Iron Hearted Violet (33 page)

“I knew I’d find you, my child,” King Randall said, running his hands along the mirrored edge, as though trying to find an opening. “I knew my footsteps would lead me home to you.”

OF COURSE THEY DID
, the Nybbas whispered with a sly smile.
BUT QUICK. YOU MUST PUNISH THAT DRAGON AND THAT GIRL. THEY TOOK ME AWAY, FATHER.
Fake tears, fake sobs. Violet felt herself sick to see such lies come from her own face, her own mouth. The Nybbas leaned in closer.
YOU MUST KILL THEM, MY FATHER
, it said in a low voice.
KILL THEM BEFORE THEY KILL ME.

“What?” The King stepped back, his face cloudy and unsure. “What are you talking about, my darling? I can’t kill the dragon. I’m trying to save the dragon.”

Violet shot a quick look at the dragon as though to say,
There! You see?

The dragon roared. It flew upward and shot another round of fire at the sky. The Nybbas howled. Its stolen face and stolen body reddened, multiplied, and swirled. It became five Violets, then ten, then a thousand. The earth shook again, snapping violently this way and that. Violet grabbed her father and pulled him away from the mirror.

STOP!
The images of Violet spun back into one, and it swelled and loomed as large as a giant overhead.
MAKE IT STOP!
the Nybbas said desperately.
YOU SEE WHAT THEY’VE DONE, FATHER?

Violet took the King’s face in her hands. “Father, that’s
an impostor,” she said. “
I
am Violet. That
thing
in the mirror, it’s not me at all. It’s stolen my face and my voice and has changed me into”—she gestured to her new body with unveiled disgust—“into this. We need to—”

DON’T LISTEN TO IT
, the Nybbas shrieked.
IT LIES! IT LIES! IT’S A NASTY, SCHEMING—OH!

The Nybbas, with Violet’s face, Violet’s body, fell to its knees. It clutched at its chest.
WHAT’S HAPPENING?
It panted as smoke erupted from its mouth, its nose, each eye socket, each ear.

“Violet?” King Randall asked tentatively, laying his hand back on the mirror.

The dragon shot its flame once again, and tiny cracks formed, tracing an outline of a body—long arms, long legs, hands and feet like points. The shape framed the image of the thirteenth god.

Violet stared at it in wonder.
I know that shape
, she thought.

The Nybbas clutched at its chest.
MY HEART!
it screamed.
IT BURNS!

Demetrius fought valiantly. The servants of the Nybbas could not be sliced in half, lest they regenerate, nor could they be stabbed, as they had no hearts, and no blood to leak out. However, their heads could be smashed—a temporary measure, as they still regenerated, but in the meantime they tripped on their own feet, wandered blindly, mewed like kittens. Apparently, they could not destroy what they could not see.

New fires were lit, and as he fought, more and more fuel was being added to new fire lines. Chairs, wagons, beds, toys, and tables—everything burned.

Demetrius stood at the front of the pack, smashing the lizards with more gusto than he would have thought possible. He fought blindly, wildly. He aimed for the heads, making sure not to split their bodies with his blows. The lizards swarmed and tangled around his feet. Demetrius kicked and raged at the tiny beasts.

“Get away from us!” he shouted. “We do not want you here!” He knocked lizard after lizard into the growing fire, but soon they swarmed around his legs, sending him sprawling into the golden, writhing mass. He felt their terrible teeth pulling at his skin as easily as if it were custard. Demetrius closed his eyes.
I’m sorry, Violet
, he thought.

“Idiot,” he heard Nod say as he grabbed lizard after lizard and hurled them into the air.

“You’re alive!” Demetrius shouted—or tried to shout. In truth, it was more of a croak. Moth stood on Demetrius’s chest, kicking the lizards with his boots and knocking their heads with a large wooden spoon.

Auntie had a basket of coals strapped to her back, and thick black gloves on her hands. One by one, she grabbed a lizard, shoved a coal into its mouth, and sent it on its way—where it would stumble, teeter, and explode.

“Must we expend all our energies, Demetrius dear,”
Auntie asked as she tossed another wriggling (and doomed) lizard away as if it were nothing more than a toy, “on rescuing your poor self from another sticky end?”

Demetrius pulled himself to his feet. “Why did you set fire to the castle? The god said—”

“Hmph,” Auntie said, shoving another coal into a lizard, then grabbing it by the tail and swinging it out of sight. “If I put my stock in every pompous fool that came along, we’d all be in a mess of trouble.”

“Demetrius.” Captain Marda appeared through the smoke. “Help me with this barrel.” She turned to the three Hidden Folk and inclined her head. “Auntie?” she asked. “Is it lit?”

“We weren’t supposed to—” Demetrius began.

“The god is intelligent but not infallible,” Auntie said grimly. “He also said that intelligence meant
ability to learn
. Which means he could stand to learn a few things. If the Nybbas simply needed to tell someone to set the castle on fire, don’t you think he’d have done it by now?”

Demetrius had no answer.

“No,” Auntie continued. “He needs those
things
. And they hate fire. So fire it is.”

“Spill and light!” Captain Marda shouted, leaping
lightly onto one of the carts and heaving the barrel to the ground.

“What?” Demetrius yelled through the din. But the Captain didn’t hear him. She pushed out another barrel, the top of which flew off the moment it hit the ground. Thick oil spilled over everything. And, in fact, on every cart, someone heaved off the barrels, popped their tops, and let the oil—all kinds of oil, at that, for cooking, for lamps, for the smooth workings of machinery—spill onto the ground.

