Page 59 of A Treason of Thorns

“Miss Violet, if you can’t—” he begins with an anguished expression, but I cut him off.

“I can. I already told you. But turn your back—House magic worked without a key isn’t a pretty sight. I don’t want you to look.”

When he’s turned away from me, I kneel, hitching my skirts up so that I’ll feel the earth and the House’s power through the tops of my bare feet, my shins, my knees. Then I sink both hands into what was once rich Somerset soil and smile. Wherever I am, so long as I’m in the West Country, I know my House can see.

“Burleigh House,” I murmur. “Take what you need.”

There’s no slow, careful doling out of power. No understanding of my human frailty. Instead I’m hit by a wall of dark, sickly energy and everything in me freezes as mortar pours through my veins.

At first I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t move. All I can do is crouch, transfixed by pain, like an insect pinned to a card or a fish speared to the riverbed.

But I have my pride, and Sam Worthing, who I’ve known from my childhood, still stands not ten yards away. I will not let the tremors take me. I will not cry out. I will not move my hands from the earth until this magic is done. Until every bit of darkness that has leached into this soil runs into me and leaves the land full of life again.

Overhead, the sun inches along the sky. The apple leaves shake in a warming summer breeze. And finally I watch as the brambles wither away. As the mortar on every surface crumbles and turns to dust, and that dust is consumed by the earth.

It is enough.

It will have to be. I have nothing left to give.

Sitting back, I pull my hands from the soil. Earth stains them, hiding the mortar that runs beneath my skin, but I can still feel its cold, sluggish poison. It will never leave me. It will rest within mybody until someday, perhaps ten, perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty years from now, I sicken from it, and die. Sam looks at me, and it’s as if he’s aged a decade in this last half hour.

“There you are, then,” I tell him, wiping at the mortar that weeps from my eyes. “I’m sorry on Burleigh’s behalf. I promise you, I’m doing everything in my power to fix what’s gone wrong in the West Country. And I pray I’ll have Burleigh restored, or it will be burned, before your farm gets in such a state again.”

“I’m glad to have the land back,” he says with a shake of his head. All the bitterness has drained from him, as surely as the mortar is gone from the soil he works. “But I’m not sure in the end that it’s worth the price, Miss Violet. Can I help you home?”

“No. Your family’s waiting, and I’ll be alright.”

I sit in the middle of Longhill Farm’s restored orchard. Some of the trees have fallen, and that can’t be helped, but the rest have shaken the mortar dust from their boughs and sprouted a dozen or more pinkening apples on every single branch. Away toward the byre, I hear a clang and a joyous lowing, as Sam lets the penned heifer loose. She kicks up her heels on her way to join her companions, entirely well once more.

My father’s old watchword churns around and around in my mind. A good Caretaker puts her House first. Before king, before country, before her own life.

How long will mine be, I wonder?

I pull on the long stockings I’ve brought, and the riding gloves, and tie the scarf around my neck, to hide the grey magic running under my skin. When I’ve finished, I look into the little hand mirror I tucked into the satchel as well.

Though there are shadows beneath my eyes and an ill look about me, you’d never guess the root of it. You’d never look at me and say, “There goes Violet Sterling, a girl with mortar in her veins.” And by the time I get home tonight, the mortar in me will have become invisible, swimming quietly in my blood, just waiting.

Someday, I will die for Burleigh House. It’s only become a matter of when.

20

“YOU LOOK ABSOLUTELY APPALLING, VI. WHAT HAVE YOUbeen doing?”

I turn around, nearly dropping my tray of cider mugs, and find Esperanza standing in the doorway of the Red Shilling. She’s in riding clothes, smelling of horse and looking exhausted herself.

“You were gone a whole month,” I mumble. “I’ve done a lot, and you’re not exactly a fashion plate yourself, now are you?”

I’ve come straight here from the Worthings’ farm—it’s still the mortar that has me looking like death warmed over, but I’m not about to own to that.

“I suppose not,” Espie sighs. “Did you know I was the best-dressed girl at the Spanish court? My, how the mighty have fallen. I’m absolutely worn-out, too. Almost as tired as you look.”

“Oh, stop it,” I say.

Alfred glances up from his omnipresent book and fixes Esperanza with a withering glare, as if they were never apart. “I beg your pardon; you’re as ravishing as ever from where I’m sitting. Don’t disparage the love of my life.”

“I smell like the back end of a horse, Alfie,” she grumbles. “Even you can’t possibly be attracted to that.”

He waves a dismissive hand at her. “Eau de cheval is my favorite fragrance, but only on you.”