The Oak and the Weed
“He thinks the Eye of the Serpent is here in Dragon’s Rest,” she muttered to Peri, who was batting at Bartleby in a half-hearted duel. “But where?”
Bartleby swung a vine over her shoulder, curling lazily around her neck until she pushed him away. “Not now.”
The town commerce meeting was due to start in two hours, but Violet couldn’t shake the sense that she was running out of time.
Sedgwick was trying to bring back Shadowfade.
Violet knew what would happen to Dragon’s Rest if he returned, and she knew exactly what her fate would be.
There was no place she could run that he wouldn’t find her, not after everything that had happened.
Not after everything she’d done. Best-case scenario, she’d be forced to become the Thornwitch again, but after a taste of who she could be without that part of her identity, Violet knew she could never go back.
And Shadowfade would know it too.
He would seek out everything she loved—everyone she loved—and he would destroy it all. Her shop. Her flowers. Her friends.
Nathaniel.
All to prove a point: that she was no one without him, and it was foolish of her to try.
No, she couldn’t let Sedgwick bring him back.
Her best chance was to stop him before that ever happened, and it was there that she felt she had the upper hand.
Magic was her strong suit. Sedgwick was a powerful alchemist but a weak mage; his own natural magic barely registered as a threat.
It was why he’d put so much effort into alchemy, which could gift him power far beyond his innate abilities.
She shuddered to think of the things he’d done—the things they’d done together.
The havoc they’d wrought, the destruction…
until she met Nathaniel, she hadn’t realized alchemy wasn’t limited to explosions and devastation.
Nathaniel used his knowledge to help people in a way that was utterly brilliant—and it wasn’t just her lust-addled brain telling her so.
Perhaps your magic isn’t so bad either, said a small voice, one that had been growing bolder recently.
Violet still didn’t understand the garden she’d grown that night in the greenhouse, not fully.
But she knew with certainty that even if she’d pulled it from deep inside herself, it wasn’t evil, not in the way she’d always been taught her power was destined to be.
Perhaps Nathaniel was onto something after all.
Perhaps it wasn’t about the magic itself; perhaps it was how she used it that mattered.
Nathaniel had faced so much, carried the weight of his family’s legacy on his shoulders, and yet he was still using his magic to overcome the fear that harried him.
Despite the tragedy of his past, he was moving onward, and Violet took inspiration from his actions.
She had never fought with anything to lose, not really, and she found now that she wasn’t sure she liked it.
But if Nathaniel could push past his fears, then so could she.
She had never been in love before—how could she, surrounded by villains who saw emotion as weakness?
But though the word itself frightened her for its foreignness, she wondered if it explained what she had come to feel of late and what she was feeling now, this almost uncomfortable fullness in her chest, like a plant grown too big for its pot.
She wanted to expand, to grow, to see where it took her, but there was still something holding her inside, trapped within the walls of her own secrets.
For the thousandth time that week, she wondered what would happen if she told Nathaniel the truth about her past. He cared for her, that much had been made abundantly clear, but could he care for who she’d once been?
She could explain it tactfully, warn him ahead of time that her past would upset him.
Once he knew, perhaps they could find a way to tell the rest of the town.
Pru, Quinn, even cranky Jerome…they were her friends, weren’t they?
They would understand that Violet was no longer the Thornwitch.
They would see how much she was trying, how she had become someone new and better and good.
They would understand that she was trying to stop Sedgwick from bringing back Shadowfade, and even more, they would help. Wouldn’t they?
But what if they rejected her? What if they feared her?
What if, all this time, Violet had been fooling herself?
What if her brief escape from villainy was just that, brief, and she succumbed to the training of her past?
It wouldn’t be on purpose, but she couldn’t deny that her first reaction to being surprised or caught off guard was still to protect herself with thorns, to wrap the threat in a stranglehold of vines.
If she told them the truth, she might let her guard fall. She might hurt one of the people she cared about, and as Nathaniel would tell her, even accidents could have dire consequences. Then all of it—her shop, her friends, Nathaniel—would be lost to her.
