Breakthrough
“I’ve never been so pleased to be covered in dirt,” said Nathaniel smugly, kissing her bare shoulder.
She laughed, low and throaty, and looked around them.
They’d ended up on a bed of their own clothing on the greenhouse floor, illuminated only by the moons.
“You know we both have bedrooms within sight of this place, right?” She nodded toward the building, blurry through the rain that had begun to splatter and run in rivulets down the warped glass.
“I don’t mind,” he said honestly. They would have to make a run for it eventually, and would likely end up drenched in the process, but Nathaniel had exactly zero desire to leave this place, or her, anytime soon. “This is perfect.”
Violet snuggled closer to him, and Nathaniel allowed himself a few more moments of this gorgeous, relaxed freedom, because for once even the incessant buzz of anxiety in the back of his brain couldn’t convince him that any task or obligation was more important than the woman in his arms.
“I never expected this,” he said suddenly. “I never expected you.” He drew a hand up her arm, fingertips brushing along soft, pale skin, charting their path by way of freckles.
“Sometimes life gives us unexpected turns,” she responded softly, her voice barely audible over the drumbeat of rain against the glass.
He couldn’t argue with that. If he’d been asked only a few weeks ago, he’d have said there was no way he wanted this—with anyone—but now that she was with him, now that he knew what it was like to be with her, he wanted to shake Past Nathaniel for his stubbornness, for his inability to let himself have something good.
He held her tighter. “I’m beginning to discover that unexpected turns aren’t so bad.”
To his surprise, she sobered, her gaze drifting to the floor.
“What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
He hmphed. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
She sighed and said quietly after a moment, “It’s just that I wonder if you’d feel that way if you knew everything about me.”
He chuckled. “I can’t imagine there’s anything about you I wouldn’t like.”
But her answering smile was limp and sad. “You don’t know the parts of me that have been trying to get out. My past.”
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. You certainly know I have.”
“Coming here was meant to be a fresh start. A way to be someone new. But I…I do want you to know me.”
His puzzlement must have shown on his face because she quickly shook her head.
“It’s a conversation for another time,” she said. “Perhaps when we’re fully clothed.”
“That might be tricky,” he said, trying to cheer her up. He wanted to hold on to his good feelings, not be drawn into his usual dark thoughts. “I plan on keeping you naked as often as possible from now on.”
He was rewarded by her smile, a real one this time, that struck him to his core with how it lit up her face. Desire stirred in him once more. Moons, she made him feel like a teenager.
“I can’t say I dislike that plan.” She stroked a hand over his hip in a way that brought his skin to life with interest and laughed at the trail of dirt her fingers left.
“Your hands are filthy,” he noted primly, sending her into a peal of giggles. “What?”
She grinned. “I’m over here trying to entice you with more sex and you’re—that was the most Nathaniel response ever.”
He froze, waiting for defensiveness to rise, but found there was none. “You’re right,” he said, cracking a grin of his own. “We’re literally lying in a bed of dirt. I’m being ridiculous.”
“I like your ridiculousness,” she said fondly, kissing his nose. “But if you’re really so worried about it…” She pressed another kiss to his jaw, then his throat, then his chest. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to avoid using my hands.”
Well. He wasn’t going to argue with that.
They continued in that vein for some time, and Nathaniel, for his part, was quite content to let go of the subject altogether.
But afterward, her head on his chest and her hair fanned out across his shoulders, she said, “I think the difference is that your past was spent working toward an admirable goal, but you were blown off course. Unveiling who you were means brushing the dust from something that has the potential to be great. Looking into my past would be more like unchaining a beast.”
His post-orgasm focus was admittedly hazy, but even so he could sense that she was trying to tell him something important.
“I’m still finding my balance,” he said carefully, “but I do believe there’s a balance to be found.” He brightened at the thought. “It’s like alchemy, you know?”
She laughed, surprised. “No, I don’t.”
“Alchemy is balance, remember?”
She nodded.
“The bracelet I’m wearing, for example.” He held up his wrist. “The solution that gives it power is made with raspberry leaf, which actually increases fertility, but it’s balanced by pennyroyal and red cedar, which, by canceling out the raspberry and then some, creates a focal parity for the magic.
