Iron Hearted Violet Read Online Free

Lady, the god with wings, the stone goddess, the god of fire, the Great Ox, and the god who was a spider. Whatever happened to the thirteenth god? Did he vanish?”
    I thought:
We don’t ask about that.
    “Did he do something bad?” she pressed.
    I thought:
No questions! There are things we do not question and things that we dare not know!
    Instead, I said, “I don’t think I have ever heard of a thirteenth god. Perhaps the book you read was in error.” I couldn’t look at her. My breath rattled in my chest. My hands shook.
    Which book?
I thought desperately.
It must be found and destroyed. I’ll destroy all the books if I have to.
    Demetrius’s black eyes twinkled at the edges. His burnished cheeks swelled with a knowing grin. “You have,” he said. “You’ve seen it and read it, or you learned about it along the way, but you don’t want to tell us. I can see it in your hands.”
    I harrumphed. “You can see no such thing,” I sputtered, hastily sliding my hands under my knees.
    “Why does he not want to tell us?” Violet faced her friend and raised her eyebrows.
    “It’s a mystery,” Demetrius said. And they both turned and stared at me.
    My teeth chattered. “There is nothing,” I stammered. “Nothing to tell. The Old Gods were twelve in number, but it was so very long ago that whether there were twelve gods or twelve thousand or none at all is irrelevant. We live in
this
world and
this
time and nothing else matters.” I took a deep breath. “And that’s that.”
    The children were quiet for a long, long moment.
    “Beloved Cassian,” Violet said as she folded her arms across her chest. “I do believe you are lying and hiding things from me. How dreadfully sneaky of you.”
    “Never, Princess!” I cried. “Never would I lie to you!”
I lie to protect
, I shouted in my heart, and I believed it.
Mostly.
Violet and Demetrius faced each other, their mouths mirrored in a thin, grim line.
    But before Violet could question me further, three nannies burst in and shooed her back to her classroom.
    “Until next time, dear child!” I called, and thencollapsed in my chair, covering my face with my hands and expelling a sigh of relief through my fingers.
    When I finally removed my hands, I discovered that Demetrius had remained behind. His black eyes peered mercilessly through the fringe of black hair hanging over his brow, and his mouth puckered to one side in a half-smile. Was I only worth half a smile? My heart shivered in my chest.
    “Do you have something to say, young man?” I snapped.
    “Nope,” Demetrius said. He was infuriatingly unrattled. His large black eyes were as implacable as two polished stones.
    “Well then,” I said, doing my best to affect a grown-uppish look of dignity. “Off you go. Your chores and such.” My hands trembled. My voice caught. Did he notice?
    Very slowly, the boy’s half-smile began to fade. He shook his head and left without a word.



CHAPTER SIX
    The children ignored me for a long time after that. It nearly broke my heart to pieces, not that they cared. Neither Violet nor Demetrius gave two figs for my heart—broken, unbroken, or missing altogether. There was a castle to explore. And both boy and girl were keen to do so.
    Indeed, ever since my little outburst, they were keener than ever.
    I suspect that you have not had the opportunity to spend a substantial amount of time in a castle, so you wouldn’t know what it was like to be a child maneuveringthrough those endless cracks, crannies, and corridors. There were secret rooms, and forgotten rooms, and hallways that wavered between
being
and
nonbeing
. A castle, you see, needs more than stones to keep it standing. Magic is also required, as are mysteries, secrets, revelry, schemes, passion, mischief, and love. In fact, if one were to make a list of the multitude of things that a castle
is
, it would likely outstrip the list of things that a castle
is not
.
    There was, for example, the abandoned workshop