Page 68 of A Treason of Thorns

I strain to see in the overwhelming darkness and gradually, the air around me grows grey. Indistinct forms begin to take shape—they’re not recognizable yet, but any moment they will be. Hope bursts to joyous life inside me, even as I feel cold creek water against my feet, and the icier bite of mortar leaching into my hands, still buried in forest earth.

The light grows. I see a rocky cavern floor, and beyond the cave mouth the blue, blue Cornish sea. A bit of rock rises from the water offshore.

The image holds. I try to move forward, but it’s as if my feet have been cemented to the ground. This is all Burleigh can give—this picture of the Cornish coast. And it’s not much to go on.

“Burleigh,” I beg. “I don’t know where we are. Can’t you tell me? Find a way.”

The sun sinks low on the western horizon. And as it does, a long, ominous wave rises out of the sea. It rushes on toward the shore, terrifyingly tall and ready to consume everything in its path.

And I know exactly where I am.

Not just a sea cave.

A cave along the coast west of St. Ives, where I stood and watched just such a wave as a child.

Abruptly, the vision shatters. The nighttime woods behindBurleigh House reappear with a suddenness that makes my head spin. Beneath me, the ground lurches. Water is rising in the stream at an alarming rate—it’s already reached my knees, but when I struggle to get to my feet, everything in me is horribly, overwhelmingly heavy. I look down, and my bare arms and legs aren’t just veined with grey—they’re the color of stone, and I can hardly feel them, they’ve grown so cold.

With a supreme effort, I force myself upright and climb the treacherous stream bank. The leaves and mud are slick underfoot, and I lose my balance several times, coming out plastered in muck. All the while, the earth beneath me groans and trembles.

At the top of the embankment, I reach out to a nearby tree trunk to steady myself. But I snatch my hand back at once with a hiss. Vines thick with razor-edged thorns are slithering across the forest floor and up the trees, and have torn my palm open. Blood and mortar ooze sluggishly from my skin.

I don’t dare stop. I don’t dare offer to help my keening House, for fear that it will kill me by mistake.

“Burleigh, stop. Calm yourself,” I shout at the House as the ground shakes and distant crashes echo through the forest. But my voice is already thick with mortar and the trees around me are losing branches or toppling over entirely, even as more magic churns into me, bubbling up from the earth, carrying the wild, tainted power of the House. I tremble and freeze as the hiss of vines grows to a fever pitch.

Dark spots are already dancing at the edge of my vision when the first bramble tightens around my ankle.

23

THE BITE OF THORNS DRIVES BACK THE DARKNESS SWIMMINGacross my line of sight, and I cry out as the vine pulls tight, its fierce teeth sinking into my skin. Something, somewhere, catches Burleigh’s attention and the immense weight of the House’s focus lifts from me. Clarity floods my mind, and I plunge a hand into my dressing gown pocket, pulling out a gutting knife I haven’t yet shaken the habit of carrying. Sliding it from its leather sheath, I saw at the grasping vine with the knife’s serrated spine, rather than its curved cutting edge, and finally pull free.

Once I’m loose, I panic. The House only ever shifts its attention like that for one person, and I can’t bear to think of him taking in its cursed power.

“Burleigh,” I choke. “Don’t. Look at me.Look at me.”

But the House’s attention does not return. Knife still in hand, I limp toward the wildflower meadow at the forest’s edge. The woods are alive with destructive energy, though, and I watch in dismay as briars thicker than my arms begin to weave themselves through the trees bordering the meadow.

I grit my teeth, hobbling faster. If that hedge of thorns closes before I reach it, my little blade won’t be enough to cut through.

Just then, Wyn appears and stands in the gap between forest and field. I fix my eyes on him, and push myself to move faster.

“Wyn, stop,” I call as he reaches out to the trees on either side of him.

“Just hurry,” he shouts, and I do my level best. Tremor after tremor throws me to the ground, but I push myself back up each time, closing the distance between us. Wyn holds out a hand and I reach for it.

The earth shakes angrily. Enormous brambles snake toward us. But Wyn pulls me forward with so much force that we tumble into the wildflower meadow together as only inches behind us, the forest is sealed off behind an impenetrable wall of thorns.

An eerie calm falls. Overhead, the sky clears and the moon comes out, bathing field and forest in silver light. But I can’t feel relief, or pain, though I’m sure I ought to. All I feel is abominable cold, spreading up my arms and legs, creeping across my chest toward my heart.

“Violet, give me your hands,” Wyn says distantly. I try to pull away, because I don’t want him to hurt himself, but I can’t focus on his voice or seem to move at all. Wyn’s face wavers and fades from my vision as everything turns to cold and stone.

I wake on my back, still in the wildflower meadow, and the stars overhead are only just beginning to fade as dawn lightens the eastern sky. There is pain pulsing through me, from where thorns cut at the skin on my hands, and from where brambles tore at my ankle.But I can feel it, at least. There’s no cold left in me. No life-stealing mortar.

Wyn sits a short distance away, head buried in his arms. When I shift and the dry grass rustles, he looks up, and his face is so pale and drawn it breaks my heart. Yet I’m glad that there’s no blankness in him—that he’s fully present within himself. Whatever the mortar did to him, whatever piece of Wyn it stole, its work is already finished.

“Are you alright?” I ask as I sit up with a groan.

Wyn shakes his head, and when he speaks, his voice is rough with emotion. “What were youthinking, Violet? You could have killed yourself.”