Page 25 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
“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 thegreen 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.Thiswas 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 thatstrange 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 meanHello backor perhapsYou 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 trustedher 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.
