Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz - 30

“I’ve never been so pleased to be covered in dirt,” said Nathaniel smugly, kissing her bare shoulder.

She laughed, low and throaty, and looked around them. They’d ended up on a bed of their own clothing on the greenhouse floor, illuminated only by the moons. “You know we both have bedrooms within sight of this place, right?” She nodded toward the building, blurry through the rain that had begun to splatter and run in rivulets down the warped glass.

“I don’t mind,” he said honestly. They would have to make a run for it eventually, and would likely end up drenched in the process, but Nathaniel had exactly zero desire to leave this place, or her, anytime soon. “This is perfect.”

Violet snuggled closer to him, and Nathaniel allowed himself a few more moments of this gorgeous, relaxed freedom, because for once even the incessant buzz of anxiety in the back of his brain couldn’t convince him that any task or obligation was more important than the woman in his arms.

“I never expected this,” he said suddenly. “I never expected you .” He drew a hand up her arm, fingertips brushing along soft, pale skin, charting their path by way of freckles.

“Sometimes life gives us unexpected turns,” she responded softly, her voice barely audible over the drumbeat of rain against the glass.

He couldn’t argue with that. If he’d been asked only a few weeks ago, he’d have said there was no way he wanted this—with anyone—but now that she was with him, now that he knew what it was like to be with her, he wanted to shake Past Nathaniel for his stubbornness, for his inability to let himself have something good.

He held her tighter. “I’m beginning to discover that unexpected turns aren’t so bad.”

To his surprise, she sobered, her gaze drifting to the floor.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

He hmph ed. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

She sighed and said quietly after a moment, “It’s just that I wonder if you’d feel that way if you knew everything about me.”

He chuckled. “I can’t imagine there’s anything about you I wouldn’t like.”

But her answering smile was limp and sad. “You don’t know the parts of me that have been trying to get out. My past.”

“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. You certainly know I have.”

“Coming here was meant to be a fresh start. A way to be someone new. But I…I do want you to know me.”

His puzzlement must have shown on his face because she quickly shook her head.

“It’s a conversation for another time,” she said. “Perhaps when we’re fully clothed.”

“That might be tricky,” he said, trying to cheer her up. He wanted to hold on to his good feelings, not be drawn into his usual dark thoughts. “I plan on keeping you naked as often as possible from now on.”

He was rewarded by her smile, a real one this time, that struck him to his core with how it lit up her face. Desire stirred in him once more. Moons, she made him feel like a teenager.

“I can’t say I dislike that plan.” She stroked a hand over his hip in a way that brought his skin to life with interest and laughed at the trail of dirt her fingers left.

“Your hands are filthy,” he noted primly, sending her into a peal of giggles. “What?”

She grinned. “I’m over here trying to entice you with more sex and you’re—that was the most Nathaniel response ever.”

He froze, waiting for defensiveness to rise, but found there was none. “You’re right,” he said, cracking a grin of his own. “We’re literally lying in a bed of dirt. I’m being ridiculous.”

“I like your ridiculousness,” she said fondly, kissing his nose. “But if you’re really so worried about it…” She pressed another kiss to his jaw, then his throat, then his chest. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to avoid using my hands.”

Well. He wasn’t going to argue with that.

They continued in that vein for some time, and Nathaniel, for his part, was quite content to let go of the subject altogether. But afterward, her head on his chest and her hair fanned out across his shoulders, she said, “I think the difference is that your past was spent working toward an admirable goal, but you were blown off course. Unveiling who you were means brushing the dust from something that has the potential to be great. Looking into my past would be more like unchaining a beast.”

His post-orgasm focus was admittedly hazy, but even so he could sense that she was trying to tell him something important.

“I’m still finding my balance,” he said carefully, “but I do believe there’s a balance to be found.” He brightened at the thought. “It’s like alchemy, you know?”

She laughed, surprised. “No, I don’t.”

“Alchemy is balance, remember?”

She nodded.

“The bracelet I’m wearing, for example.” He held up his wrist. “The solution that gives it power is made with raspberry leaf, which actually increases fertility, but it’s balanced by pennyroyal and red cedar, which, by canceling out the raspberry and then some, creates a focal parity for the magic. I can then adjust that center through careful measurement and the addition of other ingredients until I achieve the results I want.”

