Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz - 39

From the moment Jerome caught up to her on the road to Shadowfade Castle, Violet had felt a confusing mixture of warmth and confusion.

“Just stall ’im,” Jerome had insisted. “Keep ’im talking long enough for us to get a few things together. And know we’re right behind you.”

So she’d expected her friends—but the rock goblins? A dragon ?

And now they were trapped.

The dragon roared again, and though she could hear no trace of Sedgwick amidst that mountain of angry stone, she winced to know he was at its core. The dragon’s wings brushed the walls, shattering what was left of the windows, and the castle shook again. It was coming down all around them.

“How do we get out?” Pru wailed, her violin clutched to her chest. Quinn and her bees, gathered in a swarm that crawled on her arms and torso like armor, weren’t far behind. Violet looked for the others and found Fallon on the other side of some fallen debris, crawling toward them, and Jerome at their side, digging through the plaster and stone trying to make a path, Bartleby at his back flinging rubble out of their way.

“We’re going to die,” said Quinn, and there was agony in her eyes for all that her voice sounded serene. “But we’ve done good for our home, and the people of Dragon’s Rest will be safe because of us.”

Nathaniel pulled Violet toward him. “I’m so sorry,” he said, leaning his forehead against hers. “I wanted to make it up to you.”

“Hush,” she told him, her mind ricocheting between options. “It’s going to be alright.”

“I never got to tell you.” His eyes were wild and his breathing erratic. “I—”

Violet put a finger to his lips, silencing him. “After.”

“But—”

Three moons, this man!

She said firmly, “Nathaniel Marsh, you tell me after. Now do as I say and hush . I’m busy saving all of our lives.”

He frowned, and she went about ignoring him entirely, focusing on Fallon and Jerome. Her eyes began to glow as she used her vines to help destroy the debris in their way. This destructive urge she felt to crush and throttle was the Thornwitch’s influence, years of habit rising to the surface, but for the first time since Silbourne, Violet leaned into it without guilt. The Thornwitch was part of her, and so was her magic. It was neither good nor evil, only a tool in her hands. And Violet was determined— choosing —to use it for good.

When the path was clear, her friends rushed to her side.

“That was a handy trick,” said Jerome, and for once he sounded impressed.

“Wait until you see this one,” she said with a tight smile as her eyes darted around what was left of the Great Hall. “Stick close to me!”

She led them toward the western wall, where she pressed a secret panel. The door opened haltingly, and though the corridor behind it was already collapsed, the doorway itself stood strong. Violet gathered her friends to her as the dragon reared its head and took a chunk out of the ceiling.

“Get close!” she cried, and they huddled around her as she drew plants over them like a blanket, building a wall of thorns that grew ever thicker, smashing through walls and forcing its way through cracks in the stone. Destroy, destroy it all , she urged her plants, gripping tightly to Nathaniel’s hand like a lifeline keeping her tethered to herself. Bring this terrible place to the ground, only protect me and mine. Magic rushed through her veins, pushing from her body and eagerly overtaking the castle with vines that gripped and tore. As she channeled more and more power from the well of magic inside her—the one that was well and truly hers—Violet could feel the thorns tearing through her skin as the Thornwitch truly unleashed her might. Faintly she heard Nathaniel cry out, but though she tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let go of her hand.

Violet focused on her spell, weaving thorny hedges dozens of feet thick as the ground shook and heavy weight pressed into their bubble of safety. Ever more, that horrible loud roaring of the dragon tore into their ears. It went on for minutes or hours, she couldn’t be sure, but when it stopped, she was stiff and sore and disoriented. Her vision swam at the edges, and she let her eyes drift closed as she was guided slowly to the floor.

“Violet,” came a voice. “Violet, it’s over.”

She was faintly aware of Pru standing over her, hands on her face. Violet jerked away, and Pru hissed as one of her thorns scratched her.

“I’m sorry,” Violet mumbled. She tried to retract the Thornwitch, but it hurt to even think about magic after all of that. She groaned.

