Page 77 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
He stopped sweeping and glared at her. “Why should I believe you? How much of what you told me was a lie? Your sob story of growing up in a bad home, running away—you only left because he was dead, didn’t you? You only left because you knew you’d be hunted down like an animal if people knew what you were, what you’d done.”
“I was trying to find a way to tell you,” she said beseechingly. “But everything I shared with you about my past was the truth. Ileft some details out, yes, but I never lied to you, Nathaniel. I wanted you to know me.”
“Leaving out an ingredient in alchemy could mean the difference between a harmless solution and a dangerous explosive. It’s still a lie, Violet. You lied. To the whole town, tome. You—”
“I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me now!” Violet blurted. “I didn’t want to be the Thornwitch anymore. I just thought—” She shook her head, feeling foolish. “I didn’t want to be a villain anymore. I wanted to be good.”
She shrunk beneath the force of his glare, feeling stupid and small and wrong in a way she hadn’t felt since Shadowfade was alive. For a solitary moment, she hated Nathaniel for shoving her back into this role. Desperately, she whispered, “I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what? How you’ve killed people? Destroyed their homes and livelihoods? Violet, I spent years in the Crucible serving an organization that made me complicit in terrible things, but I left. I didn’t just stand by and allow it to happen.”
“I left too!”
“Once he was already dead.”
“Yes, because I killed him!” Violet clapped a hand over her mouth, and Nathaniel stared at her in shock.
There it was. Her secret.
It was the first time she’d said it aloud.
“Karina the Tempest killed Guy Shadowfade,” said Nathaniel slowly, his voice low.
Violet swallowed. “I’m the one who sent for her. I told her how to get past the castle wards. But in the end, when she had us cornered, she wasn’t strong enough. He was going to kill her and I—” She choked on the words, remembering her hand on his back and the way her dagger-sharp thorn had burst through hischest. She remembered the way his blood had splattered on the Tempest’s shirt, and the betrayal in Guy’s eyes. His gaze had darted to the Tempest and right back to her.
Run, petal.
They’d been his last words.
She’d fled, and he’d haunted her dreams, his voice present through her waking moments ever since. He thought she’d been in danger, she realized much later. Even after she’d betrayed him—killedhim—he told her to run. He wanted her to get away.
One way or another, Violet would have been responsible for Shadowfade’s downfall. She just hadn’t expected it—hadn’twantedit—to be done by her own hands. Because she was a coward. Because she’d loved him.
Yet even after all that, even with confirmation that he cared for her too, at least a little, she couldn’t bring herself to regret what she’d done. She’d killed a man—the man who’d raised her, who’d lied to her and forced her to do terrible things in his name, but also the man who had encouraged her to learn more about plants and given her space to garden and showed her not to fear her power but to embrace it. She’d killed him, and as much as she would always mourn the aspects of him that she loved, she wasn’t sorry for ending the monster that Guy Shadowfade had become.
Violet wasn’t sorry for trying to start over afterward, for trying to do what he couldn’t, or wouldn’t: change.
“I killed him,” she repeated, her tone even this time. “I have lived every moment since that day knowing what I’ve done, not just in the end but in the years that preceded it. Ilive with that, Nathaniel. I will keep living with it for the rest of my sorry life.”
He was still staring at her, only now instead of outright anger, his face was a blank mask, and that was worse. Would he hate herforever? Drive her out of town? A tiny voice inside Violet asked if he would forgive her, but she banished it, knowing she couldn’t allow that thought to take root.
“If Sedgwick brings him back, he’ll harbor no fond feelings for me, never mind all our history together,” she continued. “I stood by and let him be a monster for far too long, and I did monstrous things in his name. I know that. It took me too long to understand what he was turning me into, what I was becoming, and believe me, I know that too. But don’t tell me I didn’t try. Don’t tell me I did nothing.”
When he didn’t say anything, she swallowed, their eyes still locked on each other. It was striking Violet again that she would have to leave, and this would already be the hardest goodbye she’d ever had to say. There would be no hope of forgiveness. After all, how could she expect him to forgive her when she couldn’t forgive herself?
“I want to fix this,” she said quietly. “I will do what it takes to prove to you I’m not the Thornwitch anymore. But you have to listen to me: Peri is the Eye of the Serpent, and Sedgwick has taken him. He’s going to bring back Shadowfade. We have to stop him. And after we do, I’ll—I’ll leave Dragon’s Rest. You’ll never have to see me again, but please believe that I want to stop him. And I need your help to do it.”
His silence pierced her as if one of her thorns had grown inward, digging through her heart rather than bursting through her skin. “Say something. Talk to me. Please.”
The spell broke, and he twitched away from her. “I…I can’t do this.”
“You can’t do this,” she repeated lamely.
“I need time. To think. To…” He trailed off, his silence so complete that Violet swore he could hear her heart breaking. That was it, then. She was too monstrous for Nathaniel, for Dragon’sRest. Lies about her mother aside, there was truth to what Shadowfade had tried to teach her—there was no use in showing people who you really were. They’d only abandon you once they knew the truth. She was the fool who had chosen to delude herself otherwise.
“Right,” she said finally. Sedgwick was right—Shadowfade had broken them, made sure that by his side was the only place they would ever belong.
For a moment Nathaniel hesitated, clutching the broom like he wasn’t sure what to do with it, but then he leaned it against one of the shelves that was still standing, and with one last look at her, he was out the door.
