A Visit from an Old Friend
By the time Violet, Nathaniel, Peri, and Pru returned home, the sky was growing dark.
“I suppose I should count this skirt ruined,” said Pru with a sigh, inspecting the rot staining the hem.
“You could trim it off?” Violet suggested. Her own clothing was in no better shape; at this rate, all her trousers were on track to becoming knee-length knickers. She’d fit right in with the gaggle of young children who played in Wingspan Green each day while their parents shopped.
Pru looked thoughtful. “Sounds to me like we’re on the cutting edge of a new fashion. Short skirts and bare shins for all! A new age dawns in Dragon’s Rest, just in time for spring!” She flung her arms wide and called out, “Everyone, quick, fetch your sewing scissors! I want to see those legs!”
Nathaniel had, of course, managed to keep his clothing spotless, the blackened tips of his fingers the only evidence that he’d just spent as much time in the muck and mire of the rot as they had.
Violet swallowed hard, watching those careful hands flex at his sides, trying to banish the memory of them firm around her waist, those fingers ghosting across her cheek, in her hair, at her throat.
She’d kissed Nathaniel Marsh. No, correction, she’d cried on him and then practically mauled him, and had then spent the better part of an evening helping him clean up a biohazardous ooze from the muddy street.
Romantic, Violet. Well done.
Deep inside her, the Thornwitch smoldered with resentment at being made to look so vulnerable. And now…now she had to leave. Violet tore her gaze away, staring at the ground where Peri the rock goblin chattered up at her, his head cocked at an angle that made the peridot in his chest gleam.
“Hopefully this new age for Dragon’s Rest includes a bath in my near future,” said Violet loudly, as if the volume would clear her mind of those other thoughts. “I cringe every time I think I might bring even a speck of this blight into my shop.”
“I should have mentioned it earlier,” Nathaniel said, perking up, “but I’ve created a special soap to remove it. You’re welcome to it if you like.”
“Oh, that would be marvelous.”
“Fair warning,” interrupted Pru, “it will also remove any evidence that you’ve ever had fingerprints.”
Nathaniel clucked his tongue. “I’ve solved that particular issue, as you well know.”
“Yes, but have you solved the smell?” Pru cocked her head, an equally crooked smile aimed at her brother.
“Perhaps that’s just your natural odor.”
She elbowed him. “Violet, tell Nathaniel that I smell wonderful.”
Nathaniel had smelled like mint and rosemary. He’d tasted of it too.
“Violet?”
She jerked back to the present. “Hmm? Yes, you smell…” She wrinkled her nose. “Like blight, if I’m honest.”
Pru’s sigh rivaled a gale-force wind. “I’m almost tempted to say it smells better than Nathaniel’s soap.” She sniffed her spattered collar. “Almost.”
Nathaniel leveled his sister with a lopsided smile that made Violet’s heart stutter. “It’s either this or scrub yourself raw trying to remove it with regular soap.”
Violet looked between the twins, amused.
“Sounds like either way I lose my fingerprints, then,” said Pru. “No matter, I’ve never been particularly fond of them anyway.”
“For the last time, it doesn’t—”
Pru laughed and winked at Violet. “He’s so easy, this one.”
They reached the apothecary doors. “Which of us has the cleanest hands?” Violet asked, but Pru had already taken a handful of her ruined skirt and used it to cover her hand so she could turn the key and open the door.
The siblings maneuvered easily through the dark apothecary, Prudence announcing loudly that she was ready for a bath and heading up the stairs with a hurried good night.
“Don’t you dare touch Daisy without washing first!” Nathaniel called up the stairs as he led Violet to the back door to the garden and their shared greenhouse. He looked down at Peri with suspicion. “And you, I’m watching you.”
The rock goblin croaked at him, keeping close to Violet’s heels. Violet’s heart pounded so loudly Nathaniel must have been able to hear it. She was alone with him again. Three moons, how had that happened?
“Here,” said Nathaniel once they’d reached his worktable. He handed her a tin of some pungent-smelling cream.
Violet scrunched her nose. It was herbal and bitter, with a peppery quality that made her want to sneeze. “Pru wasn’t kidding.”
“I’d tell you that you’ll get used to it but it honestly smells worse every time I open the tin.”