From his place on the counter, Peri creeaughed at her and butted his stony head against her arm.
“I don’t know how to tell them the truth,” she said sadly, stroking her thumb over the bumpy surface of his head.
Bartleby reached over her shoulder and idly flipped a page in the book she was reading, the one they’d found at Shadowfade Castle about the resurrection ritual.
“I know,” she told him. “I’m done moping, I promise. Back to work with me.”
The bell above the door tinkled a gentle greeting, and Violet looked up, her smile freezing when she saw it was Sedgwick. She slammed the book closed in front of her and passed it to Bartleby, who curled his vines around it until it was entirely obscured.
“What do you want?”
He tutted at her scowl. “Now, now, Thornwitch. I know you’re not known for your bedside manner, but is that any way to greet a customer?”
“You’re not a customer.”
“Sure I am. I’m here for…” He looked around and plucked a packet of seeds from a display. “These.”
“They’re not for sale.” Violet crossed her arms across her chest.
“Interesting way to run a business.”
“They’re not for sale to you,” she clarified, glaring at him. “What do you want? Come to gloat? Interfere with my magic some more?”
“I came to see if you’d reconsider my offer.”
She scoffed. “In other words, you’re stuck and you need my help with your little resurrection plan.”
His eyes widened in surprise for only a moment. “I’d have thought you’d be more pleased. Although, now that I think about it, I seem to remember the two of you having a little bit of a disagreement at the end there—but no, that can’t be right. You were his favorite.”
“And now I’m on my own, making my own plans,” she said coldly. “I don’t need him.”
He looked her up and down with disdain. “Don’t fool yourself. We all need him. He made sure of that—none of us were allowed to have the vision to make it on our own.”
She swallowed hard, the words ringing a little too close to something that felt like truth.
Sedgwick continued. “But once I resurrect him, things can go back to the way they were. I won’t have to hide like this anymore, in this horrible little town where no one understands that I am somebody.
I’ll have a place by his side again. And if you’re set on getting in my way, petal, then perhaps he’ll be on the lookout for a new favorite. ”
“You’re an idiot if you think being favored by him won’t cause you anything but more grief.
” For the barest second, she stopped hiding and let him see her.
Not the Thornwitch, not Violet the florist, but the little girl behind them both who had been taken in by a villain and manipulated and brainwashed until she had no idea who she was anymore.
“It’s not the picnic you think it is, being the one he depends on.
The things he will ask you to do, the ways he will make you hurt if you fail him—the reward is greater, it’s true, but so are the punishments. Are you prepared for that, Sedgwick?”
She saw the moment he wavered—and the moment he shoved it away in favor of arrogance. She could work with arrogance.
“Tell you what,” she said casually before he could speak. “I’m growing tired of this business with the blight. It’s interfering with my plans. If you put a stop to it, I’ll hear you out. Maybe I’ll even help you.”
But she was met by a look of utter confusion, quickly masked by Sedgwick’s usual insufferable smarminess. “The blight? I thought that was you.”
“Excuse me?” This did stop her in her tracks.
“It has Thornwitch written all over it, doesn’t it? Blighting plants and wrecking crops? Isn’t that what you’re known for?” There was no guile in his expression, only puzzled uncertainty.
Had she been heading down the wrong path all this time? Was it possible Sedgwick wasn’t behind the blight?
He watched her closely, tracking her open shock. “If it’s not you, then I’ve no idea where the blasted rot is coming from.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, trying to mask the quiver in her voice. “What about my magic?”
“What about it?” He seemed genuinely confused.
There was no crowing tone to his voice, no smirking glory in his expression.
If Sedgwick truly had nothing to do with the side effects of using her magic, then that meant Nathaniel was wrong.
The pain was coming from her because Violet using good magic just wasn’t natural.
It meant her magic really was evil after all.
Sedgwick scoffed. “Come on, Thornwitch. Even I know better than to—”
“Don’t call me that,” Violet hissed, her mind racing evil, evil, evil with each beat of her wicked heart.
“Thornwitch? Why? It’s who you are.” Sedgwick cocked his head. “Unless…”
She whipped her attention back to him.