“Just over here,” she said, waving him closer.
Nathaniel stepped next to her, trying to ignore the sharp floral scent of her hair as she hefted the large wooden crate onto the worktable and pried off the lid. Ah, there was his barrier set. Used to prevent contamination, particularly when working with volatile solutions that had a high chance of exploding, it wasn’t something Nathaniel expected to have much use for in Dragon’s Rest, but the sealed glass box was a pain—not to mention expensive—to replace, and he’d thought it lost.
“I’ll just take this back to my shop,” he started to say.
Violet interrupted him with a vehement “No!” and he shook in surprise, jerking back until he felt something cold and sharp against the back of his neck.
“Put it down,” said Violet, her eyes flashing with a strange light. “Bartleby, put it down.”
The sensation left his skin, and Nathaniel turned around to find the same viny houseplant in the blue-glazed pot that had grabbed him this morning. He would have been relieved to find she’d moved it out of the greenhouse if not for the fact that it was now brandishing a knife. He lurched back, bumping his hip into Violet, who stared furiously at the plant.
“We’ve talked about this,” she said in the exasperated tone of a parent disciplining a child. “No more knives, or I’m going to build you a terrarium and lock you inside.”
The vine around the knife’s hilt unraveled, and the blade clattered to the floor.
“Three moons!” Nathaniel cursed. “What is that thing?”
Miss Thistlewaite flapped a hand at him, her attention still on the plant. “That’s just Bartleby. I promise, this won’t be aproblem, he’s just not used to the new place and he’s a little skittish around strangers. Even though he promised meno more stabbing.” She hissed this last part quietly enough that Nathaniel wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. The plant had done this before? She tapped her foot and held out a hand, approaching the plant—er, Bartleby. “Come on now, give me the other one.”
Bartleby heaved its—his? Violet had usedhis, hadn’t she?—leaves as if in a sigh and extended another vine, this one wrapped around the handle of a pair of sharp pruning shears. Violet waited until the plant dropped the scissors carefully into her hand and then set them down on the worktable out of Bartleby’s reach.
“And the one in your pot too,” she chided.
Sure enough, Bartleby reached a vine into his pot and dug through the soil until he produced a folding pocketknife. Violet stared him down for another hard moment, as if trying to determine whether he had any other sharp weapons hidden away. Finally she gave a curt nod and dropped the third knife on the table next to the others.
“Sorry about that,” said Violet, turning back to Nathaniel. “He and I are going to have a serious conversation about how to be neighborly.”
“What…is he?”
“These days he’s a golden pothos.” She shrugged. “Sometimes called devil’s ivy. I’m sure you can imagine why after that display.” Her tentative smile, trying to assess his level of anger, brought his attention to the scar on her face, which was much more noticeable in daylight than it had been last night.
Where would she have gotten a scar like that?he wondered. Had she been unlucky enough to cross paths with Shadowfade or one of his ilk? Certainly not, or she wouldn’t have settled so close to his castle. But she was definitely not from Dragon’s Rest, Nathaniel could tell, and unless news of the sorcerer’s demise hadspread quicker than he thought, he struggled to understand how a magic user would come to be here.
“What brought you here?” he wondered, then started when he realized he’d spoken the question.
Panic flared in her eyes for a moment, and he clocked the way her gaze darted around him, as though looking for an escape route. “I needed a change,” she said at last. “A fresh start.” She ducked her head so her scar was out of sight.
“Hmm.” He covered his own embarrassment at being caught staring.None of your business, he chided himself, but couldn’t help adding, “And you ran a flower shop where you came from as well?”
She shook her head. “No, but I…gardened.”
He remembered the way those plants had sprung from the ground, blossoming like it was midsummer, not the last stubborn dregs of winter. “I imagine you did. And you truly expect to find success here?”
She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s just that Dragon’s Rest seems a strange place to settle, of all the places in the world. We’re not much for flowers here.” The mountain climate was harsh, for one thing, and the summers short, though he supposed she didn’t need a good climate to make things grow. Not with a power like hers.
“Yet,” she added, a smile tugging at her mouth. “You’re not much for flowersyet.”
“I’m sure you know that until quite recently the sorcerer Shadowfade lived in the castle just at the edge of town.”
“Oh?” When he frowned, she amended, “I mean, yes, I know. Everyone knows that. Of course it’s common knowledge. There’s no reason for me not to know that. But he’s gone now, isn’t he?”
“And good riddance,” said Nathaniel. So shehadheard. “He and his band of ne’er-do-wells have held this place beneath his thumb for far too long.”
“Oh,” she said again.
“What I mean to say is that folks around here haven’t had much use for flowers, not when we’ve lived in fear of the sorcerer blasting us off the map when he was in a bad mood, or of one of his associates finding their way into town and taking what they pleased.”
