Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz - 13

Wind pulled Violet’s hair across her cheeks and eyes until, frustrated, she tucked it all back into her cloak and held her hood tight over her face. The Smokewood, just outside of Dragon’s Rest, was named for the fog that curled between the silvery trunks of the spindly trees, as well as the bare gray rocks of the mountain around which their roots twisted and wound. A bee buzzed near her head, blown off course by a gust of wind.

“You’re a bit early, my friend,” said Violet to the insect. “But another month or two and there will be plenty of flowers for you.”

Spring was slow to arrive in the mountains, but it was beginning to show signs, the ground spotted with saffron-centered crocuses, dainty snowdrops, and clumps of purple hellebore. The color combination would look lovely in her designs for opening day, which was drawing ever closer. She spotted a young sapling, impressionable and perfect for her uses, and took her knife—reclaimed from Bartleby again that morning—to one of its green boughs.

It felt good to be here in the woods. Since Pru had introduced her at Market Day and Quinn had taken her under her wing, Violet had faced no more suspicion at the hands of the locals, but she had come to discover that socializing and interacting with them was difficult for her.

The other villains at Shadowfade Castle had never been Violet’s friends—they were her competition, and abandoning that suspicious mindset did not come easily. She suspected—or hoped, at least—that the practice of being friendly would grow on her, that it would become more natural with time, but for now, it left her feeling exhausted. A day in the woods, with no one else around her but the early spring wildflowers and the birds that sang from the treetops, was like drawing a bucketful of fresh water from a well she’d thought dry.

Behind her, leaves crunched.

She turned, her magic already rushing to the bare branches in that direction, ready to command them to her bidding. Twigs grew sharp at their ends like knives on the whetstone of her power, and the dead leaves on the forest floor rustled, ready to whirl around her like a cyclone, blinding anyone who might hurt her.

But it was Nathaniel Marsh who appeared through the trees, a wicker basket hanging from his elbow. His attention was on a patch of moss slung from a branch, and she watched with interest as he reached to collect it. He wasn’t scowling for once; in fact, he looked tired, those coal-dark eyes heavy-lidded but intent on his task, lips slightly pursed, black hair tossed by the wind. He had allowed his stubble to grow longer than usual, and it roughened the sharp edges of his jaw, cast his cheekbones in a shadow that made him look…“gaunt” was the wrong word, but foreboding. Secretive. Intriguing.

Violet released the dark magic, cheeks burning with shame for letting the Thornwitch’s instincts take over and for the thought that escaped before she could cage it—that it had felt wonderful to use magic the way she always had when she was wicked.

“Hello,” she said, stepping out from behind the tree. She winced at the change that settled over his features, something like panic, and then the stern mask that hardened his expression to stone.

“Miss Thistlewaite.” He nodded to her, staring down at his basket to rearrange his goods. Forearms , she thought dimly, watching his coat sleeves with something like resentment. There was something jumpy about him today; he seemed less willing than ever to make eye contact with her. He hadn’t caught her staring during her brief lapse in judgment yesterday, had he? He was one to talk if he had—all those unreadable looks in the greenhouse! All that scowling! The exceptionally indecent way he had rolled up his sleeves and wrapped her purchase! And now he wouldn’t even meet her eyes! It was rude, wasn’t it, to spend so much time watching her and then turn it off like this with no notice? How was she supposed to figure out the rules of the game if he kept changing them?

“I wish you would call me Violet,” she said coaxingly, banishing the odd sense of frustration she felt when he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Really. I want you to.”

His face spasmed like he was in pain. “You want— ” He spluttered, choking on his words. “You want ,” he said again, this time more to himself than to her.

Three moons, he was strange. “Is it such a difficult ask?”

“It’s not that. ” The poor man looked like she’d thrust him beneath a spotlight in front of a packed crowd—and she might not know him well, but she knew enough to guess that was his worst nightmare. “Violet. Yes, I can call you Violet.”

She caught her lip between her teeth—this was the most they’d gotten along since, well, ever, and she wouldn’t ruin it by laughing. “What brings you to the woods?” she asked instead.

He lifted his basket with those arms of his. “Foraging. Crow moss is quite useful for making poultices. And there are a handful of herbs that start their growth season out here this time of year. I’m looking to harvest them before someone else does.”

“So you can sell them in the apothecary?”

“Cheaper and more efficient than ordering from a supplier.”

She cracked a smile. “Plus this way they’re local.”

“Exactly.” He finally met her eyes. “What brings you, then? To the woods?”

Violet held up one of the boughs she’d collected. “I’m building shelves for my shop. Green wood is much easier to persuade than anything fully grown or long fallen.”

“Persuade?”

