Page 39 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
“It was…volatile. I should have been clearer with them about that.” He turned his head, but he wasn’t really looking at her at all, or at least not really seeing her.
No force so vengeful as a ghost from the past, she thought wryly. She understood the look in his eyes, for it mirrored her own in the weeks since Guy’s death. Unbidden, delicate tendrils of vines sprouted from her fingertips and clung to the rough stone exterior of the building, gently reaching toward Nathaniel’s window in a way that could almost be accidental.
“I don’t know what they were doing,” he said. “If they touched it or tried to move it, or if it exploded on its own. If it was a stupid bloody accident no one could have prevented.” She watched his face harden to anguished stone. “I never got to ask, because they were dead by the time I found them.”
Violet couldn’t help herself; she gasped softly. The creeping vines froze in place.
She imagined Nathaniel coming home. Discovering—
“So now I’m here,” he continued, “running the apothecary like they always wanted. Trying to keep their legacy alive even though I’m the reason they’re gone.” He raised his eyes to hers at last,searching her face. “And who am I now to be delving into that field again? To delude myself into thinking I can reverse this blight?”
“Everything you’re doing is trying to help.” She kept her voice soft. “Why diminish your own skills when Dragon’s Rest needs you, and you have the expertise and knowledge of alchemy that no one else here has?”
He grumbled something in response that she didn’t quite catch.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” he said dismissively. “Just some new competition in town. It’ll be fine.”
“Another alchemist?”
“Yes. It’s made me realize just how much I miss it,” he admitted. “Following the trail set out for me by nothing but my own ambition and creativity. Researching, experimenting, the thrill when I find the perfect balance…I hadn’t realized how much it had become a part of me until I opened that door again to try and reverse the blight.”
“Then why not let that part of yourself out once more?” She kept her eyes on the moons while he gathered his thoughts.
“What if I make another mistake?” he whispered finally. “What if I hurt someone else?”
Violet considered his fears, his passions, the raw way he was laying himself open to her right now. “It’s terrifying to know you have the power to hurt someone,” she acknowledged, “and it’s tempting to lock that part of yourself away entirely. But that doesn’t make it disappear.”
She paused, thinking of her flower shop, of the smiles on her customers’ faces, of Karina the Tempest in the garden that horrible day.You could be good.“That power of yours goes both ways,though. Perhaps it’s not a matter of asking, ‘What if I hurt someone?’ Perhaps it’s about asking, ‘What if I could help someone?’ ”
Between them, a delicate white flower budded and unfolded, glowing almost blue in the moonlight. Lady’s favor, she recognized, the flower that had been given to the goddess Cesenne by her lover as a symbol of hope in impossible circumstances. It only bloomed at night, under the light of Cesenne herself.
Nathaniel froze, watching it grow, but when he spoke next, she knew by his tone and the way he was back to the stiff, formal shopkeeper that she’d lost him. “That is an admirable thought,” he said politely. “But I suspect this is something you couldn’t possibly understand.”
I do understand, she wanted to say.I know what it is to carry power that can destroy everything you love. I know what it is to feel the weight of death on your shoulders.With urgency now, she ignored the pain in her fingers and coaxed the vine closer to his window, the flower like a ship bobbing on the waves.
But he was already closing the shutters, already telling her, “Good night, Violet.”
Already gone.
Notes
Shame bubbled in Nathaniel like a cauldron beginning to boil. For more than a year, he’d kept these emotions at a low simmer, even among the people who knew him best. Pru had begged him to let her in, and old Guy—who had been so close with his parents—had sat with him more than once while he cried, but he’d never talked about it.
He saw the wreckage of the workroom whenever he closed his eyes, as though it had been tattooed to the inside of his eyelids against his consent. He felt his mother’s cold skin whenever he shook hands with a customer. Even the smell of the elixir he worked on now—a pet project, and nothing unsafe—brought to mind the scent after the explosion, the acrid sharpness of alchemist’s fire so strong that even experimenting on the blight made Nathaniel have to step outside more than once to settle his nausea.
But he’d prided himself on his ability to keep it all together, to hold steady so not a drop spilled where it shouldn’t. So why in the name of the three sisters had he chosen to overturn the whole damn flask? Tohis bloody tenant?
The witch was anathema to his self-control. A distraction he didn’t need or want at a time when he certainly couldn’t afford the disruption. Nathaniel had far too much to worry about—his struggling business, the new competition, his sister, and now this blasted blight—to be letting Violet worm her way through the protective structure he’d built inside himself. Nothing good lay inside those walls, he knew, only rotting, empty buildings haunted by old ghosts best left undisturbed. He was spent, past his prime, a broken thing. There would be no point to letting her in; he would only cut her on his edges.
For two days, he changed his schedule or conveniently popped back into the apothecary whenever she came to the greenhouse. He was subtle about it, of course; he didn’t want to offend her. But on the third morning after their conversation, he came down to the greenhouse an hour earlier than usual, while Violet was sure to still be asleep, to find a note on his worktable, next to his glass box of blight and the simmering cauldron that held his other work.
In her blocky script, it said,
Are you finished avoiding me yet?—Violet
Shame warmed his cheeks for entirely new reasons. Not so subtle after all. She’d called him out, and what’s more, she was entirely correct. Nathaniel raked a hand through his hair and looked around as though she might be waiting in the shadows, hiding behind the ridiculously large hydrangea bush she’d installed in the corner by her door. But of course the sun wouldn’t be up for another hour or so yet, and she was likely fast asleep in her bed.
