The idea that Wren was intimidated by a girl she had never even heard Tamsin mention was far more worrisome. She didn’t understand why she cared, why she was sprawled on the floor, gossiping with Leya, when the entire trajectory of her life had changed. She could never go back to Ladaugh. She would never see her father’s face again.
“Who’s Marlena?” Wren tried to sound flippant, but the buzzing in her body made it clear exactly how badly she wanted to know. She wanted to know the type of girl who had stolen Tamsin’s heart back when she’d had a heart to steal. She wanted to know the kind of girl Tamsin had loved. She wanted… Wren wanted the witch.
The feeling was startling yet certain. Unfathomable yet entirely true. Wren didn’t know when it had happened, when she had begun to see Tamsin as someone to be desired. Never learn to love someone untouchable, the woman in Farn had said, but of course Wren had disobeyed. Had found herself in this impossible situation: falling for a girl who could not love.
She hated that Leya was there to witness it.
The other girl simply stared at Wren. Then understanding dawned across her face. “She didn’t tell you.” Leya began to laugh, an incredulous, hysterical sound that echoed around the empty room.
“Tell me what?” Wren’s cheeks were growing warm. Her forearm, where the Coven’s symbol lay, itched so fiercely it was painful.
“Oh. Oh no.” Even as Leya continued to laugh, her eyes examined Wren with pity. “You don’t even know what you don’t know, do you?”
Wren’s cheeks flushed with frustration. She hated being treated like a child. “I know things. We’re a team.”
“I’m sure that’s what she told you.” Leya pushed herself to her feet. “Careful there.” She flashed Wren a small smile, the red of her lips garish against her white teeth. Then she turned and walked away, the swish of her skirt echoing like laughter, leaving Wren alone in the darkening hall.
FIFTEEN TAMSIN
Your sister isn’t dead.
Tamsin had spent five years yearning for those words, but now that she was finally faced with them, she didn’t know how to react. She wanted to scream, wanted to retch, wanted to hurl her sister’s diary across the room. It was more than she had expected to feel, considering that she had no store of love left in her heart. It was more, but it was still not enough.
Marlena was alive. She was out there, somewhere. For five years, Tamsin’s twin had lived, and she had never known.
“But I saw her.” A nagging disbelief pushed its way forward. Tamsin had been forced to stand on the black marble floor of the Grand Hall and watch her sister die. “When you severed the bond, she collapsed. I put flowers on her grave.”
The betrayal was so enormous it felt as vast and impossible as the sea.
Vera pursed her lips, looking uncomfortable. “The bond was never fully severed. It was clever, tying your sister’s life to your power. It made it nearly impossible for the source to extract the dark magic in its entirety. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. One small thread remained.”
“When did you find out?” Tamsin’s breathing was coming in ragged fits.
“Immediately after the bond was broken, I took your sister’s body to the northern tower. I needed a moment alone to say good-bye. A mother should never outlive her child.” Vera sniffed sharply. “As I clutched her frozen hand, I felt a pulse so faint I thought I was imagining it. But I wasn’t. She still clung to the lifeline between the two of you. So I kept her hidden away in the tower. You and I buried an empty coffin.
“She stayed asleep all these years. It was a gift, really. If the Coven had ever discovered that she’d survived, if they’d guessed there was still a hint of dark magic left between you…” She trailed off, her long nails raking through her hair. “I made a decision to put my family first. I did what I had to do to save my daughter. And the world is paying for it now.”
Tamsin laughed bitterly. She had spent so many years mourning her sister. Blaming herself. She let her breath out slowly, trying to control the rage bubbling beneath her skin. “All these years she was alive and you never told me.”
Vera at least had the decency to look guilty. “When it came to Marlena, you had such a need to prove yourself, a need to be her champion, to secure her love. After what you’d done, I couldn’t let you stay here. But I knew the only way to get you to go was to make you believe the worst.”
“I did what I had to do. I saved her when you wouldn’t.” Tamsin still remembered Vera’s pinched frown, the hard look in her eyes as she refused Tamsin’s plea. “She might not have been powerful, but she was still worth saving.”
Vera sighed. “You were always so focused on what was right in front of you that you could never see the bigger picture. You loved Marlena so much that you forgot about the rest of the world. But all she ever wanted was the world. And your actions nearly destroyed it.”
It was all so impossible Tamsin could hardly wrap her head around it.
“I don’t understand. If Marlena is asleep, how is she the dark witch?” She looked down at the diary, still clutched in her white-knuckled hands.
“She finally woke up.” Vera glanced at the floor. “Your sister awoke and escaped from the north tower the morning of your seventeenth birthday.”
Tamsin shook her head uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean, ‘escaped’? How?”
“I don’t know.” Vera looked pained. “She shouldn’t have been able to do it. I used blood wards to keep her locked inside. It would have taken an ordinary witch months to undo the number of enchantments. But she was just… gone.”
Vera pushed herself away from the desk, her shoes clacking against the stone floor. “There was only a tiny thread of dark magic between the two of you, just enough to keep Marlena alive. I didn’t expect her to wake up. I certainly didn’t expect her to use it for her own purposes. To flee the academy. To cast her own spell.” Vera settled herself carefully behind her desk, her hands folded atop several scattered pieces of parchment.