“Get back behind the line!” the Captain shouted. And before Demetrius could ask, he saw just what kind of line she meant.

Soldiers with torches ran to the toppled barrels. If any barrel was still closed, the soldiers smashed it open. They lit the oil.

And the whole world burned.

The dragon flew at the mirrored sky, belching flame. The sky glowed red, then blue, then white. And the outline cracks deepened into fissures around the form of the Nybbas.

Violet stared.

The outline had sloped shoulders. And a narrow head. And its pointed hands and pointed feet were as sharp as spears.

It’s almost like—
She shrugged the thought away. She would not think about the painting. She would not think
about the dragons with the empty eyes or the pile of hearts. She would only do what was necessary. There was only
now
.

We are going to win
, she told herself firmly.

The dragon coughed, sputtered, and reared. It took a deep breath and blew fire once again.

“It’s working, Dragon!” Violet called.

The King unsheathed his sword. “Your prison is breaking, my darling. It’s only a matter of time before I get you out.” And he charged the mirror at a run, aiming the tip of the sword toward a broadening break.

GET AWAY! GET AWAY!
The Nybbas cast a panicked eye on the growing cracks. Its body—its
stolen
body—continued to smoke and heat.

Violet winced, as if it were her own arms, her own skin that was slowly burning alive.
Is it truly my body?
she wondered.
Or is it just an illusion? Is
this
body, this
wrong
body, an illusion? Will I open my eyes and be
me
once again?
Smoke poured from each hairline crack, and the Nybbas screamed.

“But… Violet.” King Randall was confused. He looked up at the huge figure in the mirrored sky. “You are trapped,” the King said, smashing at the mirror with his sword. “I’m here to get you out.” But though the cracks spread and deepened across the breadth of the sky, the King’s sword
had little effect. The sky was made of stronger stuff than swords forged by men and women. The mirrored sky was built by a god.

STOP!
The Nybbas tore at its hair (
my hair
, thought Violet) and clawed at its eyes (
my eyes
, thought Violet) and wept like a child. (
Faker
, thought Violet.
Schemer. Liar. You cannot weep without a heart!
)

WHAT’S HAPPENING?
it yelled, desperately grabbing at its smoking chest. It turned back to the King, its wild eyes glittering with confusion and rage.
DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! DO YOU HEAR ME? THIS IS MY MOMENT OF FREEDOM. MY MOMENT OF TRIUMPH. AND
THIS
IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPENING!

“Oh yes, it is,” Violet said. She turned to the King. “Father, you need to leave. I don’t know why the Nybbas guided you here—but I have no doubt that it did. You need to get on your horse and get away. Whatever that thing wants—”

But she said no more. The ground rumbled and cracked, knocking the King to his knees. It split and yawned, causing a rift that stretched from well behind them all the way to the lip of the land, and snaked up the sky. The Nybbas howled in pain.

The earth shook again, snapping under the King’s feet and sending him tumbling into the rift. The King cried out and then was silent.

“FATHER!” Violet shouted, leaping and stumbling over the shifting rocks and into the break in the land. Cursing her weak arms and her oddly balanced body as she climbed, she scrabbled and scrambled into the rift. Her father was slumped at the bottom, bleeding heavily from his head, his left leg bent away from his body at a sickening angle. The ground shifted and grumbled. Violet lifted her father from the dirt, hoisting his weight onto her narrow shoulders and teetering to a stand.

“Dragon!” Violet called. “Please. Get him out of here.”

The dragon circled above and landed next to the rift. It stretched its long neck into the gap. Violet grasped her father’s chest with one arm and the dragon’s neck with the other.

“That voice! I know that voice,” the King said. “Violet, is that you?” Blood flowed from the wound on his forehead into his eyes.

“Yes,” Violet said, kissing her father on the cheek. “Hang on to my shoulders if you can, Father,” she whispered, “but don’t strain yourself. I’ll hold tight either way.”
The dragon dragged them to the surface. Violet hoisted her father to his feet and placed him in the arms of the dragon. She gazed into the beast’s one, shining eye and laid her hand on its chest, right over the heart.

“Dragon,” she said. “Take him in your arms and fly him away from here. Some place safe. And you stay safe.” She grabbed the hilt of her father’s sword and slid it from its sheath. She gave the dragon a hard, wild stare. “The sky is already cracking, and I will break it myself. I will fight that thing, and I will kill it. And I want you to live. And I want him to live.”

VIOLET—

“I am the Princess. And I love you. I love you both. And I am giving an order.”

A queen’s voice. A queen’s face. A queen’s tears. There would be no dissuading her.

“Violet—” her father said.

“In a minute, Papa,” she said. And to the dragon, “GO.
Now.
” The dragon unfurled its wings. “
Go
,” she said again. It launched into the air, kicking the dirt into eddies around her feet.
I love you
, she thought,
I love you, I love you, I love you
. And she felt her love radiating from her body like flame. She felt it go toward the dragon and her father and
beyond. She felt her love shoot outward, from one end of the mirrored sky to the other. Toward Demetrius. And her mother. And the whole kingdom. And the whole world. And her love was sharp and hot and
dangerous
.

Violet turned her back on her father and the dragon and faced the Nybbas.