“Oh, well if it’s that easy,” Violet teased, as though she was about to spring up and start brewing potions naked at his worktable. Blatant safety hazards aside, Nathaniel mused, he wouldn’t mind that at all. In fact, it was a mental image he was absolutely going to revisit later.

For now, he tamped down his hormones and said, “Well, not quite. But it is about finding balance. All magic is, at its core.” He looked around the greenhouse, and the mess of flowers that had sprung up on her table during their…activities. “Or at least, it should be. I still can’t work out how your magic powers itself.”

“What do you mean?”

He waved his hand around the greenhouse. “I mean this . I’ve seen you perform incredible feats of nature magic that would bring a practiced mage to their knees. You keep your entire shop stocked and fresh with plants that I have on good authority come from other parts of the world and are more long-lived than their natural counterparts. You just did”—he gestured to the worktable behind her and the jungle of botanicals that had sprung from the spilled soil and burst from the drawers—“ that without breaking a sweat.”

She smiled devilishly and nipped at his jaw. “I seem to recall exerting myself quite a bit during that last one.”

Warmth swept his body. “You know what I meant. Don’t you ever experience magic burn, woman?”

She raised her hands. “Oh, you mean like this.”

“Your hands?” Nathaniel frowned.

“The way they hurt when I do magic.” She clocked his face. “Is that not what you meant?”

Nathaniel tugged her hands into his lap, tracing her fingers with his. He’d never heard of anyone whose magic reacted like that. “Can you explain what it feels like?”

As she spoke of stinging nettles and pulling magic through her system like she was forcing it through a straw, Nathaniel grew more and more tense.

“Has it always been like this?”

“No,” Violet admitted. “Just since I…since I came to Dragon’s Rest, really. And it’s gotten worse lately. I assumed it was cumulative—that’s what magic burn does, right? It comes from overuse?”

Nathaniel’s brows drew together. “Well yes, but magic burn doesn’t happen while you’re doing magic, it happens after , as a result of drawing on too much of it,” he said with confusion. “And it’s more of a full-body exhaustion than a concentrated injury. Violet, this is something else.”

She sat up, trying to pull away from him, but he kept hold of her hand, massaging circles into the pad of her palm with his thumbs. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” she said, studying him. Every word sounded as though it was being torn from her. “It isn’t comfortable, but it’s my cost. For acting against my nature.”

Now he was really lost. “What does that mean?”

She shifted, looking supremely uncomfortable. “My magic isn’t…it’s not good .”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said.” She shrugged as if it were that simple, as if she weren’t spouting nonsense. “There are two types of magic inside me—one that’s very powerful and doesn’t hurt, and one that takes more effort. If I let the first one have its way, it wouldn’t be growing flowers for people’s weddings, so I use the second, even if it’s not comfortable.”

“Violet,” he said gently, tipping her chin so she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “Magic is energy. Energy isn’t good or evil, it’s just energy.” He wondered for the hundredth time who she’d been before she came to Dragon’s Rest, and who had let her believe such a thing.

“So you’re saying Guy Shadowfade wasn’t evil?” she asked skeptically. Even with his tendency to ignore social cues, Nathaniel could sense there was something dark and hulking behind her words, some missing puzzle piece in the picture that was Violet Thistlewaite.

“I’m saying his magic wasn’t—it was what he chose to do with it that was evil. Just as Sedgwick choosing to do evil with the blight doesn’t say anything about alchemy as a whole.”

“Hmm” was all she said, and he could tell she didn’t believe him.

He gestured to the colorful jungle she’d made of her worktable. “ That isn’t evil. A bit of a mess, perhaps, but a good one. Did making that hurt?”

“No, it didn’t.” She looked puzzled, and the most adorable little wrinkle appeared between her brows. Her eyes darted to him, and a blush crept up her neck. “It felt wonderful. Even if I’m going to have to replace all those seeds now.”

Nathaniel’s eyes wandered to the small chest of drawers, barely visible beneath the flower bed that had sprung from it. “Those were seeds ?”

