Trust
The facade of Violet Thistlewaite had begun to grow tattered, and the thorns of her past were beginning to snag on the weave.
The truth was that her conversation with Nathaniel had shaken loose something she normally kept screwed tight.
It didn’t take much to understand that he’d allowed Violet to see a part of him he showed to few people, and she wanted to return the favor.
He would understand.
He would still care for her if he knew.
Wouldn’t he?
Her doubt hovered over her like a storm cloud all day. Whether he knew what he asked for or not, by trying to get close to her, Nathaniel was asking for her truth. She wasn’t sure she could act on her feelings without giving it to him. But could he be trusted with her past? Could anyone?
Another of Guy’s aphorisms came to her. Even secrets told at a whisper grow wings, petal. We must clip their feathers by never letting them fly from our mouths and shoot down any birds that take to the skies.
She couldn’t help the part of her that still believed him to be right.
“You’re distracted today,” said Jerome. “More’n usual. Mind, you’re not the most attentive shopkeeper I’ve met even on a good day.”
He’d shown up bright and early with his toolbox to fulfill his promise to fix her door.
“Tea with milk, and I like me eggs scrambled, not fried,” he’d said by way of greeting.
Violet hadn’t argued, just gone upstairs to make him breakfast. The ache in her hands was growing worse, the sort of raw, chapped feeling that made every movement uncomfortable, especially magic, so doing something as mundane as making eggs and toast for Jerome was a welcome distraction.
Violet liked the old gnome; his blunt gruffness was a respite from some of the others in Dragon’s Rest—as kind as they could be, Violet wasn’t used to their friendly drop-bys or kindly invitations to get-togethers (or Pru’s recent plans of breaking and entering at Shadowfade Castle on a “book rescue mission”).
Her instincts insisted they wanted something from her, but Jerome was about as direct and undiplomatic as a person could be, and she found that strangely comforting.
“Just thinking,” Violet replied now. “Have you ever had a secret?”
He took a leisurely sip of his tea and studied her carefully. “Sure.”
“Is there ever a right time to share it with someone?”
“S’pose that depends on the secret, and what’s at risk in the telling.”
“Quite a bit,” she admitted.
“And what’s the cost of keeping it to yourself?”
Violet slumped against the wall. “Also quite a bit.”
Jerome turned back to his work, measuring out where to realign the hinge in the jamb.
Violet almost thought he’d abandoned the conversation when he said, “Everyone’s got secrets, just as everyone’s got a past.” He held a mouthful of nails between his lips so it came out slightly garbled.
“We’re none of us the people we once were, but it’s still scary letting others through that gate.
But those that’re worth it, they’ll let you know.
Might be in different ways than you expect, but they’ll show you that they’re worthy of your trust.”
“How?” Bartleby snuck a vine into her hair; she only caught him seconds before he hacked off a sizable lock with the pruning shears he’d stolen again. “I will prune you until you don’t have vines anymore,” she warned him, and he retreated.
Jerome spit out the rest of the nails, chuckling. “I s’pose trust comes from the way they make you feel part of their circle. The way they make you feel safe.” He eyed the pothos with mild, almost-amused derision. “Safe like leaving your hair be and not hoarding weaponry.”
“You can imagine why it’s difficult for me,” she said dryly, gesturing to Bartleby, who froze at the attention, trying desperately to look like he wasn’t in the process of pilfering a few fallen nails. She sighed, mentally tasking herself with disarming him later, and massaged her hands.
Did Violet feel safe around Nathaniel? She wasn’t sure she really knew the meaning of the word or if it was something she felt around anyone.
“I’ll take another cuppa if you’re just going to stand there,” said Jerome, jerking her from her thoughts. She took his empty mug and went upstairs to fetch him some more tea.
Long after he’d left, her door now hanging straight and proud on its hinges, the conversation swam in Violet’s head. Violet wasn’t sure she’d ever had cause to truly trust anyone.
Your mother saw who you truly are and she abandoned you, Guy had told her.
You are so lucky I found you, petal.
The rest of the world may fear you, but you will always have a home with me.
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 as though 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 like Captain Marigold Thistlewaite and missing daughter and kidnapped and still searching, then it would mean that Guy had lied to her about everything.
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 the Violet and 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 littered the 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; this was 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.
“What happened, 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.