“Think she finally gave herself magic burn?” Jerome asked with a chuckle.

“Not sure anyone took that wager,” mused Pru.

“Jerome did,” confirmed Fallon.

Quinn chuckled. “I can’t decide if I’d be more impressed or flabbergasted if she didn’t have magic burn.”

Then she heard Nathaniel’s voice, became aware of her hand still in his as he squeezed it. “Don’t try to get up. Rest a bit.”

When she came to again, there was a painful throbbing between her temples, but her thorns had receded. Her head was in Nathaniel’s lap, and he stroked her hair absently. One of Bartleby’s vines coiled loosely up her arm, for once not squeezing like a boa constrictor. The others sat in a loose circle around her, close within the small space, Quinn’s bees buzzing with a comforting rhythm.

“Awake?” Nathaniel smiled down at her. “Feel any better?”

She shook her head. “I feel like someone just dropped a castle on me.”

“I’ll make you a tincture for magic burn when we get home,” he murmured, brushing his thumb across her cheekbone. His hand was bandaged with what looked like a strip of Pru’s skirt, and she felt a twinge of guilt that swirled confusingly with warmth when she remembered how he’d refused to let go.

“Eh! She did get magic burn!” Jerome cheered. “Fallon owes me a beer!”

“I’ll buy everyone a round if Violet can get us out of here,” said Fallon, laughing.

“True,” added Pru. “Beer’s a bit hard to find in this, er, cave of thorns?”

Violet sat up, reaching behind her to squeeze Nathaniel’s knee. “Give me just a second.”

“Take all the time you need,” said Quinn with a smile.

“Did we do it? We stopped Sedgwick?”

“We did.” Quinn’s smile grew.

“And Peri? The rock goblins?”

Pru shook her head. “No idea.”

“What happened there anyway?” Violet asked. “How did you know they’d become a dragon?”

“Well, that part was a surprise,” admitted Pru. “But remember the book I found in the castle library? I learned all about them—as much as anyone really knows anyway. They’re formed when beings of immense magical power are turned to stone, and all that magical energy needs to go somewhere so it kind of animates itself. When a slide gets together, it can re-form into whatever creature it once was. There were so many of them, we knew it would be big. We just didn’t know it would be…that.”

Nathaniel scoffed. “Do you think they knew they were trapping us in here?”

“No idea.” Pru shrugged and threw him a look. “Haven’t gotten to that chapter of the book yet. Plus, Violet kept us safe. That was downright heroic.”

Through the weariness in her bones, Violet’s body heated in a head-to-toe blush.

“But can you get us out of here?” Jerome asked gruffly. “Reckon I’d take some more heroics if it means we don’t die like this.”

She looked at the wall of bramble around them, various bits of stone wall or wooden door frame wound tightly in its grasp. She stood on wobbly legs and closed her eyes, pressing a hand to the thorns.

Thank you , she thought to them, and instead of letting the magic that created them dissipate, Violet drew it back into her body like a great inhalation. Almost instantly, her headache disappeared, and though nothing else seemed to change, she knew it was working. The magic filled her, pouring back into her vast reserves until even that well felt close to overflowing.

Eyes still closed, Violet began to imagine a garden. She pictured her greenhouse and all the flowers in her shop. Daisies for Daisy and bee balm for Quinn. Hypoallergenic hydrangeas for Jerome, fiery red camellias for Fallon, and fragrant, edible herbs and spices for Guy. Vining plants for Bartleby. She added yellow tulips for the sunshine in Pru’s smile and marsh roses for the twins and the home they’d given her. Snapdragons for Dragon’s Rest.

For Nathaniel, she thought of the clematis that had knocked over his potion the night she’d met him and the mugwort she’d grown for him in a misguided attempt to help. Cherry blossoms for the tree that had nearly crushed them the night they first kissed, and dahlias and freesias and all the flowers of the riotous jungle that had grown from her worktable the night they’d made love for the first time.