“Mm-hmm. I’ll harvest more from the plants that grew.”

He remembered her telling him in the Smokewood that using her magic to manipulate an existing plant was easier, which meant whatever was hurting her when she used magic wasn’t at play in the same way. The little scientist who lived in his brain began taking notes, and Nathaniel sat up, dislodging Violet with a squeak of surprise. He pressed an apologetic kiss to her temple and stood, ignoring the protests of his limbs after lying on the hard ground.

“I need to try something,” he said, excitement bubbling in his chest as he pulled her to her feet. He tugged on his trousers, not bothering to look for his belt. Behind him, he heard a rustle as Violet donned clothing too. Nathaniel plucked one of the flowers that grew from the seed chest and examined it, sniffing the flower and rubbing the stem between his fingers. He turned to look for one of the conjured flowers as a comparison, his eyes flaring a moment when they settled on Violet wearing his shirt and nothing else. “That’s yours now,” he said, pausing to kiss her again. He wanted to see her wearing his clothes every day.

She chuckled against his mouth. “Good. I wasn’t planning on returning it.”

Scratch that last thought, he wanted to see her wearing nothing at all every day. He couldn’t even bring himself to be frustrated at how easily she distracted him from his task.

“How am I supposed to stay focused when you look like that?” he muttered, dragging his gaze over her from head to toe once more.

“Go on,” she said, shooing him toward his workstation with an indulgent smile, following close behind. Her expression turned sly. “Teach me, professor .”

Pleasure leapt through him, and any restraint he had mustered instantly vanished. Perhaps she was evil after all—she was trying to kill him, it seemed.

“Oh, we’ll be revisiting that , believe you me,” he growled, catching her around the waist and drawing a delighted laugh from her as he hauled her against him. He kissed her soundly once more before tugging her over to his half of the greenhouse. “But for the moment, would you conjure a flower for me, please?”

Now that he was watching for it, he noticed the tight set of her jaw and the little wince of discomfort before a round, yellow flower with spiky-looking petals appeared in her hand. He had a number of salves and creams at the apothecary; as soon as they were done here he’d fetch her a whole selection to see if any of them would help her hands.

Nathaniel took the flower from Violet and held it aloft in his free hand. “This, erm, flower,” he said, gesturing with the spiky one.

“A dahlia,” she supplied patiently, albeit with an amused smirk. “You work with plants for a living, shouldn’t you know this?”

He treated her to a look of practiced disdain. “If it has no medicinal or alchemical use, then no.”

“Aren’t they used to treat intestinal ailments?”

He paused mid-retort—dammit, but she was right—and booped her nose with the dahlia. “You’re awfully clever today, aren’t you?”

“Just today?” she teased, pulling the flower from his hands and twirling it between her fingers. He could feel himself getting distracted by her (again), and was very grateful that she didn’t seem to mind, though not so grateful when she pulled away from him, once again directing him back on track. “Now what’s this about the dahlia?”

“You envisioned it and created it using nothing but magic, and despite appearances, it didn’t actually grow from anything but your mind. It’s more like a fancy illusion brought to life. It’s real and corporeal, and like we proved with the mugwort, it’s at least partially organic. But it’s not a genuine flower.”

She shifted on her feet, looking defensive. “So?”

“So you’re absolutely brilliant, Violet. You’re creating flowers that have a scent and texture and—forgive me, I’m not as familiar with flowering botanicals as I am with herbs—seem to bear an exact resemblance to the real thing, and you’re creating them using nothing but your mind and memory. That’s incredibly advanced magic.”

She seemed appeased, if a bit puzzled. “Thank you?”

“But it’s not all you can do.” He held up the flower he’d picked from the overgrown worktable and the mound of flowers that had once been her seed collection. “This flower—” He waited for her to fill in the blank.

She grinned placatingly. “Freesia.”

“It grew from a seed, not your imagination.”

“Bulb.”

“Pardon?”

“It grew from a bulb.”

He shot her a look. “My point is you used magic not to form the flower but to encourage the bulb to start and complete its life cycle. Everything in the world has its own reserve of magical energy, you see, but some things far more than others.”

“Like the Eye of the Serpent,” said Violet thoughtfully. “It has its own magic, which users can draw on.”

