Page 51 of A Treason of Thorns

Wyn takes a step forward, heedless of the brambles. They retreat a little, making way for him. “Violet. Say what you mean, for once. Tell me the truth. You’re upset with me, aren’t you?”

“No. Yes. Youleft. I am so tired of people leaving me, Wyn. So tired. My mother, my father, you—”

“I came back,” he offers, though there’s no defensiveness in his voice.

“It’s not just this time, though,” I say. “Why wouldn’t you go with me? When Papa was put under arrest, why did you stay? I needed you, Wyn. Mama always put herself first and Papa had Burleigh to think of. You were the only person I felt safe with, and you turned your back on me to stay here of all places, and I can’t understand why.”

“Blood and mortar,” Wyn mutters under his breath as he runs a hand across his face. “Violet. Can I show you something?”

“Oh, very well,” I answer flatly, because now I’ve said my piece, all I feel is sad and empty.

The brambles pull back and wither away as I step forward.

“It’s this way,” Wyn says, and leads me back into the woods. I hesitate at the edge of the forest. Part of me wants to stay out in the sunlight, in sight of Burleigh House, which has never let me down. But Wyn stops and waits for me, and at last I follow.

We go just about as far as you can get in the little forest while still remaining on Burleigh’s grounds. And in a back corner, in a thicket near the edge of the wood, we come upon something I’ve never seen before.

There’s a small shepherd’s hut in among the trees, built of odd, mismatched boards and roofed with a thin layer of thatch. It has no windows, and only one door.

“What is this?” I ask Wyn. “Where did it come from?”

“I made it,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “The year after the arrest began. You can go in—I think then you’ll see why.”

I open the door and stop on the threshold. “Will you come with me?”

Wyn joins me at once. It’s reassuring, having him at my back, and I step into the close, dim interior. At first the only light is whatever filters through the chinks in the walls and the bare patches on the roof. But then Wyn strikes a sulfur match and lights a lamp, and it’s like we’re alone together in a small golden bubble, when everywhere else on the grounds it’s impossible to escape thepervasive presence of Burleigh House.

In here, though, my sense of Burleigh’s consciousness is dampened. I let out a small, audible sigh of relief as the House’s pain and exhaustion fade from the edges of my mind. They don’t vanish entirely, but quiet to a bare whisper.

“It’s because nothing in here is part of Burleigh,” Wyn explains, without me having to say what I’ve felt. “I found the boards in the old barn, and all the nails and the thatch—they’d been brought in from the village and were just sitting there, gathering dust. So I built this myself. The House had no part of it. When the arrest started, Burleigh was always... looking at me. You know the way it is, when all of its attention is focused on you, and it’s hard to keep upright? It’d be like that for days at a time, and I got so tired of it I could hardly see straight. I just wanted somewhere of my own, somewhere to hide. And this is it.”

I settle down, sitting cross-legged on the rough planks of the floor. Wyn sits, too, facing me, and sets the lamp down between us.

“It helps when I’ve done House magic, to come out here,” he says, an apology written across his face. “If I’ve done a lot of it, I can’t think of anything else. I didn’t mean to let you down, Vi. Are you still angry?”

“Have I ever been able to stay angry with you?”

Wyn smiles, and it’s a half-broken, wistful thing. “No. I suppose not.”

“Can I look?” I ask, gesturing to the confined space around us.

Wyn shrugs. “Alright. There’s not much to see.”

He’s not being entirely truthful, though. I take the lamp and hold it up, and find charcoal drawings on every wall. They’re ofan achingly familiar landscape—wide, flat expanses of water and grass, with seabirds skimming the air overhead. I can almost hear the sea. Almost taste the salt. Almost smell the brine.

“It’s the fens,” I say, turning back to Wyn. “You drew the fens. How did you know that’s where we went?”

“Jed told me, just before you left.” He gets to his feet, ducking a little to avoid hitting his head on an arrangement of carved wooden birds suspended from the ceiling. I look at them, squinting a little in the low light, and I know every one of them. There’s a teal, a marsh harrier, a common crane, a grey shrike with a tiny hooked beak. They’re fen birds.

“I found some books in Burleigh’s library, and read about where you’d gone,” Wyn says.

Suddenly, hot tears burn at my eyes and my throat aches. Even while I was away, Wyn and I were still together in a sense. Sometimes, I feel as tied to him as I do to Burleigh House. And the panic I felt before dissipates, because he hasn’t left, he’s still here.

He’s still here.

“Wyn?” I say. He looks down at me, a question in his eyes. “Please don’t do House magic anymore. It’s not safe, and I hate watching what it does to you.”

“I know,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t. And I know I promised you that I’d stop. But if I’d let all that mortar out into the countryside...”