Her own spell. Surely that couldn’t mean the plague had come from her sister. Evangeline’s sickness had targeted those without power. Marlena knew what it was like to suffer at the hands of magic, had been outspoken about the dark witch’s intolerance and cruelty toward ordinary folk. She would never have cast a spell that subjected others to the same terrible fate.
“She wouldn’t.” Tamsin shook her head. “She couldn’t. She doesn’t have the stamina. It doesn’t make sense.”
“And yet…” Vera sighed wearily. “I tried to suppress the plague, but the magic behind it is too furious. Too raw. I could not keep up.”
Tamsin had never before heard her mother admit a limitation to her power. It revealed the sheer magnitude of their predicament. The urgency, the necessity of what they were facing. The reality of what one ill-fated decision had grown into.
“After Evangeline, we formed the Coven so that we would never have to witness such brutality again.” Vera massaged her temples, her eyes squeezed shut. “We only recently were able to repair relations between witches and ordinary folk. This plague cannot continue. The spell must be broken.”
Vera shifted slightly in her seat. “I fear it will soon be too late to return the world to the way it was. The Coven is exhausted. The queen wants a witch to burn for this. If anyone gets wind of the truth, I have no doubt that the rest of the Coven will strip me of my title and kill you in order to break the bond of dark magic that still exists between you and your sister. Without your power fueling her, Marlena will lose her life too.”
Her mother was gazing at Tamsin with an emotion she could not name. “It is your bond that keeps your sister living. You must find a way to break it. You must stop her spell.”
“Me?” Tamsin spluttered. “But if I break it, she’ll die.” It took everything she had to choke the words out.
Vera leaned across the desk. “Maybe. But maybe not. If you work together.”
“How?” Tamsin despised the desperation in her voice
. “Marlena hates me.” The truth of it twisted in her gut like a knife.
Vera smiled sadly. “She doesn’t hate you. You’re just different people. And you were never willing to admit that.” She straightened the stack of books beside her. “Find your sister, Tamsin. Make your peace. End this,” Vera implored, “for all of us.” And then she rose from her desk and swept toward the door, giving Tamsin a curt nod. She was High Councillor Vera again. Tamsin’s mother was gone.
* * *
It was strange the way the light still fell at the same slant through the tall windows, the moon pooling on the floor beneath her feet. Tamsin stepped carefully, her skirt whispering against her ankles as she crept down the corridor the way she had so many times before. Only this time she was not sneaking out of bed to meet Leya, a flame concealed beneath her cloak. The two of them would not sprawl on the floor of the library, concealed by the dusty stacks, sharing secrets—and, occasionally, soft, searching kisses. There had been a delicious hope to the darkness then.
Now the west wing was empty, the dormitory doors flung open, revealing haphazardly made beds, lonely shoes, wrinkled robes. The inhabitants of those rooms had left in a hurry, likely sent back to their families in the wake of the new darkness. Marlena’s darkness. It took some effort to even think her sister’s name in such a context. It made no sense.
Tamsin paused, eyes catching on a room’s four abandoned beds. She and Marlena, assigned to the same lower-form dormitory, had both claimed top bunks. Tamsin had wanted to see her sister at all times. Marlena had wanted to be closer to the sky.
She leaned against the door frame, slumping slightly against the smooth wood. Five years. She had gone five years believing her sister was dead. Five years and she had never suspected. Never doubted. And all the while, Marlena had slept, locked in a tower behind a shield of spells.
Would she have wanted Tamsin to rescue her? Or would she have been grateful to be left alone for the first time?
Either option made her feel ill. Either way, she had failed Marlena by being not enough or by being too much.
It was the reason Vera had insisted on her curse. When Tamsin loved, she loved too hard. It made her dangerous. Never before had that been so clear. Tamsin’s love hurt people.
She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, wishing desperately that she could cry. Anything to release the terrible, terrible ache in her chest, the stiffness of her heart, the guilt pooling in her lungs. It was all her fault.
She had no idea what she was going to tell Wren.
Wren.
She had nearly forgotten about the source, left alone to face the Six. Tamsin hurried to the end of the corridor, faltering as the door opened before she reached it. She tensed, waiting for a reprimand or a gasp as the person on the other side registered her presence. Instead she was met with a familiar red-lipped frown.
It was odd knowing that once Leya had made her feel. For as she stared at her now, she saw nothing but a girl.
“Are you following me?”
Leya rolled her eyes. “Again,” she said, her voice flat, “I live here, so in fact one could argue that you are following me.”
Tamsin swayed slightly, exhaustion creeping through her bones like a morning frost. She used the wall to steady herself, rested her head against it.
Leya’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Tamsin reluctantly lifted her cheek from the stone.
“Make me feel sorry for you. I can’t handle that.” Her words were harsher than her tone.
“I’m sorry,” Tamsin said. “I haven’t slept in two days.”
Leya snickered. “No kidding. You look awful.”
“I’m sorry,” Tamsin said again.
Leya sniffed. “What’s the matter with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you were my best friend for ten years, and you’ve apologized to me more in five minutes than you ever did then.”
