Page 75 of A Treason of Thorns

I chafe at the enforced confinement, and feel as if at any moment, I might fly apart.

“Do you want to talk about anything, Vi?” Espie offers.

“No,” I answer sharply. “No, I don’t want to talk at all.”

Alfred buries himself in his books, receding so far into a stack of them that only the top of his head remains visible. Esperanza sits at the counter and strikes up a rather desperate conversation with the barmaid, about St. Ives and Cornwall and fisheries and what could be done to ease the burdens of local tin miners.

I don’t have a bent for reading to distract me, or the good of England to bother with, so I stand at a window and brood, staring out into the dark of the storm. In all my life, I have never felt so low. And with nothing to occupy me, all I can do is wait for ungovernable fear to rise up, for heartbreak to blossom in my chest like a physical pain.

While I wait, I think of Burleigh House, marking me as a child. Of Mama’s insistence that Papa find a way to undo what had been done. Of my father bringing a foundling boy home not a week later, when he’d never shown much of a bent for charity before.

I think of Mama’s refusal to welcome Wyn into the family, to make him one of us. Of Wyn’s unease throughout our childhood—his furtive requests for the two of us to run away together. Of Papa taking him, a blameless boy, into the living prison of House arrest. And I think of Wyn at home, steeling himself to do something that should not be required of him.

Suddenly, I find I am not fearful, or heartbroken.

I’m furious.

Before either Alfred or Esperanza can protest, I burst back out into the storm, grabbing a lantern that hangs by the inn door as I go. I don’t care that the cliffs are slippery and treacherous, or that in the darkness the boom and crash of the surf is near overwhelming. I don’t care that the rain has me soaked through in a moment, either. All I care about is getting back to that sea cave, because I can no longer tolerate failure. Perhaps I will die for Burleigh yet. But I will not go home and watch Wyn do it in my stead. I’m not just Violet Sterling, Caretaker of a failing House. I am the sum of everywhere and everything I’ve been. And I am still, in my deepest parts, Vi of the Fens, who never goes home empty-handed.

In the dark and the rain, I nearly pass the gorse bush that marks the head of the trail down to the little beach below the cave, where I felt Burleigh’s presence so strongly. But my skirt snags on its reaching branches and I start down the rain-slick path.

The climb up to the cave is a nightmare, with unseen water frothing below as I grasp for purchase on the wet rocks, forced toleave my lantern behind. But at last I haul myself up into the cavern’s scant shelter and draw a breath.

Well done, Violet, I think to myself.You’ve really thought this through. Sitting in a cave during a rainstorm when you can’t see your hand in front of your face will absolutely save Wyn and Burleigh.

But do I need to see? We searched this whole place over with our eyes in broad daylight, and not a sign of the deed turned up. Perhaps it isn’t sight I’m wanting. With sight, I saw nothing worth noticing. But even now, that part of me that recognizes Burleigh, that’s always recognized Burleigh, can feel magic, and the familiar presence of my own House.

So in the darkness, racked with shivers, I get down on my hands and knees and reach, with the piece of me that is always reaching for either Burleigh or Wyn; the bit of Violet Sterling who sees them as family, and home.

As I do, thoughts of Wyn being bound to Burleigh rise up, and are soon met by grim imaginings of the House being put to the torch by His Majesty, and of Burleigh overtaking Wyn entirely in order to survive. I force those bleak visions down ruthlessly, all my practice at holding things in check coming to good use as I creep along the cavern floor. I don’t want to live in a world where either Wyn or Burleigh does not exist—I want them both, and I refuse to trade one for the other, whatever my father was willing to do.

So I move inch by slow inch through the cave, feeling for my House. Toward the back of the cavern my awareness of Burleigh grows ever so slightly stronger. And then again as I shift a few paces to the left. And again. Then a little weaker, so I hastily backtrack. At the place where I can feel Burleigh most strongly, I meticulouslyrun my hands across the cave floor, touching every bit of rock, and then up along the wall. Little by little I go, all of me bent on sensing my House.

When my searching fingers slide over a slight lip of rock just higher than my head and brush against a small stone, I’m shoved three steps back by the force of what I feel.

Despair, darkness, calamity. Brokenness, heartbreak, agony.

And once that subsides, I realize cold mortar is dripping from my hand. It hasn’t gone into me—there was no sense of magic crawling under my skin, no, this is leftover mortar—the last vestiges of it that remain in my blood from the times Burleigh couldn’t hold its power back. Whatever I’ve just touched, it’s pulling the lingering bits of poison from me like a magnet draws metal. I’ve never seen the like, and never known such a thing to be possible. As the mortar goes, I feel suddenly flush with health, like waking up from a long illness you’ve grown used to, only to find yourself well again.

Bending, I tear a wide strip off the bottom of my already ragged fen skirt. Folding it double and wrapping it around my hand, I reach up once more and grasp at the stone resting on the rock ledge overhead. I can’t see it in the darkness, but even through layers of fabric I can still feel that wild anguish, that sense of brokenness, of unbelonging, and of separation.

No wonder my father stood in this cave and never found what he was looking for. It’s not deeds that bind the Great Houses—it’s missing pieces of their own selves. How devilishly clever of the king and all his predecessors, to never speak a word of this truth. To ensure for eight hundred years that anyone who sought to free the Houses would always be searching for the wrong thing.

And how well Marianne Ingilby must have known Ripley Castle, to find its missing piece.

I carefully wrap up this lost bit of Burleigh and tuck it into one of my deep pockets, where its constant thrumming of loneliness and desolation immediately sets an ache in my thigh. Fear uncurls in my belly at the thought of the journey back down the cliff face, but when I turn to the cavern’s mouth, the clouds have parted. A sickle moon gleams overhead, casting diamonds across the restless sea, and its light seems all the brighter for the night having been so dark.

Esperanza and Alfred are still waiting up when I trudge back through the inn door at dawn.

“Violet—” Espie begins.

“I’ve got it,” I tell them wearily. “I found it.”

They both begin speaking at the same time, but fall silent as soon as I draw the bundled stone from my pocket.

“Are you—are you sure that’s it?” Espie asks, concern pulling her expressive face into a frown. “Only I know you’ve had a shock, what with us failing to get hold of the deed earlier.”

“I’m certain,” I tell her. “Espie, look at me. I haven’t taken leave of my senses. We’ve been looking for the wrong thing. Chasing after deeds made of paper, when it’s a piece of Burleigh itself that’s bound my House.”