Page 43 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
Violet’s panic began to ease, but she could still barely feel the breeze on her clammy skin, barely feel her nails digging into her face as she clutched them over her eyes, barely hear someone calling her name until a hand came down on her shoulder.
Thorns burst from her skin.
Can’t Help Falling
Nathaniel snatched his hand away as something stung him—a pin in Violet’s cloak, perhaps, or an insect that had hidden away on her shoulder. For a moment, as she whipped her face up to look at him, he imagined malice on her features, fury and intent like he’d never seen before, that lush mouth curled into a snarl and those eyes blazing withsomethingthat scared him, but then he blinked and she was Violet again, albeit much more distraught than the woman he’d come to know.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply. Grouchy though he could be, Nathaniel was not a violent man—but he found himself just then seized by the mad desire to find whoever had hurt her and make them pay. A cold gust of wind whipped her hair in front of her face, and again he saw that glimpse of a startled predator, a fey creature with glowing green eyes, all snarling teeth and jagged edges. He blinked.
Violet made a barking sound that might have been a laugh or a sob or a choke of relief. “You,” she said, breathless, running her hands over her arms like she was soothing a bird with ruffledfeathers. “It’s you.” Her voice cracked and his frown deepened, creasing his face into crisp lines like folded laundry.
“Violet.” He forced his tone to soften so she didn’t think he was upset with her. “What happened?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re on the ground, looking like you’ve seen a ghost. Of course it matters.” He searched her face for answers, but she only tilted her chin, searching him right back. Nathaniel knew with some inner certainty that he was undergoing some kind of test, and so despite his discomfort, he held her gaze as he helped her to her feet. Some of the tension in her eyes seemed to soften as his fingertips brushed her wrist, the flash of green he had imagined replaced once more by the warm golden brown he sometimes saw when he closed his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said, brushing the dirt and damp from her clothing, her eyes breaking from his. “There was a man—I thought I recognized him from somewhere, that’s all. Sometimes I—”
“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want.”
Again, Nathaniel forced himself to still as she studied him. “There’s more blight,” she said finally. “Bigger than any we’ve seen.”
“Show me?”
When she led him around the corner, his heart sank. Nathaniel produced a vial from one of his pockets and, as he’d grown accustomed to doing, took a sample to test in the greenhouse. He cast his eyes around, looking for similarities, patterns, anything to help him determine why this was happening to his town.
“The man I met,” Violet said quietly, “suggested that Shadowfade had been keeping it at bay.” She gestured to the blight. “And that with him gone, the town needsprotection.”
She studied the rot, refusing to meet his eyes. “That monsterwas not a protector,” said Nathaniel firmly, but his response didn’t carry the comfort he intended. “We can hold our own here just fine.”
Nathaniel couldn’t shake the feeling that she was taking more from his words than he intended, and he didn’t know how to break the flow of whatever was happening inside her head to cast such heavy sadness into her expression. This Violet looked so far from the smiling, bright, hopeful woman who lived and worked next door, the one who, despite his stubborn intentions, madehisdays brighter too.
He wanted to touch her, to tuck the wayward hair behind her ear, pull her cloak back up over her shoulders so she’d stop shivering.
He had no idea how she’d react if he did.
Moons, he wished he was better at this.
“I’m worried he could be involved,” she said.
“With the blight?”
She hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “He’s an alchemist, and the timing of his arrival in Dragon’s Rest is…”
Recognition prickled like a bee crawling up his sleeve. “He wouldn’t happen to be named Sedgwick, would he?”
She startled. “You know of him?”
Nathaniel barked a humorless chuckle. “Do I know of the man who appeared from nowhere to open a rival business that is doing its best to sink Marsh Apothecary? Yes.”
“He’s hungry,” Violet said. “Ambitious.”
Nathaniel thought of the list of ingredients Sedgwick had asked him for. “He’s dangerous.”
“I think the blight could be his way of positioning himself as someone powerful in Dragon’s Rest. If he ‘saves’ everyone from a problem he created, he’d be respected and listened to.”
He thought on this for a moment. “I suppose the blight couldbe alchemical in nature. A skilled alchemist could create a balance that only they’d be able to reverse.”
