Page 43 of A Treason of Thorns

“Why should that be dangerous?” I ask. Outside, the ivy is waving at me, creeping across the window glass.

Behind Mama, the door to the airing cupboard swings open another few inches. Wyn’s face is pale in the gloom—he’s his child-self in this dream, not the Wyn I’ve come to know, and even in sleep I feel a stab of disappointment.

“Vi, I know your father loves Burleigh House more than anything,” Mama says, and I ignore the hint of bitterness in her voice.“I know he’s teaching you to love it, too. But every House, no matter how biddable it may seem—no matter how devoted to its Caretaker it may be—must obey its binding in the end. And the Houses are bound to kill anyone who attempts to return their deeds.”

A tendril of vine snakes through a crack in one of the window frames and lifts the latch. When the window swings open, ivy creeps in, spilling silently across the window seats, pouring onto the floors.

“Burleigh isn’t like that,” I answer with unshakable confidence. “Burleigh would never hurt anyone.”

“I’m sure Marianne Ingilby thought the same of Ripley Castle.” Mama glances over her shoulder at the oncoming ivy and shivers. “But that House killed her, Violet. Ripley strangled her in obedience to its bond. It was not freed by blood and mortar as Marianne had planned. Killing her was too much for the House to bear, though. It went wild, and unleashed every bit of its destructive magic on the countryside. What is it your father always says? A Caretaker puts his House first, but a House puts itself first. Well, Ripley Castle did just that. Then in the aftermath, caught up in its own grief, it destroyed Yorkshire.”

I look down at my hands, and they’re a child’s now. I’ve shrunken, folded into my former self, and I can feel tears slipping down my face.

Mama is relentless. She continues speaking, and the ivy creeps inch by slow inch toward her. With every word and every rustle, I feel as if the axis of my world is shifting.

“In the wake of Marianne’s death, Ripley Castle turned the north to a wasteland. Its magic became a dark and twisted thingthat spilled out into the surrounding countryside. The damage was so severe that even after His Majesty finally dealt with the House, people fled the county, and it still lies uninhabited.”

Mama takes my hands in hers, and I’m too shocked by her story to pull away.

“Houses don’t love us, Violet. They obey or disobey, and they use us to their own ends.”

She startles with a quick intake of breath as the ivy brushes against her ankle.

“Burleigh, stop it,” I snap, and in an instant, the vines crumble to ash. I look at the black smudges they’ve left on my bedroom floor, because I can’t look at my mother.

“You needed to know,” Mama says. She presses a kiss to my forehead. Her lips are cool against my skin and I catch a hint of rosewater as she stands and moves to the door.

I stop her with a word. “Wait. What happened to Ripley Castle, after it went wild?”

“The king had it burned. Every stone and every timber.”

Once she’s taken the lamp away and shut the door behind her, I crawl out of bed and pad across the floor to the airing cupboard. I sit down next to Wyn and shut the door behind us, so that we’re shoulder to shoulder, alone together in the quiet dark.

“Violet, I’m afraid,” Wyn says. “What if it’s true, about the Houses?”

“I’m afraid, too,” I tell him. “What would I do, if Burleigh were to burn?”

And in the way of dreams, everything shifts. I’m no longer sitting in the dark with Wyn—I’m standing at the front gate, whichis once more iron-wrought bars rather than brambles. Wyn stands on the other side, within the grounds, and he’s the boy I know—sandy-haired and reticent, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He clutches the gate’s iron bars, and I cover his hands with my own.

“Go on then, Violet,” Wyn says. “Find your own way.”

Beside me in the hedgerow, a little bird opens its beak to sing, and the voice that comes out is Mama’s clear, sweet soprano.

Burleigh holds quicksilver

Burleigh ruins all

Without blood in its mortar

Breath in its walls

As it sings, I watch Wyn go down the gravel drive and into the House, where he shuts the door behind him. Smoke billows from the windows. Flames lick at the stonework, glass shatters and timbers groan. Burleigh House collapses in on itself, with Wyn inside, and it feels as if I’ve caught fire myself, and my own insides must surely crumble.

When I wake, that pain is still with me, crushing my chest like a vise, pushing the breath from my lungs. I gasp, and gasp, and gasp.

15

IT IS A FINE MAY MORNING—THE LAST MAY MORNING OFthis year, in fact—and Burleigh looks lovely on the cusp of summer. I sit out in the kitchen garden, on a bench in the sun with my back against one of the walls. The air is warm, and while the garden may be mostly weeds at this point, bees buzz drowsily among their blossoms. Finches flit between the green thistles. I am happy in this brief moment, and Burleigh is happy because I’m happy. Though I can still feel pain emanating from the bricks, and the immense strain of the House holding in its unspent magic, there’s also contentment, benevolence, and a vast sense of fondness.