“I can create growing things from nothing or convince already growing things to do my bidding. It’s easier to ask green wood to grow and shape itself the way I’d like than a fallen log or hewn lumber.”

He narrowed his eyes, and she understood that something she’d said had set the wheels of his brain churning. Fascinated, she watched as he clearly set his thoughts aside and said simply, “So you’re foraging too.”

“I suppose I am.” She wanted desperately to ask him what he’d been thinking about, but it felt private and they were barely on civil terms. “It’s nice to be out here in the quiet, I suppose. Dragon’s Rest is a bit more crowded than I’m used to. Busy. Noisy.”

He hmm ed. “I’ll admit, I took you for someone who enjoyed that.”

“Because I haven’t rusted my mouth into a permanent scowl, you mean?” She cocked her head and grinned so he’d know she was teasing. “It might surprise you to know I’ve never lived in a city. Or among many other people at all, really.”

“That does surprise me.” He leaned against the tree trunk, watching her with inscrutable eyes. “You’ve adapted to it quite naturally. Everyone in town seems very taken with you.”

She narrowed her eyes, waiting for a veiled insult or scorching remark. But it never came.

“Is that a compliment?” she asked finally.

He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Is that so surprising?”

“From you? Yes.”

He looked abashed at that. “I deserved that.”

Violet softened. “It’s nice, sometimes, to escape the noise. To feel none but your own presence.”

“Sometimes, I suppose.” His expression darkened. “Though it depends which thoughts are there to keep you company.”

“That’s certainly true.” She nodded behind her and beckoned for him to follow. “Come on, I found a patch of crow moss over here earlier. I’ll show you.”

Crow moss, so named for its iridescent black sheen and feathery texture, grew best in early spring before the cold fully released its hold. Here in the Smokewood it was abundant if you knew where to look. Violet picked her way over roots and logs, checking back over her shoulder for Nathaniel to make sure he was still following her, and showed him to a large, flat boulder where it grew in thick patches. They dropped to their knees in the dirt and, side by side, set about gathering. While the basket steadily filled with downy black moss, a gust of wind carried his scent to her, a whiff of sharp mint and fresh rosemary that clouded her senses like stirring up a riverbed. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but the herbal mix suited him. She…liked it.

When they exhausted the boulder, she was almost surprised to find he kept to her side as they set off in search of more.

“Is business going well at the apothecary?” she asked politely.

“It’s…fine.” Once again, quiet settled over them like snow, broken only by the crunching of leaves and twigs beneath their boots.

“I’m hoping to open my shop next week,” she chattered to fill the silence. “Just a few more finishing touches and I’ll be ready to grow!”

She regretted the pun immediately, but after a stilted pause he responded, “I can’t be-leaf you managed it all so quickly.”

Violet whipped her head around to stare at him, but he avoided her eyes. Had Nathaniel Marsh just made a joke ? Wordplay, even?! She wasn’t certain what to make of this new development.

He changed the subject before she could probe any further. “Why do you forage for branches, green or not, when you could conjure them from nothing? Is there a difference in the strength or longevity?”

She shook her head, bristling as she thought of the mugwort she’d conjured for him, and his reaction to it. “My magic does hold up, you know, regardless of whether you think it has any medicinal use.”

Violet took a startling amount of pleasure from his abashed expression.

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

She settled and, after a moment, relented. “Growing them from nothing sometimes…stings a bit,” she said truthfully, flexing her hands and debating how much to tell him. “Starting with a living plant rather than air is easier for me.”

“So you do get magic burn,” he said, sounding strangely victorious. “I was starting to think you were some sort of legend.”

“Hardly.” Violet cocked her head and laughed nervously. “I have limits, just like anyone else.”

It felt like those limits had been staring her in the face lately. Her darkness still called to her, and though the new way of doing magic had grown easier, it wasn’t the same. Even before, she had not been infallible—after all, it had been five years and she was no closer to figuring out how to turn Bartleby back to a human than when she’d first transformed him by accident. (It was likely for the best, though she didn’t ever say so to him directly. Murderous as Bartleby the plant might be, he had been far worse when he had opposable thumbs and could lift a greatsword.)

“I certainly haven’t seen any limits,” said Nathaniel, drawing her from her morose thoughts.

And you’d know, wouldn’t you? she almost responded. With the way you’ve been watching me.

“Mostly,” she said instead, returning to a safer route of conversation, “I just forage because I like being out in the woods.”

He nodded slowly, accepting the olive branch. “You said you didn’t grow up in a city. Where did you come from?”

Violet prickled, though for once not physically. Still, the spindly boughs of a nearby hawthorn reached for her like it meant to wrap her gently in its branches.