I can then adjust that center through careful measurement and the addition of other ingredients until I achieve the results I want. ”
“Oh, well if it’s that easy,” Violet teased, as though she was about to spring up and start brewing potions naked at his worktable. Blatant safety hazards aside, Nathaniel mused, he wouldn’t mind that at all. In fact, it was a mental image he was absolutely going to revisit later.
For now, he tamped down his hormones and said, “Well, not quite. But it is about finding balance. All magic is, at its core.” He looked around the greenhouse, and the mess of flowers that had sprung up on her table during their…
activities. “Or at least, it should be. I still can’t work out how your magic powers itself. ”
“What do you mean?”
He waved his hand around the greenhouse.
“I mean this. I’ve seen you perform incredible feats of nature magic that would bring a practiced mage to their knees.
You keep your entire shop stocked and fresh with plants that I have on good authority come from other parts of the world and are more long-lived than their natural counterparts.
You just did”—he gestured to the worktable behind her and the jungle of botanicals that had sprung from the spilled soil and burst from the drawers—“that without breaking a sweat.”
She smiled devilishly and nipped at his jaw. “I seem to recall exerting myself quite a bit during that last one.”
Warmth swept his body. “You know what I meant. Don’t you ever experience magic burn, woman?”
She raised her hands. “Oh, you mean like this.”
“Your hands?” Nathaniel frowned.
“The way they hurt when I do magic.” She clocked his face. “Is that not what you meant?”
Nathaniel tugged her hands into his lap, tracing her fingers with his. He’d never heard of anyone whose magic reacted like that. “Can you explain what it feels like?”
As she spoke of stinging nettles and pulling magic through her system like she was forcing it through a straw, Nathaniel grew more and more tense.
“Has it always been like this?”
“No,” Violet admitted. “Just since I…since I came to Dragon’s Rest, really. And it’s gotten worse lately. I assumed it was cumulative—that’s what magic burn does, right? It comes from overuse?”
Nathaniel’s brows drew together. “Well yes, but magic burn doesn’t happen while you’re doing magic, it happens after, as a result of drawing on too much of it,” he said with confusion. “And it’s more of a full-body exhaustion than a concentrated injury. Violet, this is something else.”
She sat up, trying to pull away from him, but he kept hold of her hand, massaging circles into the pad of her palm with his thumbs.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” she said, studying him.
Every word sounded as though it was being torn from her.
“It isn’t comfortable, but it’s my cost. For acting against my nature. ”
Now he was really lost. “What does that mean?”
She shifted, looking supremely uncomfortable. “My magic isn’t…it’s not good.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said.” She shrugged as if it were that simple, as if she weren’t spouting nonsense.
“There are two types of magic inside me—one that’s very powerful and doesn’t hurt, and one that takes more effort.
If I let the first one have its way, it wouldn’t be growing flowers for people’s weddings, so I use the second, even if it’s not comfortable. ”
“Violet,” he said gently, tipping her chin so she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “Magic is energy. Energy isn’t good or evil, it’s just energy.” He wondered for the hundredth time who she’d been before she came to Dragon’s Rest, and who had let her believe such a thing.
“So you’re saying Guy Shadowfade wasn’t evil?” she asked skeptically. Even with his tendency to ignore social cues, Nathaniel could sense there was something dark and hulking behind her words, some missing puzzle piece in the picture that was Violet Thistlewaite.
“I’m saying his magic wasn’t—it was what he chose to do with it that was evil. Just as Sedgwick choosing to do evil with the blight doesn’t say anything about alchemy as a whole.”
“Hmm” was all she said, and he could tell she didn’t believe him.
He gestured to the colorful jungle she’d made of her worktable. “That isn’t evil. A bit of a mess, perhaps, but a good one. Did making that hurt?”
“No, it didn’t.” She looked puzzled, and the most adorable little wrinkle appeared between her brows. Her eyes darted to him, and a blush crept up her neck. “It felt wonderful. Even if I’m going to have to replace all those seeds now.”
Nathaniel’s eyes wandered to the small chest of drawers, barely visible beneath the flower bed that had sprung from it. “Those were seeds?”
“Mm-hmm. I’ll harvest more from the plants that grew.”