Page 58 of Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore
It had taken her nearly all her life to realize that he had orchestrated all of it that way.
Her memories pressed into her consciousness like ivy climbing a wall, finding any hole, any foothold where it could stick.
Funnily enough, it was Sedgwick who had lit the spark that burned her relationship with Shadowfade. He had spent years trying to get under her skin, to unseat her and take her place as his favorite. None of it had worked until the day Guy sent her to the city of Silbourne.
“They’re amassing a militia against me,” Guy explained when he summoned her to his study, “led by some ‘great warrior’ or other who wants to make an impression upon the Queen.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Go to Silbourne. Take care of the problem,” he told her, flicking his ring-laden fingers as if sending a child off to play. “I will follow in three days’ time.”
“Of course,” she said, and he dismissed her.
As Violet mounted her horse, Sedgwick had strolled into the stables, a folded piece of paper in his hand.
“What’s this?” she asked haughtily when he offered it to her.
“A little parting gift, Thornwitch,” said Sedgwick, winking.
“I want no gifts from you.”
His eyes glittered with mirth. “Believe me, you’ll want this one.”
Violet had rolled her eyes and shoved the paper into her pocket, riding away. It wasn’t until she made camp that night that she remembered it, unfolding the creased paper carefully asthough it might explode—with Sedgwick, one could never be sure. And as her eyes scanned the letter there, her life changed forever.
She’d heard Sedgwick brag about his connections, of course—anyone who was in a room with him for more than five minutes had heard him boast of his ability to procure information—but he must have been exaggerating, never mind that Shadowfade trusted his network. He must have been a liar because this couldn’t possibly be true.
No, because if the letter before her eyes were true, the one that contained words likeCaptain Marigold Thistlewaiteandmissing daughterandkidnappedandstill searching, then it would mean that Guy had lied to her abouteverything.It would mean she’d done terrible things because the man she trusted told her she was evil—and all the while there had been a ship somewhere in the Stained Glass Sea with purple sails called theVioletand a captain at its helm who had never abandoned her on an island after all.
It had been a long time since the Thornwitch cried, and when she noticed the hot moisture that tracked down her cheeks, it only made her angry. Sedgwick was lying. He had to be. She couldn’t trust him, not when he was so openly trying to replace her. Her thorns shredded the letter until nothing was left but a few scraps drifting in the wind.
And so the Thornwitch had ridden to Silbourne, the swirling vortex of emotion forming into a cyclone of anger. As she drew closer to the city, she announced her presence as she always did, by desiccating whole fields of crops, her smile growing as cries of dismay and fear rose around her.
They shot at her with arrows, as they usually did, but the Thornwitch simply opened her saddlebags, laden with soil, and grew strong vines that wove around her like tentacles, pulling arrows from the air and breaking them to pieces until they litteredthe packed dirt road behind her horse like a carpet of rose petals beneath a queen’s feet.
To either side of the road she grew tall, thick hedges, their wicked, long thorns just as toxic as their vivid purple flowers, and the armed men who rushed at her drew back just as quickly when they were overtaken by hacking coughs from the poison. It was a performance she had played out countless times, and she knew each line of the script by heart.
Her mouth curled in a wicked smile;thiswas what she was made for. As her purple cloak whipped around her, she—
Purple sails. A ship with purple sails.
No.
Violet snarled, and her thorns grew. She was the Thornwitch, fearsome and powerful, and that was the truth. That was what she’d been taught, and Guy wouldn’t lie to her. He’d taken her in. He’d protected her from those who would have called her a monster and punished her for the evil that was inherent in her. He’d cared for her, given her a home when no one else wanted her.
Hadn’t he?
Violet wavered, and her hesitation was enough for someone to get lucky. An arrow knocked her from her horse; a sword she barely dodged sliced open her lip. And by the time Guy found her, three days later as promised, and fought his way through the city to free her from the dungeons, she’d had time to let her thoughts fester.
“Whathappened, petal?” His voice had been a low hiss, and there was a shallow gash on his temple that dripped blood across his brow. He was still a man, she remembered thinking. For all that he had become, he could still bleed. The sounds of fighting had stopped; she imagined he must have won, as he always did. He wanted Silbourne, and Guy Shadowfade got what he wanted.
Like Violet.
“My mother,” she said, tucked back into the farthest reaches of the cell where she’d been kept. Cuffs on her wrists stopped her from accessing her magic, and the skin beneath them felt just as raw and angry as she did. The cut on her face had grown infected, and while it was agony, it wasn’t the worst pain she felt. “Did my mother abandon me?”
“Why are we reliving the past?” he said smoothly. “You know she did. I found you, and I took you in because I knew no one else would. I gave you a home, petal.”
“Tell me the truth. Did yourescueme? Or did you take me from her?”
