Violet Demeray

“Go on, then,” came the quiet order. She rose, taking the nearest candle and walking towards the door of her small cottage. She couldn’t do what they wanted; she wouldn’t. Hopefully the light from her candle had already scared off whatever they’d heard out there. The soldiers were hoping it was a spy, but it might just as easily have been a wild animal or even a familiar face from the nearby village. This thought reassured her as she pulled open the door.

And then – there he was. 

She froze when she saw his form, his features flickering in her light. The fair hair, the brown coat, those grey eyes; it was him. “Aeron?” she said the name before she could turn back. It was a horrible plan, but she couldn’t let him go now. The stranger raised his hands, ready to deny her and explain who he truly was. She couldn’t let him. “Aeron! Aeron!” She dropped the candle as she raced towards the dumbstruck man and flung her arms around his shoulders, holding tight. Was this how a woman in love was supposed to act? She didn’t know, but she hoped he was quick enough to understand that, for his sake, he needed to play along.

Violet Demeray is an enigma; nothing she says about herself ever adds up. There is even something off about her name, and the way she introduces it as ‘something people call me’.

To the main character of The Once and Forgotten Thing, it’s baffling how someone too honest to be good at lying can also be so mysterious. And yet there is an innocence about her, a child-like innocence that should have evaporated long ago, given her circumstances. In times of war, kindness too easily arouses suspicion; but her kindness is both persistent and endearing, strong enough to rival war’s atrocities. And of course there are her captivating violet eyes, which have a way of laughing and teasing him without a word. She carries everything in those eyes – including all the secrets he has little time to discover.

She has a quiet, peaceful little life, singing and dancing with her children to shelter them from the ugliness of war and a world unwilling to accept what it cannot understand. And yet, with everything to lose, she does the unthinkable – she drags an enemy spy through her door, pretending he’s her husband. . .