Tamsin sighed, guilt flickering in her chest. Another casualty of her carelessness.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, then winced. Leya snorted.
“She really did a number on you, didn’t she? I can see the earnestness written all over your face.”
“Who?”
Leya blinked blankly at her. “My replacement.”
“Wren?”
“No,” Leya snapped, “the other source you brought along. Yes, Wren.” She slumped against the wall next to Tamsin, pressing a foot up behind her. “How did you even find her? I thought we had every source in all four corners of the world.”
So had Tamsin until Wren had appeared at her door. “She came to me.”
“Of course she did,” Leya muttered darkly.
“What does that mean?” Tamsin turned her head to face the girl who had once been her friend.
“That you were always going to be okay, no matter what happened.” Leya turned away from Tamsin, her eyes fixed on the window across the corridor. “It means I did the right thing, telling you no.”
Tamsin frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Leya’s laugh echoed in the empty corridor. “Did you ever care for me? Even a little? Even just as a friend?” Her eyes flitted across Tamsin’s face hopefully. “Before, I mean.”
“Of course I did.” The question was unfathomable. Even though she couldn’t remember loving Leya, she knew she had. She had been in awe of her, the way magic was so intrinsic to her person, the confidence she’d possessed. The way she made Tamsin feel important and full of potential.
“Then why did you ask me to help you?” Leya brushed her hair in front of her eyes the way she always did when she was close to tears. “They would have killed me, and you didn’t care at all.”
“That isn’t true.” But maybe in some small way it was.
Tamsin had thought that her return Within would be a chance for redemption. A way to set things right. But there was still so much to repent for.
“Just don’t do the same thing to Wren,” Leya sighed, sounding resigned. “She likes you, you know.” Tamsin nearly hit her head on the wall in surprise.
“Wren?” Leya’s words were unfathomable. “No, she doesn’t. I’m awful.”
Leya snickered. “Now, that we can both agree on.” She pushed herself away from the wall. “Good luck,” she said, “with whatever you came here to do.”
“Thanks.” Tamsin ran a finger absentmindedly against the black ribbon around her throat. “I’m going to need it.”
“You probably won’t,” Leya said, smiling sadly before continuing down the corridor.
It was all Tamsin was going to get in the way of good-bye.
SIXTEEN WREN
Wren was restless. Although the flames in the torches on the walls still burned bright, the outside sky had grown light. The fresh mark upon her skin had stopped its throbbing and become a sure, steady pain.
Still Tamsin had not appeared.
Wren shifted her position on the marble floor. She had lost feeling in one of her legs but was too exhausted to pull herself to her feet. She drummed an empty rhythm on the floor with her fingers, playing in time with the echoes of magic floating near the rafters.
Leya had left Wren alone with her thoughts, and rather than unpack the meaning behind the fluttering of her stomach and the twisting envy in her gut, Wren had given in to the sounds of magic: its broad, swooping notes, its grating scrapes, its lulling, unchanging pulse.
The hall was filled with it, the history of every bit of magic ever performed within the confines of its black walls. Some spells lilted with hope; others cried like crashing waves. Wren managed to find a melody: several bright, careful notes that kept repeating. She tried her hand at whistling, but her lips went dry with the effort.
Wren faltered, a note catching in her throat as the door at the back of the hall scraped open. She scrambled to her feet, wobbling slightly as she put weight on her dead leg.
Tamsin moved swiftly forward, the low b
lue flames cutting a sharp shadow across her face. Her jaw was set, her expression hard. She might have been carved from stone were it not for the wildness in her eyes.
It was an uncertainty, more contained than Leya’s raw energy but less focused than the fire Wren had spotted within High Councillor Vera. Something was wrong, but even as Wren understood that an event of great magnitude had occurred, she watched Tamsin hide behind her steely expression, watched her build back up the walls that kept her safe.
“Hi,” she said simply.
“Hi?” Wren blinked at her uncomprehendingly. “That’s all you have to say to me? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering what else you couldn’t be bothered to tell me. Not only were you banished, but your mother is the head of the Coven?” She threw up her hands helplessly. “Was this all just a joke to you? Am I a joke?”
“You’re not a joke.” Tamsin scrubbed a hand across her face.
“Well, you’re making me feel like one.” Wren was tempted to shout, thought that hearing her anger bounce off the vaulted ceiling might give her some release, but instead she crumpled, her left leg giving out and sending her back to the floor.
Tamsin stared down at her with trepidation. “Are you all right?”
Wren’s laugh was a wicked, snarling thing that ripped through her throat and brought tears to her eyes.
“No.” She fought to keep her voice level, but instead it came out as a growl.
Tamsin merely blinked. She didn’t push, didn’t ask her to explain. Wren wished she would. But when Tamsin offered up a frigid hand to help her back to her feet, Wren took it.
“You’re always so cold,” she said as Tamsin pulled her up. Nose to nose with the witch, Wren was suddenly quite aware of the stale taste in her mouth. She held her breath.
The witch stared at her with amusement. “Maybe you’re just warm.”
Sweet & Bitter Magic Page 17
