Page 65 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
She grinned. “I’m over here trying to entice you with more sex and you’re—that was the mostNathanielresponse ever.”
He froze, waiting for defensiveness to rise, but found there was none. “You’re right,” he said, cracking a grin of his own. “We’re literally lying in a bed of dirt. I’m being ridiculous.”
“I like your ridiculousness,” she said fondly, kissing his nose. “But if you’re really so worried about it…” She pressed another kiss to his jaw, then his throat, then his chest. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to avoid using my hands.”
Well. He wasn’t going to argue withthat.
They continued in that vein for some time, and Nathaniel, for his part, was quite content to let go of the subject altogether. But afterward, her head on his chest and her hair fanned out across his shoulders, she said, “I think the difference is that your past was spent working toward an admirable goal, but you were blown off course. Unveiling who you were means brushing the dust from something that has the potential to be great. Looking into my past would be more like unchaining a beast.”
His post-orgasm focus was admittedly hazy, but even so he could sense that she was trying to tell him something important.
“I’m still finding my balance,” he said carefully, “but I do believe there’s a balance to be found.” He brightened at the thought. “It’s like alchemy, you know?”
She laughed, surprised. “No, I don’t.”
“Alchemy is balance, remember?”
She nodded.
“The bracelet I’m wearing, for example.” He held up his wrist. “The solution that gives it power is made with raspberry leaf, which actuallyincreasesfertility, but it’s balanced by pennyroyal and red cedar, which, by canceling out the raspberry and then some, creates a focal parity for the magic. I can then adjust that center through careful measurement and the addition of other ingredients until I achieve the results I want.”
“Oh, well if it’s that easy,” Violet teased, as though she was about to spring up and start brewing potions naked at his worktable. Blatant safety hazards aside, Nathaniel mused, he wouldn’t mind that at all. In fact, it was a mental image he was absolutely going to revisit later.
For now, he tamped down his hormones and said, “Well, not quite. But it is about finding balance. All magic is, at its core.” He looked around the greenhouse, and the mess of flowers that had sprung up on her table during their…activities. “Or at least, it should be. I still can’t work out how your magic powers itself.”
“What do you mean?”
He waved his hand around the greenhouse. “I meanthis. I’ve seen you perform incredible feats of nature magic that would bring a practiced mage to their knees. You keep your entire shop stocked and fresh with plants that I have on good authority come from other parts of the world and are more long-lived than their natural counterparts. You just did”—he gestured to the worktable behind her and the jungle of botanicals that had sprung from the spilled soil and burst from the drawers—“thatwithout breaking a sweat.”
She smiled devilishly and nipped at his jaw. “I seem to recall exerting myself quite a bit during that last one.”
Warmth swept his body. “You know what I meant. Don’t you ever experience magic burn, woman?”
She raised her hands. “Oh, you mean like this.”
“Your hands?” Nathaniel frowned.
“The way they hurt when I do magic.” She clocked his face. “Is that not what you meant?”
Nathaniel tugged her hands into his lap, tracing her fingers with his. He’d never heard of anyone whose magic reacted like that. “Can you explain what it feels like?”
As she spoke of stinging nettles and pulling magic through her system like she was forcing it through a straw, Nathaniel grew more and more tense.
“Has it always been like this?”
“No,” Violet admitted. “Just since I…since I came to Dragon’s Rest, really. And it’s gotten worse lately. I assumed it was cumulative—that’s what magic burn does, right? It comes from overuse?”
Nathaniel’s brows drew together. “Well yes, but magic burn doesn’t happen while you’re doing magic, it happensafter, as a result of drawing on too much of it,” he said with confusion. “And it’s more of a full-body exhaustion than a concentrated injury. Violet, this is something else.”
She sat up, trying to pull away from him, but he kept hold of her hand, massaging circles into the pad of her palm with his thumbs. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” she said, studying him. Every word sounded as though it was being torn from her. “It isn’t comfortable, but it’s my cost. For acting against my nature.”
Now he wasreallylost. “What does that mean?”
She shifted, looking supremely uncomfortable. “My magic isn’t…it’s notgood.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said.” She shrugged as if it were that simple, as if she weren’t spouting nonsense. “There are two types of magic inside me—one that’s very powerful and doesn’t hurt, and one that takes more effort. If I let the first one have its way, it wouldn’t be growing flowers for people’s weddings, so I use the second, even if it’s not comfortable.”
