Page 37 of A Treason of Thorns

And then, though I can hardly credit it, my father has won. He looks down at the cards with the same disbelief I feel.

“Well, there you have it.” The king is genial, as if he’d just lost a sovereign or a meaningless trinket. “We’ll pack you up come morning light and get you to a port. Where will it be? Spain? Portugal? Or Sweden, perhaps. Hot or cold?”

Papa hesitates. The fire crackling in the grate flares blue, the way it always did for him. His shoulders droop.

“Once more,” he rasps. “For a pardon. So Violet and I can stay with Burleigh.”

His Majesty’s face remains carefully neutral, but I know him, the devil, and the way his attention suddenly fixes on my father when before it seemed to wander can mean only one thing.

He knew their game would come to this. He knew George Sterling could never resist grasping at any straw that might let us remain with our House.

“Are you certain, George?” the king asks, and the feigned kindness in his voice is like splinters inside me. I hate him worse than anyone else in all this world, I think. Most wicked men are at least straightforward—unwieldy clubs that bludgeon you with their ill will and brute strength. But His Majesty the king is a dagger in the night, wielded with a smile.

From that point on it’s like watching a cat toy with its prey, as the king languidly lets Papa take a few tricks before soundly beating him. My father just sits afterward. He’s very quiet, and when I look down, his hands are trembling.

I glance over at Wyn beside me, too. He seems alright, but that vacant look I saw last time he did House magic has clouded his eyes. I gnaw at my lower lip, torn between wanting to end this memory for Wyn’s sake, and needing to see it through till the end.

“Burleigh, are you sure about showing me this?” I whisper. A wave of insistence hits me. “Very well, buthurry, please.”

“I would have let you go, if you hadn’t wanted what isn’t yours,” the king tells Papa. “I’m good for my word, and we both know it.”

“Yet I am who I am, and we both know that as well,” Papa answers. “I can never help but try for this House.”

His Majesty holds out his hand. “The key, if you will, George. They call me a game player, but you’re the one who staked what you most value on something larger, only to lose in the end. Pity about that. I thought you might actually get the best of me and unbind the old place.”

Papa pulls the Caretaker’s key from his pocket and looks down at it. The greyish-brown bowstone gleams dully in the firelight. At last he surrenders it to the king, and a great, muttering groan of stone and timber rises from the House.

I can feel Burleigh’s bereavement, even in memory, creeping through the soles of my feet and into my lungs with the air I breathe. Though my father still sits across from the king, the House knows—this is the beginning of the end.

From our present time I sense Burleigh struggling to see the memory through to its conclusion. The force of its attention is oppressive, and Wyn’s eyes aren’t just blank now, they’re opaque and grey, marked by the mortar that doesn’t show beneath his skin. I can’t stand to see him so.

“Burleigh, that’s enough!” I snap, but the House pays me no mind, pushing through to the end of this memory.

“I’m curious, George—how far did you get?” His Majesty asks offhandedly. “How close did you actually come to laying hold of the deed?”

“I stood exactly where Falmouth told me to,” Papa says, and his eyes never leave the key. “And I couldn’t find it. But I suppose, if Falmouth played me false, you sent me on a fool’s errand in the first place.”

“No.” The king toys with the key, passing it from hand to hand, and the bowstone glimmers as it moves. “Joss Falmouth may be loyal to the crown, but he told you the deed’s location. You were an arm’s length from your heart’s desire, George, and didn’t have the wit to find it.”

Papa says nothing. He tears his gaze away from the key and fixes it on the floor, as the king leans forward with an infuriating smile.

“Do you know how little you’ve truly accomplished?” His Majesty asks my father. “Nothing’s changed for the better because of you, George. I don’t even plan to move the deed—it’s safe enough where it is. And your House is worse off having had you as a Caretaker than it was when you took charge.”

Pitch-colored brambles snake up the arms of the king’s chair, crumbling in places and weeping mortar. They’re not part of the memory, though—they’re a piece of my present time. The House trembles, an earth-deep sense of unease, of anguish, and darkness falls.

When it clears, I’m sitting on the rug in my room. Blighted vines tangle around my crossed legs, and around Wyn’s, but he has his hands to the floor and his eyes are still that unseeing grey. Sweat beads on his forehead and his mouth moves soundlessly. I wait, jittering with nerves and impatience, until I feel the House’s attention finally shift away from us. Even as the sickly vines loosen and burst into radiant flowers, and a rain of petals falls from the ceiling, I snatch Wyn’s hands and chafe them between both of my own.

“That’s enough,” I tell him. “You can stop now.”

Wyn’s mouth moves, near soundlessly, and I lean forward to try and catch what it is he’s saying over and over.

Blood in the mortar. Breath in the walls. Blood in the mortar. Breath in the walls.

It gives me an unpleasant, creeping sensation, hearing him speak the words when the rest of him seems to have gone somewhere else entirely.

“Wyn,” I whisper. “Haelwyn of Taunton, come back to me.”

He blinks. Suddenly he’s there again, within himself once more. I draw in a shaking breath and throw my arms around him, because fear has turned my heart to a wild thing.