The garden of her life grew and blossomed in her mind, full of color and life, but there was one person she was forgetting.

So for herself she added blankets of violets, purple as the cloak she hated and the sails of the ship she hoped she’d be brave enough to look for someday. For the Thornwitch—and for Guy, both of whom would always be part of her—she added a few rosebushes, beautiful and fragrant and, of course, thorny.

Violet took the magic gathered inside her and poured it into that image like a vast waterfall of power. There was no stinging or pain or even thorns beneath her skin. This felt good, yes, but even more, it felt right . The bramble beneath her hands melted away, and when she heard the harsh intake of breath from her companions, she knew she was done.

Violet opened her eyes and saw what she had created.

It was night now, but they no longer stood in a castle, or even the ruins of one. Violet’s magic had destroyed it all as surely as she had once sunk entire towns into bogs, but she hadn’t stopped there. Thick ceiling trusses had been grown into benches, shaped from the dead wood into something curving and elegant. Stones had been hauled by her bramble to form fountains and pools and pathways, and all around were the flowers she had imagined and so many others. They spilled from stone planters and beds that lined the paths, bracketed by hedges and flowering fruit trees, most of them a bit out of season. Under the approving eyes of the moons, everything shone silver.

“It’s beautiful,” whispered Pru, stepping out of their circle onto one of the paths.

Jerome sneezed loudly, pulling a polka-dot handkerchief from his pocket. “Great,” he muttered, setting off down a path to explore. “More flowers.”

Quinn’s bees shot off in all directions as she turned to Violet. “You made all of this?”

Violet drew a staggering breath. “I had some extra energy to burn.”

As her friends discovered the nooks and walkways of the garden, Nathaniel took Violet’s hand and led her in a different direction, awe painted on his features.

“This looks like much more than ‘some extra energy.’ ”

“I pulled my own magic back from those thorns,” Violet explained. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work.”

Nathaniel had the look on his face that told her he was in scientist mode, so she swallowed hard and set loose the thought that had been flitting in a frenzy since he’d found her in her shop. “I got the idea from the blight. I was so afraid of being the Thornwitch that I accidentally used every drop of life and magic I could source from the plants in Dragon’s Rest rather than touch my own. I wondered, maybe, when I spent so much of my own power to protect us, if I could repurpose it in the same way. Only, you know, without accidentally hurting anything around me, because it was my magic in the first place.”

He looked down at the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted again, blinking away tears. “I was scared, and trying to be good, and I thought—”

“Violet, I get it.”

Her breath caught. “You do?”

“Well, inadvertently blighting your neighbors’ crops and half the local flora? No. But I do understand desperately trying to avoid a part of yourself that has hurt people in the past.” He took a deep breath. “You’re the one who helped me see that it’s not the answer.”

“You had an accident,” she rebutted gently. “I was the trusted right hand of an evil villain. They’re not exactly the same thing.”

He rolled his eyes to acknowledge her point and let out a weighty sigh that cast dread into her bones.

“I’m going to ask you a difficult question now.” He waited for her to nod, her heart thrashing the whole time. “Will you tell me about the Thornwitch?”

And though it scared her, Violet did. As they walked along the paths of the garden she’d built, she told him the truth about Shadowfade and Silbourne and that day with Karina the Tempest. She recalled memories of growing up here and the gardens she created and the ship with purple sails and the day she realized she had been stolen rather than abandoned.

“I didn’t know how to trust myself after all of that.” Violet kicked at the grass beneath her feet. “I knew he’d lied to me but I still felt like he was right and that there was something wrong with me.”

“Do you feel that way now?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “That’s why I came to Dragon’s Rest, to learn who I was without him, to see if I could build something all my own. But I built it around a lie because I thought it was the only way to escape my past.”

Nathaniel took her hand as they turned a corner to discover a gazebo that appeared to have been grown from the ornate window frames of the Great Hall. Some of the panels were still fitted with colorful stained glass.