“I was born on a ship in the Stained Glass Sea,” she said, reciting what little truth she knew. The hawthorn leaves tickled her shoulder, and she let them. “My mother was captain of a merchant ship. But I’ve spent most of my life inland.”

“Near here?”

“Sort of,” she said vaguely. Was he prying? Did he suspect her identity? Violet took a deep breath to calm herself. She was getting carried away. People were allowed to be curious, to take an interest in her life. It didn’t mean he—

“What brought you to Dragon’s Rest, then?”

For a split second, Violet considered showing him, letting the thorns that lived beneath her skin come to the surface and the green light of her sorcery shine through her eyes like a predator in the darkness. She could destroy him where he stood, pull roots from the ground to trap him in place or bury him beneath the still-thawing ground. Force poisonous plants to grow all around him, leaving him senseless or sick or hallucinating from their toxins. She could—

No.

She quashed the instinct, pruning it from her will like a branch that grew in the wrong direction. Violet Thistlewaite wasn’t the Thornwitch. Not anymore. Shoo , she thought, banishing the hawthorn back to its natural position. This was why she needed to be in constant control of her magic. It was too easy to slip back into old habits otherwise.

Nathaniel was still waiting for her response. With a sigh, she finally said, “Haven’t you ever wanted to start over?”

When no answer drifted back to her over the wind, she looked over her shoulder to find him watching her with a frown. For once, she could easily decipher the language of his expression, and she was surprised that it read like understanding.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I suppose I have.”

There was something in the way he looked at her then—sad and real—that made her think perhaps she was seeing him truly for the first time. They couldn’t be more unalike or come from more different backgrounds—and yet some inner sense told Violet that he understood and wanted her to know he understood regardless of whether he liked her personally. It made her feel warm all over, like she was on the cusp of casting off her cloak even in this harsh wind, but at the same time like she should clutch it closer lest he see more of her beneath. Was there a word for that feeling? And if there was, did she want to know it? Violet clenched her fists to brace herself against the rocking wave of that strange emotion and stared at him until she tripped over a root and careened into the soft floor of the forest, effectively ending her line of thought.

He dropped to his knees next to her in the dirt, his hands hovering as she brushed damp, silty soil and wet, decaying leaves from her trousers.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, scanning her carefully.

She shook her head and he leaned away, settling that mask of indifference back over his features as if the moment between them had never happened. Violet found she craved seeing him without it again.

“I’m quite used to having my hands covered in dirt.” To prove her point, she waggled her fingers, tugging at her magic until a white daisy crept up from the ground between them. Violet plucked it by the stem, handing it to Nathaniel. He took the flower from her, tucking it into his breast pocket like a boutonniere, and used his other hand to help her up.

For the second time in as many days, she felt that zing of awareness at his touch, only this time he didn’t let go or say anything rude. They just stared at each other, neither making any move to let go of the other’s hand. Violet wasn’t used to touching people—she wasn’t accustomed as Pru and some of her other new neighbors were to a hug goodbye or a casual nudge to punctuate a point, so she wasn’t sure how commonplace this was to feel so alert, so alive at the touch of another’s skin.

As a lock of Nathaniel’s thick black hair blew over his face, Violet could see her own reflection in his eyes, pale and unsure of herself, her hair whipping in the wind. Every time she’d found Nathaniel Marsh looking at her, she’d lamented how difficult he made it to read his expression, only today it seemed he had briefly pulled back the heavy curtains and thrown open the windows, inviting her inside to a room that felt surprisingly cozy and welcoming. Come and warm yourself by my fire , his eyes said to hers. Stay awhile with me, if you want.

A small part of her—perhaps the Thornwitch, perhaps the florist, perhaps some part she had not yet met—thought she rather did want that actually.

A small yelp broke the moment and had them both whirling around, hands still clasped.

“Did you hear that?” Nathaniel asked, sounding strangely breathless.

From beneath a scraggly bush that hadn’t yet budded any leaves for the season, a pair of onyx eyes watched them.

“What is it?” Nathaniel whispered. Violet realized her hand was still in his and jumped away, the cold air chilling her palm as soon as she let go. For someone who had so little experience in the act of hand-holding, Violet could already see how it could become an addictive drug.

“ Crrrrreaugh? ” A croaking sound came from the bush, and Violet let out a squeak of recognition as an odd creature the size of a small dog crept timidly closer. A rock goblin! Was it one of the ones she’d seen that first day in Wingspan Green? She couldn’t be sure.

