Page 59 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
He was a good liar, one of the best, but he hadn’t been prepared for this conversation, and in the instant before his mask settled into place, Violet saw it—alarm. Just how much truth there was to the story Sedgwick’s informant had shared remained to be seen, but therewastruth to it.
“Let me get you out of here,” Guy said soothingly. “We’ll destroy this place, raze it to the ground for what they’ve done to you, and then we’ll go home and I’ll get one of the healers to fix that dreadful wound on your face. Really, petal, how did they manage to get the better of you? Frankly I’m a bit disappointed.”
She let him remove the cuffs from her wrists, but the second he did, she let her thorns grow long and vicious, forming twisted horns at her temples and vicious, spiky pauldrons at her shoulders. The wound on her face was torture, but this was armor in the best way she knew. Before she could think twice, she’d reached for Guy’s throat.
“You lied to me,” she growled. “Myentire life, you lied to me.”
He gasped for air, pawing at her hands. “Petal, let go.”
She found she was crying, for the lies she had been told, yes, but also, for the first time, for the person she could have been if he hadn’t taken her and raised her to be a monster. If she’d beenallowed to grow up on that ship in the Stained Glass Sea. If she had beenlovedinstead of used.
“Violet…” Guy got himself together then, and his skin grew red-hot beneath her fingers until she was forced to let go. He coughed and collected himself quickly, and when he spoke again, his voice was a growl, his eyes lit with the threat of more magic. “That isquiteenough.”
She shrank back from him like a dog who had been beaten.
“Those idiot sailors didn’t know what they had in you,” Guy snarled. “Born under aConvening. You were made for so much more than they offered. You would never have reached your potential if I hadn’t taken you in.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Of course I do!” he roared, and when she winced at his anger, he schooled himself back under control. Just like that, he was her father again, the man who’d raised her. Beseechingly, he said, “The past is the past, Violet. Haven’t I loved you well enough? Everything you are, you owe to me.Me, not some merchant nobody on a floating death trap.Imade you.”
A monster, she thought, smelling the smoke of destruction though the tiny window of her cell.You made me a monster.The realization broke something within her, though she was careful not to show it.
He searched her face, and whatever he found there, he was satisfied. After all—as he said—he had made her. He swept from the dank stone corridor, leaving her to follow at his heel.
Guy had done more than destroy Silbourne’s militia that day. He had destroyed nearly the entire city, leveling buildings and allowing his minions to do as they pleased. Violet hated him. She loved him. She wasn’t sure what to think, what to do, where to go from here.
When they finished, Shadowfade stood above the destructionbefore his team of assembled villains, handsome and charismatic, and said, “All of this thanks to your Thornwitch.”
They took it like a celebration, but Violet knew it then for what it was: a warning. She came home to Shadowfade Castle to all the accolades she had yearned for, but they felt hollow now, a snakeskin from an animal that had already shed. Guy celebrated the sack of Silbourne by giving her full rein over the southwest lawn. That seed of something inside Violet had taken root, though, and she found she couldn’t enjoy the act of growing as she once had. She hadn’t been abandoned, and the man who raised her wasn’t her savior. What would her life be like now if he hadn’t taken her? Would she have drifted toward dark magic anyway, or was that affinity, so lovingly nurtured by Guy, just another lie?
A complicated hedge maze grew on the southwest lawn from Violet’s tattered thoughts, unnavigable by anyone but her unless she wanted them to find their way through. The vivid, tropical-looking flowers were carnivorous and toxic, and the thorny hedged passageways often shifted, trapping unwary visitors inside the maze until they had no choice but to crawl out through its wicked thorns. Guy thought it hilarious whenever one of his cronies emerged into the hall radiating fury and covered in scratches, their clothing torn. Before long, everyone learned to treat the misleadingly beautiful new garden like any other danger on the grounds of Shadowfade Castle.
As for Violet, the cut on her face never quite healed, and she learned never to trust anyone again.
Now, as she tidied her shop, cleaning soil and leaves from the counter, straightening the displays, Violet marveled at what that day had brought. The very worst of her reputation, yes, for Silbourne would follow her and haunt her for as long as she lived. But another seed had taken root as well.
The next time Guy had asked her to become the Thornwitch, Violet had said no.
He had not liked her answer. He’d threatened her, burned one of her gardens, and, after she’d refused to change her mind, locked her in her room. But he had not replaced her, hadn’t given Sedgwick or any of the others the seat at his side.
“The Thornwitch is indisposed,” he’d told the other villains of Shadowfade Castle. He hadn’t wanted them to know she’d disobeyed. After weeks in her tower room like a princess of legend, with only Bartleby for company, Violet had stopped moping and decided enough was enough. She couldn’t get rid of Shadowfade herself, but she knew of someone who could.
She’d written a letter and sent it before she could think twice.
Violet did not know it at the time, but it had been the beginning of the end.
Thrilled
“What’s got into you today?” Pru asked the next morning as she finished measuring bite root for a customer. “You’ve got your thinking face on. Is the blight bothering you? Quinn said there’s a patch of it now in her neighbor’s garden.”
“What?” Nathaniel looked sharply at his sister. “Has she contained it?”
“No, I told her to spread it on her morning scone like butter.” Prudence rolled her eyes. “Of course she’s contained it.”
The familiar cracks of dread began to spiderweb through Nathaniel’s confidence. “I’ve still never seen anything like it. I’m considering reaching out to some of my old colleagues from the Crucible for their take.”
“What if you asked that new alchemist who opened up shop?” Pru asked. “Sedgwick, yeah?”
