Iron Hearted Violet (5 page)

“We won’t come back here,” he said to no one in particular.

WE’LL SEE
, a slithery, whispery voice sounded in his head. Demetrius jumped, grabbing at his ears. But the voice wasn’t in his ears. He heard it
inside
.

“Are you coming or what?” Violet asked from the dusty corridor.

“Yes,” Demetrius rasped, shooting one last look at the painting. He thought, for a moment, that the mirrored figure was smiling—a yellow, sharp-toothed smile. But then it flickered away.

A trick of the light
, Demetrius told himself as he wriggled into the corridor.

YESSSS. A TRICK OF THE LIGHT.
The Nybbas grinned.

The children were right, of course. There was a thirteenth god.

But we did not speak of it.

We did not speak its name.

Its story was forbidden.

Though they never talked about why they weren’t talking about it, neither Violet nor Demetrius uttered a word about the hidden library—not for a long, long time.

I won’t talk about it if he doesn’t talk about it
, Violet thought obstinately.
I already know what he’ll say.

I will never mention that place again
, Demetrius thought fervently.
I will pretend it doesn’t exist. And if she brings it up, I shall change the subject.

Demetrius tried not to think about it, in hopes that by intending not to think about it, he actually
wouldn’t.
He
was wrong. The image of the hollow-eyed dragons haunted his nightmares. Night after night, he sweated and moaned in his sleep, his skin aching with the imaginary bite of the dragon’s chains.

He would wake from these dreams with sore wrists and sore ankles and a great weight upon his heart.

What happened to them?
he wondered.
And who would do such a thing?

Violet, on the other hand, after getting away from that room with its sticky wrongness, was curious. So, so, so curious.

Her curiosity grew and festered. It lived in her brain, in her heart, and in her bones. It bubbled under her skin.

That name
, she thought.
Why do I know that name?
She wondered and wondered and wondered. She scolded herself for dropping the book. And without telling Demetrius she was doing so, Violet started an unsuccessful campaign to find the corridor that would bring her back to that hidden library. But try as she might, she could not do so.

And she thought she’d never see the book again.

And for a long, long time, she didn’t.

But books—particularly lost books—have a way of making themselves found.

On the eve of Violet’s thirteenth birthday, her father, King Randall the Bold (the last of that name—indeed, the last Andulan king at all), prepared to lead an expedition into the border mountains on the hunt for a reported dragon. It was a decision hastily made and vociferously argued against.

“Think of the danger!” the King’s advisers cried. “You could be gone for weeks, or months—an entire season, most likely. Think of your people. Think of your family.”

But the King was undeterred. The terrain was dangerous, to be sure, and he didn’t relish the notion of going so
far to the north, where our country bordered the nation of the Mountain King—a greedy, cruel tyrant, and growing crueler by the day. But the King, in his soul, was a scientist, and his love of learning trumped his love of country. This particular expedition was for the sake of scientific research while also providing the King with an opportunity to test a new idea—a device to facilitate the live capture and transport of a dragon. It was a bold plan, and risky.

“The first dragon sighting in a century,” the King said, his eyes shining. “To think that I should see this day!” And so the preparations were made. And all the citizens of the Andulan Realms worried together.

Demetrius, it was decided, would accompany the expedition. “It’s high time for the boy to stand on his own feet,” both the King and the stable master agreed. Indeed, in his ability to anticipate the needs of the horses and to heal their afflictions, Demetrius outstripped even his father’s—a fact that his father would readily admit, and Demetrius never would.

And so both father and friend were to sally forth without Violet. She was incensed. And as the day grew nearer, she seethed and mourned and seethed again.

And though she had not yet seen it, she hated the dragon.

You see, my dears, long ago dragons roamed throughout
our world and were, for eons, more abundant than people. But many centuries before my time, their numbers began to dwindle and fade. Eventually, evidence of their existence was no more than rumor and supposition. This sighting—an Onyx—was the first verified proof that the species had miraculously escaped extermination. And the King wanted to be the one to find it, save it, and learn from it. And so a hunt was called for.

Princess Violet was unimpressed.

“You can’t call it a hunt if you have no intention to kill it,” she said. “All you are doing is playing a game of hide-and-seek with a bunch of grown-ups and an overgrown lizard.”
And Demetrius
, she thought bitterly.
That traitor.

“I’ve assembled the finest hunters in our nation. Men and women who have no equal as trackers, archers, trappers, and navigators,” the King said. “It sounds like a hunt to me.”

“Then why must Demetrius go?” Violet asked petulantly. “You are stealing my only friend.
On purpose!
Think of how bored I shall be!”

“Demetrius is coming because no one sees to the animals better. Not even his father.” The King wrapped the last of his tools in an oilcloth and slid them carefully into his pack. “Besides,” he said, “he
wanted
to come.”