“Hello,” she murmured as it—she? He? They? He, Violet decided capriciously—crept closer. A greenish yellow crystal made up the front of the rock goblin’s chest, translucent and prominent against the dusty granite of the rest of him like a gleaming breastplate. The goblin opened his blunt-nosed snout, displaying a row of smooth polished rocks where teeth would normally be, and let out a little croaking bleat that Violet took to mean Hello back or perhaps You look delicious, I’m going to eat you now. She didn’t speak rock goblin so she couldn’t be sure.

But Violet knew what it was to be feared, and she also trusted her magic enough to know she wouldn’t go down easily even if the rock goblin tried something, so she remained still.

“Where’s the rest of your slide, little friend?”

The creature let out another one of those bleating sounds and skittered a few steps away. He looked back and whipped his blocky little head around in a passable imitation of a nod.

“Are rock goblins intelligent?” Nathaniel asked. “Is he asking us to go with him?”

“I have no idea.” But Violet was already following him, and with every step she was more convinced the rock goblin was indeed leading them somewhere.

“We should be careful,” Nathaniel said. “Rock goblins travel in groups. He could be leading us into a trap.”

As if in response, they heard that yelping again.

Violet frowned at the rock goblin, who remained still, watching her with unblinking, stony eyes. “That wasn’t you, was it? It didn’t sound anything like the noise you made before.”

The rock goblin took three steps toward another scraggly bush and then sat on his haunches, staring up at her again expectantly.

With Nathaniel’s warning in mind, Violet knelt to the ground, her magic at the ready.

“Hi there,” she said, and leaned down to peer beneath the bush.

A flash of pale fur caught her eye. Not another rock goblin, then. Violet grew bolder, leaning toward it. A rumbly growl rang from the space, followed by another barking little yelp.

“I think it’s…” She laughed, clapping one of her filthy hands over her mouth. “Nathaniel, it’s a dog!”

Sure enough, a small puppy cowered beneath the bush. She had pale yellow fur, speckled with mud and matted against her body, and dark brown eyes that regarded Violet suspiciously.

The rock goblin had disappeared.

“I won’t hurt you, little friend,” she said in a low, calming voice, reaching out a hand. The dog barked back and growled again, cowering away from Violet.

“Here,” said Nathaniel, squatting down next to her. He pulled a small, wrapped item from his pocket and handed it to her. Violet pulled back the paper and was suddenly overwhelmed by the mouthwatering scent of roasted ham, sage, and gooey cheese, all wrapped in flaky golden dough and kept warm by some enchantment on the wrapping paper.

“A family friend of ours makes them,” Nathaniel explained, tearing a corner from the pastry. His eyes were on the puppy and softer than she’d ever seen them. “Guy—not the bad Guy, he’s—”

“We’ve met.”

“Yes, well.” Nathaniel’s eyes went back to the pup. “Perhaps our new friend might be hungry.”

Nathaniel Marsh was evidently a dog person. Her heart thawed as he knelt next to Violet and held the piece of pastry out with an open palm. “Hello there,” he said in a low, coaxing voice that was kinder than she’d thought he was capable of. “Would you like a bite to eat?”

The puppy stopped growling when she smelled the food and crept forward. A thin scratch wove across the side of her nose, and there was a small notch missing from her ear.

“She looks young.” Nathaniel’s low voice, much closer to Violet’s ear than she’d anticipated, carried a slight rasp that sent an inexplicable wash of heat through her. Surprise, she reasoned. She hadn’t realized they were so close.

“Much too young to be away from her mother,” she agreed, smiling when the puppy swiped the food from his hand and dashed back to safety beneath the bush. She tore another piece from the pastry and handed it to her. “Another?”

It took three bites before the puppy would let Nathaniel scratch behind her ears. After the fifth bite, they were nearly out of food, but the puppy barely protested when Nathaniel scooped her into his arms.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, scratching her neck. “Where’s your mama? Your siblings?”

Violet eyed the scratch on the pup’s nose, the mud caked into her fur. “I don’t think she has any.”

The puppy nuzzled into Nathaniel’s coat and sniffed at the daisy in his pocket.

“Ah,” he said, pulling her away from the flower. “I don’t think that’s going to be good for you.”

Violet smiled. “They’re just about the same color. Maybe she just wants to wear it instead.”

“She sprung from nowhere like one as well. Perhaps we should call her Daisy.” Nathaniel’s eyes were firmly on the dog as he scratched her neck and checked her over for injuries. He murmured sweet words into her ears and allowed her, his face stern as ever, to lick his stubbly cheeks. Any thoughts Violet might have harbored about taking the puppy for herself dried up like a leaf in the desert when she saw that his look of fondness never wavered, even when the puppy left muddy paw prints all over his clean clothes and upset some of the herbs in his basket during a particularly energetic bid for belly rubs. It was clear where she would find her home.

“Daisy it is,” Violet agreed quietly, smiling at them.