Page 16 of A Treason of Thorns

“What will you do with the answer to that question?”

She looks into my eyes and my gaze falters. I say nothing.

“George found where the king keeps the deed,” Mira admits, “though I don’t know that he ever laid hands on the thing itself.”

I’m breathless. The air around me is breathless, too, as the House holds back, fighting against the restless, destructive energy I can feel through the flagstones beneath my feet. I am pushing too far, I know. But I can’t stop now.

“Where, Mira? Where does His Majesty keep Burleigh’s deed?”

She shakes her head. “Your father never told a soul but a friend of his called Albert Weston, and the two of them are dead and buried. I expect no one knows that secret now but the king and Burleigh House itself.”

With a wrenching shriek, metal twists and a sapling bursts through the center of the kitchen’s long wood-fired range stove. The tree rises to the ceiling and spreads leafy branches over us, dark flowers and darker thorns jutting from every twig.

“Oh hush, I’m sorry,” I soothe, crouching to press my hands to the flagstone floor. Mira gets up and goes out to Jed, because she knows the words aren’t for her.

Wyn gets up, too, wordlessly dropping his plate into the washbasin and leaving the room. As I watch him go, guilt and regret and longing all churn in my stomach. I want to be the way we were, but he’ll barely look at me. And now here I sit, having done no more than speak of treason, and my words have already bred damage. Fear fills my belly, and I ruthlessly tamp it down.

After dark, I creep up to the long echoing attics at the summit of Burleigh House, drifting past old wardrobes and chests of drawers and clotheshorses. Opening a familiar window, I shimmy out onto the roof and scoot around a brick chimney only to find Wyn, lying on his back on the slate tiles, eating a wrinkled winter apple and staring up at the starry night sky.

“It’s nice to see some things haven’t changed,” I say, a little shyly, because I don’t know if I’m wanted or not. “I missed coming up here.”

“Didn’t they have stars in Lincolnshire?” Wyn asks, and takes a bite of his apple.

“Yes, but not like these ones. Am I interrupting? Do you want me to go?”

Wyn glances over at me. “I can’t tell you to go. It’s not my House.”

“It’s not mine, either,” I point out. “It’s the king’s.”

“But you want to change that. Tell the truth.”

I settle down with my back to the brick chimney, which still holds a hint of the sun’s warmth.

“What else am I supposed to do?” I ask, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. “His Majesty won’t give me the key, but Burleigh needs help. I don’t see a way around this, Wyn. Have you looked at the countryside, or at Burleigh? I’m afraid this House won’t last the summer, and that’s all the time I’ve got. After that, the king’s sending a new Caretaker to oversee things.”

“Then let His Majesty choose a new Caretaker now, and tell Burleigh you approve,” Wyn says.

The House rumbles ominously underneath us. I’m not sure I could convince it to accept a new Caretaker, even if His Majesty sent me someone sympathetic. What’s more, I don’t think I trust anyone else to look after Burleigh. Revulsion churns in my stomach at the thought of the key in a stranger’s hands. It’s not just me the idea upsets, either—ill temper and distaste are creeping up through the slate tiles of the roof.

“I don’t think that’ll be enough,” I tell Wyn. Not enough for Burleigh, and not enough for me. “I think—blood and mortar, Wyn, I think I have to finish what my father started.”

There it is. The thing that’s been weighing on me since we left the East Fen, and that I haven’t, until this moment, fully acknowledged even to myself.

“You don’t have to, though.” Wyn’s voice is flat, devoid of emotion, and he keeps his eyes fixed on the sky. “You’re not a Caretaker. You don’t have the key, like you said, and you can’t work House magic without it. It’s foolishness to think you can do much here, Violet, and trying for the deed will be the death of you. You don’t need to end up like your father did.”

On my far side, out of his view, little daisies sprout beneath my hand, their soft petals brushing the webbing between my fingers.

Don’t I?

“What happened?” I ask Wyn.

“Your father kept doing his job. Working House magic after the king had taken the key. That’s what killed him.”

“Not that. Why did you stay?”

A muscle works in Wyn’s jaw. “George asked me to.”

“I still know when you’re lying. That’s not the truth,” I chide.