He shoved the letter into his pocket and looked up at the moons in the sky. Rava would wane and wax three more times before he had to start making the new payments. A bit less, now, because he’d felt absolutely frozen in the week and a half since he received the letter.
Nathaniel was trying his best to follow his mother’s example, but he didn’t have her patience or knowledge, and besides, the warlock who bespelled their greenhouse had disappeared a few years back, probably a victim of Shadowfade’s paranoia. He still had a few potted plants, but most of their supplies came from merchants these days, though Nathaniel still insisted on blending the teas and tinctures himself. It was what they’d always done, which meant it was what his mother would have wanted. Besides, it was the closest he’d come to alchemy in the apothecary.
He feared, with the kind of dread that weakened everything it touched, that he wasn’t cut out for this. Nathaniel didn’t have his mother’s skill with herbal medicines or her ability to charm customers. His original plan for saving the apothecary had failed with the kind of epic tragedy that had his neighbors trailing off their sentences and grimacing rather than speaking of it, and now he was barely holding his head above water. Pru was insistent that downsizing the shop and taking on a tenant was the answer.
He hoped for both their sakes that she was right.
Light spilled through the warped glass of the greenhouse already, and Nathaniel eyed the dark silhouette inside, preparing himself for the unpleasant task of interacting with the new tenant. His mouth tensed with the smile of a man held hostage by propriety, but the door caught on something as he opened it—a stack of boxes that shouldn’t have been in its path.
As if in slow motion, Nathaniel watched, horrified, as the tower of crates wobbled and then toppled over, spilling glass vials and flasks that crashed and shattered on the ground. One crate struck a pile of boxes, knocking those over too and creating a clamoring eruption of sound and shattering that seemed endless.
A small “Oh!” of surprise cut through the crash, but Nathaniel could only stand frozen, his hand still on the doorknob. Amidst the chaos, he dimly registered a pale face, a tangle of brown curls, a pair of lips slack with dismay. Eventually the cacophony came to an end, and his eyes swept the mess before landing on the woman who stood, hands clutching another crate, amidst the destruction.
The Tenant
“What,” said the man calmly, though his words hissed with underlying steam, like a kettle about to boil over, “do you think you are doing?”
“I…” Violet cleared her throat. “Pru said I was free to explore. I only wanted to see if the floor was dirt or stone. I was going to move the boxes back. I didn’t expect…” She trailed off, thinking that calling out this man, whoever he was, on his own part in the mess—the door would never have knocked over the crates if he hadn’t opened it, after all—would only deepen that crease between his brows.
She took in the stranger’s lean height and long limbs beneath the worn sleeves of a forest-green coat, and the thick black hair that swept tidily back from his forehead, as though he’d run a hand through it that morning and told it sternly to stay put in that low voice that brooked no argument. He surveyed the mess before them and said, “Those flasks won’t be easy to replace.”
“I’ll pay for them,” she said quickly, feeling small as his gaze landed, unblinking, upon her once more. His scrutiny unsettledher, like he was taking note of every feature and every flaw, and Violet felt thoroughly stripped bare by the analysis, as if he could sense all the thorns of her past and prickherwith their sharp points. She drew a shaky breath and set the crate in her arms on top of another stack, which collapsed under the added strain. Of course it did. Violet clenched her eyes shut in an extended, horrified wince as another chorus of shattering glass detonated among them.
“You will,” he agreed, his glare sharper than any of the shards that lay smashed around them. “How could you be so careless, and with someone else’s belongings no less?”
Violet bristled at his cold tone.How dare he speak to you like this, said a voice in her head that sounded an awful lot like Shadowfade’s.You are the Thornwitch. You could tear him to shreds where he stands.The thought triggered a reflex, one that filled her to the brim with power. The energy inside her clambered to escape, to make, to create, to grow. Thorns, vines, it didn’t matter—Violet’s body was a conduit for roots and leaves, a seedbed for natural destruction, just as Guy had taught her.