“None of us can truly escape the past,” he said as they climbed the stairs. Light poured in around them, casting them in a dappled rainbow of light.

“I know that now. The past is a compass; it’s what guides us to the future we want—and away from the one we don’t.”

“Even when that future means facing the unknown. Even when it means change .” He said the word like a bitter curse, and Violet laughed.

“I want to change. I want to be better than I was.”

“It sounds like you already are.”

“I’m certainly trying. And I’m going to keep trying.”

He drew them to a stop and turned to her, taking her other hand and gathering both in his. “I’ve never been someone who deals well with change,” he said, inching closer. “I turn inward when I fear I might fail. I lie to myself or I ignore it or I run. But I don’t want to do that with you. I know now who you once were and I can’t say if that woman would ever have made me feel the way I feel for the woman you are now. But I see how hard you’ve worked to create a life you love, and I want that too, even if it means change. I want a life that I am passionate about, in my business and my family—and with you.”

Her chest tight, Violet whispered, “I want that too.”

He tucked an errant curl behind her ear, letting his thumb linger on her cheekbone as he regarded her with bright eyes. “I love you, Violet Thistlewaite. For all that you are, I love you. For all that you are working so hard to become, I love you. I see you, thorns and all—and I love you.”

Violet’s heart was a bud, and in that moment it blossomed, petals unfurling, expanding, stretching toward the light of a sun she had thought lost behind the clouds.

“I love you too, Nathaniel Marsh.”

And that was the last she could say of it just then, for he hauled her against his body like he couldn’t wait a moment longer and kissed her soundly. Violet laughed against his lips, tasting mint and rosemary and the salt of tears that might have been hers or might have been his. It was the most perfect sort of alchemy she knew, because it all combined in this moment, with his hands in her hair and her lips beneath his and their hearts beating a harmonized duet against their pressed-together chests. Together, the way they were meant to be.

He loved her.

Pru’s voice cut through the air. “I hate to interrupt, because this is obviously A Moment, but you’re going to want to see this.” Violet and Nathaniel broke apart, foreheads resting against each other, chests heaving, arms still entwined. They had more to talk about, but Violet felt better. They had time now. Time for talking and more mistakes and making up and everything in between.

“Come on,” she said, feeling positively giddy. Hand in hand, they took off toward the sound of Pru’s voice.

Pru was standing with the rest of their group in front of a massive statue. A stone dragon curved around a lone figure, glaring at him with its eyeless face. It was Sedgwick, freed from his thorny bonds but trapped by the dragon’s huge body. Held aloft in his hand was the Eye of the Serpent, the gorgeous peridot gleaming in the moonlight, and at his feet was Peri, still and frozen as the rest.

“So it wasn’t a myth after all,” murmured Nathaniel. “Rock goblins really can turn living beings to stone.”

“Including themselves, apparently,” said Violet, crouching to stroke Peri’s still form. “Poor little thing.”

The group crowded around Peri.

“I can’t get over it,” said Fallon. “All this time, the legend was real. The Eye, the dragon…it was all around us.”

“Where’s the second one?” Jerome asked. “I see only one Eye.”

“I don’t know,” said Violet. “I didn’t see it back in the castle either. It must still be missing.”

“And now the dragon has come to rest,” said Pru, patting the beast’s stone tail. “Maybe someday the other Eye will find its way back.”

They stood in silence and Violet leaned her head on Nathaniel’s shoulder as his arm slipped around her waist. She allowed herself a moment to mourn her friend. “Peri deserved better,” she whispered.

Nathaniel squeezed her shoulder. “So we’ll do better.”

Her answering smile was teary. “Yes,” she agreed. “We’ll do better.”

It was a battle she’d fight her entire life, she suspected. Being good— doing good—wasn’t easy, but perhaps that was true for everyone, not just recovering villains. As Violet looked down at the statue of her friend, and the dragon it had come from, for the first time in her life she truly looked forward to that fight.