate. She’d simply been making an observation. Wren did look better when she wasn’t hunched over, when she wasn’t tugging on her hair or picking at her cuticles. Wren was always worrying. Of course Tamsin would notice when she wasn’t.
It seemed simple enough. She didn’t know why Wren had to start blushing everywhere. Tamsin straightened her cloak. “Come on, then.”
“Wait.” Wren cast a glance over her shoulder, biting her lip as she stared at the pit. Tamsin’s heart sank. The longer the girl looked, the more certain Tamsin was that Wren had changed her mind about the situation. “Do you think they’re going to die here?” Wren turned toward Tamsin, eyes worried.
“I don’t know.” Tamsin’s voice was so soft she hardly heard it herself. She didn’t want Wren to turn her back on her now. Not when they were so close to the Wood. Tamsin didn’t have the strength to go Within alone. It would be too easy to walk away.
Wren was silent for what seemed like an eternity, eyes fixed on the gaping hole in the earth. Then she seemed to make some sort of decision, nodding once, sharp and short. “I want his knife. The one he cut you with.”
Tamsin blinked at her uncomprehendingly. “Why?”
Wren took a moment to answer. “So he can’t ever use it again.”
“Do you even know how to use a knife?” She could only imagine the sort of inadvertent damage Wren could do with that sort of weapon. Yet there was something else, something in her that wanted to see what Wren would look like holding one.
And so Tamsin did not wait for an answer. She simply called for it, and the vicious, beautiful thing flew through the air toward her like an arrow. She admired it for a moment, the etching so delicate it could only have been done with a needle, before handing it over to Wren, who tucked the blade into her belt as though it had always belonged there.
They turned away, a surprisingly amicable silence between them. Neither Tamsin nor Wren looked back.
* * *
They were close to the Wood. Tamsi
n could hear it, the soft swishing of wind through the leaves, the names of the runes carved into the twisted trunks by the hands of her ancestors. It was an ancient magic, heavy and powerful.
A magic Tamsin had never expected to witness again.
She ran a hand over the mottled skin on her left arm. She wondered if the Wood would recognize her, or if it would send out a call alerting the Coven of her imminent return. She hoped it was not so specific. She hoped that it would sense only her power and offer her safe passage.
She hated that she did not know for sure.
“What’s wrong?” Wren was nearly ten paces ahead of her. Tamsin had not realized she had stopped walking.
“Nothing.” But her tone was not as sharp as she hoped. It seemed to only offer proof that the opposite was true.
Wren frowned but did not push. She merely waited for Tamsin to catch up before continuing on.
The trees were getting louder, their creaks and moans reminding Tamsin of the last time she had made her way through the tangled Wood, away from the life and the world she had always known. Away from the lifeless body of her sister. Cursed to be forever alone. She still remembered the way the trees had shrieked as she hurried past.
When the dark witch Evangeline had been caught using dark magic, the High Councillor had killed her. Everyone, including Tamsin herself, had expected that she’d meet the same fate.
But the High Councillor had banished Tamsin instead. Cursed her, yes, but let her go alive. She had been twelve years old. A child. Still, the rest of the Coven had wanted her dead. She was certain they still did.
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