Her limbs buzzed with unspent magic, begging her to grow vines that would tear his arms from his torso, tempting her with sweet promises about opening the ground and swallowing him whole, pulling him into the dirt with strong, grasping roots so she could be left in peace. She could make him regret looking at her with such patronizing scorn.
No.Violet forced those thoughts down and screwed a lid tight over them. Hadn’t shejustvowed to be done with dark magic when she was back in the park with Pru?
Holding this much energy made her feel like the very seams of her were ready to burst. Her vision sharpened, and she knew her eyes were glowing green.
Oh no.
Violet sometimes imagined herself like a sieve—she could slap her hand over the mesh all she wanted, but magic would still find places to seep from her pores. She could feel it coming now whether she liked it or not, plants and poisons budding from the power within her, the only thing she was ever any good at.But what else could you do?Karina the Tempest’s voice was still fresh in her ears. Violet squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught of magic pushing its way out, until—there!—in her mind’s eye she sensed a glimmer, like sunlight winking from the shimmering surface of another spring. Power that was pure, uncorrupted. Power that wasgood.
Violet reached for the new spring, barely a puddle compared to the deep well of the other one, but what plant could grow after a lifetime of being starved for air and light? She yanked her thoughts away from thorns and poisons and breathed relief as the Thornwitch’s power dissipated, spreading back into her body. Violet focused on that other spring, pulling it through her fingers like a rope, and thought,Be good.
Now hollyhocks in shades of red and pink exploded from the ground, tall and towering where they burst between the other stacks of crates, and blue clematis began to climb the walls of the greenhouse, wrapping its vines tight around the legs of a table. Bright yellow dahlias with their thick masses of raylike petals burst to life, shards of glass trapped between some of the blooms from the force of their growth, and delicate pink-and-white phlox sprung to soften the ground beneath her feet, the shattered instruments glittering among their leaves. Tall sunflowers and fragrant lilacs completed the scene, splashes of color at strange odds with the detritus of broken glass and dusty boxes.
It stung, this new magic, like nettles against her skin, but perhaps this was Violet’s price after so many years of doing evil. She kept her hands in the air for a second longer than necessary,marveling at the difference, the way the new magic receded without complaint. Then she turned to face the man who was gaping at her with something between anger and shock.
She looked around sheepishly; she hadn’t expected the garden she created to be quite so…much. It was beautiful, at least—and didn’t seem likely to try to murder anyone, so that was promising. “I’ll pay for the damage,” she told him. “And I can clean this up.”
It would hurt a bit to cut it down, this wild and beautiful thing she’d made, but she could use the flowers for bouquets and arrangements. That was why she was here, after all. One could not open a flower shop without cutting a few stems.
His jaw was hanging open like a door with a broken hinge, eyes scanning the garden she’d created. “You’re the new tenant, then.”
“Violet Thistlewaite,” she said, brushing her hands over her shirt. “And you must be Prudence’s…” She trailed off, and when he didn’t fill in the blank, she tried, “Husband?”
He barked out a sound that might have been a laugh. “Brother.”
“Ah.” Another landlord, then, and this one not quite so impressed with her as his sister.
Now that she thought about it, he did look an awful lot like Prudence, if someone had dressed her in drab colors, dusted a layer of stubble over her brown cheeks, and removed any trace of humor from her expression. He and his sister were both tall, with the same eyes like an ink spill, framed by the same thick lashes and bold brows, though his were pinched in distaste. But unlike Pru’s open warmth, there was a sharp, elegant clarity to her brother’s features, as if he’d been drawn in sure strokes and angles rather than the smudged, shadowy pencil sketch of her own silhouette. If not for the scowl that twisted his mouth, Violet might even have called him beautiful.
He cleared his throat, his dark eyes still caught on the garden that had bloomed to life around them. “Nathaniel Marsh.”