“Exactly, but not everyone can draw on the magic inherent in everyday substances because they simply don’t have much to spare. An artifact like the Eye contains an immense store of power compared to a single seed—er, bulb .”

She smirked at his correction.

Nathaniel continued. “By pouring your magic into the bulb and asking it to grow, you evoked the energy that was already within it, the same way a water mage can bring a kettle to boil, or how the Clerics of Rava can shape structures from raw earth.”

“So that one’s an actual flower, then?” Violet asked. “And the dahlia isn’t.”

He shook the dahlia at her and turned to his worktable, where a sample of the blight was contained within a large glass jar while he waited for his new safety equipment to be delivered. “If my suspicions are correct, then yes,” he clarified, opening the jar.

He dropped both into the jar, Violet looking over his shoulder, and watched with satisfaction as the rot crept over the dahlia and, just as with the mugwort, slowed and stopped. The freesia, however, was quickly overtaken in its entirety, collapsing within the jar to become a stringy mess of black goo, soon indecipherable from the rest.

“So what does that mean?”

“Well, it means that the blight reacts to magic.”

“We knew that already, didn’t we? It pushed back when I tried to use my magic to reverse it.”

“Yes, but why ? Magic is balance, remember, so what is the blight balancing by pushing back?” He looked up at the rain-splattered panes of the roof, his mind whirring. “When did you say the pain in your hands started getting worse?”

“Not long ago. It stopped going away just after—” She sucked in a breath, her mouth falling open. “After I saw Sedgwick.”

Nathaniel took her hand between both of his and absently began massaging it again. “Magic shouldn’t hurt,” he murmured, kissing her fingers. “You said it first started when you came to Dragon’s Rest?”

She nodded, frowning. “I—yes.”

“Sedgwick came here that very same week, did you know that?” He looked down at their clasped hands. “And the ingredients he came looking for when he first came to the apothecary—how could I have forgotten?” Nathaniel thought back to that list. Minotaur horn. Mane of marea. Both were elements of magical creatures that could be used to perform powerful magic—or inhibit it. “What if Sedgwick is trying to obstruct your magic? The blight affects plants. Wouldn’t it make sense that he’d identify a powerful plant witch as a threat to his plans? That he’d take steps to deter anyone who could potentially stop the blight otherwise?”

Violet’s eyes widened. “You think Sedgwick is targeting me ?” She appeared thoughtful. Quietly, almost to herself, she added, “That…makes a lot of sense.”

Nathaniel squeezed her hand. “If we can figure out how he’s affecting your magic and counteract it, we could stop your magic from hurting you anymore.”

“And get rid of the blight,” she reminded him.

“Yes, the blight. Of course.” He smiled sheepishly. Distraction , he thought again, with no shortage of fondness. “That too.”

He’d been focusing too hard on the blight, but the answer had been staring him in the face all this time— Violet could reverse it. If Sedgwick saw her as such a threat, then it meant her magic was the key to stopping the blight. He only needed to help her unlock whatever alchemical means Sedgwick was using to hurt her, and luckily Nathaniel had a lifetime of experience as an apothecary. He knew how to combine alchemy and medicine.

Nathaniel reached for a pair of gloves. “I need to test a theory. I need to—”

“Get dressed,” Violet finished, smirking at him. “You need to put your clothes back on before you do any experimenting. I’m not an alchemist, but even I know you probably want to be wearing a shirt.”

He looked down at his bare chest. “Ah,” he said. “You are correct.”

“I often am, much to your chagrin,” she teased, and reached for her buttons. “Do you want your—?”

He grabbed her wrist, stopping her, and they stared at each other for a moment. “You undressing right now is going to lead us in one direction and one direction only,” he told her, smiling. “And as much as that’s a road I’d happily travel down again, Dragon’s Rest needs a solution to the blight, which means you need a solution to Sedgwick.”

She redid the offending button and stood on her toes to kiss him again. Nathaniel allowed himself to sink into the kiss for just a moment before pulling away. Truly, he felt he’d never be able to get anything done again in this greenhouse. If it weren’t for the matter directly at hand, he didn’t think he’d actually mind at all.