That, Violet thought, did not help.
She
wanted to come. But she was not asked. And therefore she would not ask. She crossed her arms across her chest and tried to suppress a glower.

“You should be happy for him,” her father said, patting her head as though she were just a little child, and turned his attention to the organization of maps.

The King, as always, did his own preparations for his journey. He carefully compared the items in his rucksack with the items on his list. He arranged, checked, weighed, rechecked, and mended any weak spots himself. It would be hours before he was satisfied.

The King, like his father before him, was an engineer, devoting hours to the dreaming and building of devices and contraptions—much to the chagrin of his daughter. A
real
king, thought she, does not hunch over drafting tables! He does not tinker with hinges and levers and pulleys. A
real
king carries a sword into battle—he is brash and brave and
bold
. Just like the stories said. And though she knew it was wrong, Violet narrowed her eyes at her father’s work and felt ashamed.

“Will you at least be fighting the dragon?” she asked, imagining the story she’d tell of her father’s derring-do against a fearsome beast.

“Certainly not!” he cried. “We might hurt it!”

Violet threw her hands in the air in exasperation.

“Father,” she said. “Do you never read? Great kings are supposed to fight great battles and slay fearsome dragons. Don’t they call you King Randall the
Bold
?”

The King, temporarily satisfied that he hadn’t forgotten anything, cinched his bags closed and hauled them over to the door.

“There are other ways to be bold,” he said, “without demonstrating it with the sword. Most battles are won by changing minds and turning hearts. Sometimes that’s all the bravery you need.”

Violet scoffed, “And you intend to turn a dragon’s heart?
That
is why you won’t kill it?”

Briefly, a vision of the painting flashed behind her eyes—those long legs and long arms, those sharp feet digging into the pile of dragon hearts. And the eyes of the dragons—awful, empty, and blank, blank, blank. She shook the image away.

The King smiled slightly and sat next to his daughter on the sofa, leaning as he did so toward the fire. “In a manner of speaking,” he said, “yes.” He stretched his feet as close to the flames as he dared, trying to warm them through.
Spring had come early that year—a blessing, of course—but the nights were still windy and cold and damp. Still, the King was undeterred. “Many of the stories you’ve heard about dragons come from the days when their will was not their own. When they were enslaved. Worse than enslaved. Controlled.”

Violet snorted. “So, they’re forgiven? Just like that? Their nature is still their nature. The stories—” Her voice caught, and she stopped.
Those eyes.
She tried not to think about it.
Those blank, blank eyes.

“Indeed,” the King said, not noticing the catch in his daughter’s voice. “Simply stories. There are risks to irresponsible storytelling.” He paused, then folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes at his only child. “And you, my dear, ought to be going to bed.”

Now Violet, like many children, had her own ideas of when she should sleep, wake, eat, read, and pursue her own plans. But after several minutes of negotiations, offers, and pleading, Violet agreed with her father. Besides, she had several stacks of books squirreled under her bed that she had stolen from the library, her father’s study, and my room. Violet had not yet found any more mentions of a thirteenth god, nor had she found any of its stories, but she had not
stopped trying. It was there somewhere. She just knew it. Violet threw her arms around her father, kissed each cheek, and wished him pleasant dreaming.

But when she reached the door, she paused.

“Father,” said she, “do you know the story of a creature called the Nybbas?”

The room was lit with the rich light of beeswax candles and the bright coals in the fireplace. Even still, it appeared to Violet that her father’s face began to darken, then pale. But she blinked and he looked quite himself, and she wondered if she had only imagined it.

“Now where would you have heard such a name, child?” her father asked, a curious hoarseness grating the edges of his voice.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Violet said casually. “A book or a painting or something. Or perhaps I just dreamed it. But I haven’t been able to come up with a reference no matter how hard I look.”

“I don’t believe I can help you, my dear,” her father said. “I simply haven’t heard of it. And if Cassian doesn’t know it either, I daresay no one does.”

And Violet went to bed wondering.

That night, she was troubled by strange dreams. She
dreamed that the castle foundation became, quite suddenly, beset by cracks—fine as spider silk. And like spiderwebs, each filament intersected with countless others, making an intricate and infinite pattern that stretched from the ground to the midpoint of the castle walls. The cracks began to widen, then crumble, then yawn open, and they gave way to an army of golden-skinned lizards, each with hard, glittering jeweled eyes. They were beautiful, quick, and without mercy.

Violet woke just as the castle fell.

Her father, on the other hand, did not sleep at all. He remained seated by the fire, his brooding heart troubled by worry. Exhausted and distracted, the King, along with Demetrius and the rest of the party, left the next morning into the fresh, damp world as the early sun lit their way with a thin, cool light. Before the castle disappeared from view, he stopped, turned, and looked at his home, the place of all he held dear.