“I suppose it would be shortsighted to tell you to stop working on the antidote for the blight in order to find a way to make this smell less awful, wouldn’t it?”
His lips twitched. “Believe me when I say I’m tempted.”
She looked at the tin to distract herself from the way her neck flushed with heat at the sight of his smile. “Is there anything special I should do?”
“Just rub it into your hands. I’ll fetch us some water.”
Violet nodded to her half of the greenhouse. “There’s some in the pail by the door.”
He dutifully fetched the bucket from the ground near her worktable.
They were each standing on the other’s territory, and it made Violet entirely too aware that she now knew what this man’s mouth felt like against hers, that later tonight she would draw to memory the scratch of his stubble against her skin.
As he returned to her side, his eyes darted across her face in a way that made her think maybe he was thinking the same thing.
Moons, what had she done? Silence settled over them as they washed the blight from their hands.
Violet couldn’t hold back her embarrassment any longer.
“About earlier,” she began at the same time he said, “Can we discuss—?”
They both cut off abruptly. “You go first,” he said awkwardly, and Violet wanted to call the earth to bury her where she’d never have to have this conversation. Why was this so difficult?
“You and I have been in a better place lately, haven’t we?” she began. “The chalkboard signs aside—and to be clear, those are all in good fun—we’ve been getting along.”
“We have.”
She kept her eyes on her hands as she scrubbed. Horrible though the smell might be, Nathaniel’s soap really did make it easier to remove the rot. “I’ve enjoyed getting to know you better. And I didn’t mean to jeopardize that earlier by presuming anything.”
“You haven’t.”
His words took a moment to catch up to her, and her thoughts stuttered.
Violet dragged her gaze to his and found him watching her, the dark brown of his eyes almost black in the dim light.
It was a different type of watching than she’d grown accustomed to from him.
Heavier. She felt naked under this kind of attention. How much could he see?
He offered her a clean handkerchief to dry her hands and dipped his hands in the bucket to wash his own.
The soft slosh of the water in the pail played harmony to the pounding in her ears.
When Violet offered him back his handkerchief, he clasped her fingers in his, the damp cloth held between them like a spiderweb hung between eaves, gossamer and delicate, so easy to break.
He came closer, tugging her by her fingertips until her hand lay against his chest, and fear tugged at Violet’s heart even as she felt the reckless pounding of his.
She was leaving. She couldn’t stay. Couldn’t risk her future for this man, beautiful and infuriating and igniting as he might be.
The way she felt right now, like he’d turned aside the soil that buried her heart and found the glowing seed that took root beneath, was nothing but a passing fancy.
No matter that he’d listened to her, no matter that he’d helped her with her nightmares.
Violet had worked too hard to escape her identity as the Thornwitch to let it all come to light now.
She couldn’t bear to see the look on his face—or Pru’s or Quinn’s or any of her other new friends—if they found out about her past.
Nathaniel’s mouth hovered over hers, asking for permission, and Violet wanted so badly to grant it.
But no, it was better that she leave. Without complications.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pulling her hands from his. “I’m so sorry, Nathaniel, I can’t.”
She mourned the light when it left his eyes, wanted to snatch away the familiar stiff mask when it settled back over his face. He scraped a clean hand through his hair, missing a single curl that she wished she could push back from his eyes, and cleared his throat. “I understand.”
“It’s not that I don’t—”
“No, I understand,” he said stiffly, offering her a weak smile. “It’s…this would be a distraction. I have the shop and…”
If Violet could wind back the clock just a moment and redo it, she would have, if only to bring back the look he’d had, like he truly saw her, instead of the wooden expression he wore now. “Nathaniel…”
He jerked at the sound of his name. “I should check on Daisy. I’ve left her alone too long. She’s probably eaten another of my shirts by now.”
He rushed for the door, turning back to her with his hand on the knob.
“Good night, Violet,” he said, then disappeared.
She waited until he was back inside the building before leaving the greenhouse and darting into her shop.
Violet closed her eyes and pressed her back to the closed door, taking in the familiar scent of flowers and dirt and plant life.
Moons and stars, but she loved this place.
Every shelf she’d grown from a stick, every plant she’d conjured from a thought—even Bartleby had settled into his corner shelf above the counter with the territorial ease of a jaguar waiting to pounce from a tree branch.
She’d be sorry to leave it.