Page 66 of A Treason of Thorns

Yet tempering the bitterness of that revelation is Wyn’s admission that he’s done all this for me. Knowing it is a weight and a burden, but it kindles heat and light inside me, where the similar burden of looking after Burleigh leaves only cold resolve.

All that warmth crumbles to ash, though, as Wyn speaks again.

“In a few days, everything will be alright,” he says, though there’s a note of uncertainty in his voice. “Just before His Majesty arrives, I’ll do what I’ve been bound for. Burleigh will have a fresh start. You will have a fresh start. You’re going to be fine, Violet. I promise.”

I drop my hands and stare at him. “Wyn, I don’t want a new start without you.Nothing’sgoing to be alright if you don’t make it through this. Do you really think I could stand by and watch you make the sacrifice I was meant for? What if—why can’t I bind myself to the House again, in your place?”

“I’d have to go away for that to happen,” Wyn answers simply. “I can’t be replaced unless I’m absent from the House. But the binding’s gone too far, and I can’t leave. So I’m afraid this is how things have got to be. But you’re a Caretaker, Vi. What does a Caretaker do? She puts her House first. Before king, before country, before—”

“Stop,” I say. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Wyn bends and picks up his nightshirt, pulling it back over his head. When he faces me again, he’s all maddening practicality.

“Why don’t you want to hear it?” Wyn asks. “Being a Caretakeris everything you’ve ever wanted. Everything your father taught you to be. I can bring about what you’ve hoped for since we were children.”

He stands there, with his hands at his sides, next to the place where Papa cut my name into Burleigh’s walls and bound Wyn to the House. And Wyn seems so small and breakable next to Burleigh’s thorns and mortar.

The House will eclipse him.

He will be overshadowed.

Burleigh will take him over, and leave him lifeless when it goes back into the earth.

Panic wells up inside me, setting my hands to shaking and tears to burning at my eyes. This is not what I wanted.

“I’m not a good Caretaker,” I own to Wyn. “I’m never going to be a good Caretaker. I don’t want to put the House first, not like this. I don’t...” I swallow. “Wyn, I don’t want Burleigh without you.”

He heaves a sigh. “Well, that’s unfortunate. Because I’m afraid it looks like you’re going to get it.”

And then I’m crying in earnest, not bothering to hide my face or turn away, because Wyn already knows the best of me, and the worst.

“Come on now,” he says. “Don’t do that, Vi. You really will be fine, you know.”

Wyn steps forward and puts his arms around me. For a moment, I feel an overwhelming sense of safety, until the awareness that it’s Wyn who will die for Burleigh strikes me all over again. I tremble in his arms and he pulls me closer.

“It’s alright,” Wyn says, his voice low and comforting. “It’s alright.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my head, but I turn my face up to his and we’re caught, looking at one another and knowing that in this moment, something’s irrevocably changed between us.

Then my hands are on his skin beneath his nightshirt, tracing those scars once more, and his are on my waist. My mouth meets Wyn’s, and in spite of all this blood and mortar, in spite of what feels like the end of the world, everything in me sings. I kiss him as if a kiss could break a binding, and he kisses me as if it could mend a broken heart.

When we finally draw apart, I know it will never again do me any good to count the stars, or to count my fears. Because as Wyn runs a hand through his untidy hair and gives me a look that saysWell, Violet, what are we going to do now?I can feel it with every bone in my body: he is the center upon which all my fears, at last, converge.

22

EVER SINCE WYN’S MIDNIGHT CONFESSION, BURLEIGH ISon edge. I’m on edge. Wyn seems quietly resolved, and that only sharpens the fear inside me.

I beg Alfred and Esperanza to redouble their efforts on Burleigh’s behalf, though I can’t bring myself to explain why. They write a flood of letters to their contacts throughout the country, asking if anyone’s found even the vaguest hint as to the location of Burleigh’s deed. For my part, every night I watch Burleigh’s memories until I can’t stay awake any longer, and fall asleep with the House’s whole sad history playing out around me.

I know in my bones that this is the only chance I have—if I can succeed in finding the deed, if I can manage to unbind my House, perhaps I won’t have to choose between home and heart.

Because everything has shifted between Wyn and me. Though we’re careful with each other, lips and hands never meeting, our eyes meet often. Every time, my pulse goes wild. And every time, I see it in him as he looks back at me—panic, raw and wild, forced down so deep that only the merest glimmer is visible. But I am amaster of keeping my emotions tightly in check and know exactly what to look for.

Wyn is like a rabbit in a snare. Whatever he may say, however he may insist he’s ready to die to give me a chance at happiness and Burleigh an opportunity to start over, it’s not what he wants. And it works like mortar and thorns in me, seeing him unhappy. I think that’s why he’s maintaining this new and scrupulous distance between us, too—because to be close is to be honest, and Wyn doesn’t want me to see the truth.

Then, three nights after Wyn tells me the truth, I wake to a memory I’ve never seen before.

I haven’t asked Burleigh to show me anything about Papa’s arrest, beyond what it’s volunteered. I’ve been wary of pushing the House to show me things that might be painful. But I open my eyes in the small, dark hours between evening and morning, and find myself looking at the dining hall.