Page 77 of A Treason of Thorns

“Violet, what—?” Esperanza begins from where she and Alfred are waiting for me next to the carriage.

“Going home, I’ll be back,” I call over one shoulder, already hurrying down the lane.

“She’s got to stop tearing off like that,” I hear Espie say to Alfred, and then I gather up my skirts and run.

It snows harder the closer I get to Burleigh House. Drifts blur the edges of the lane and I can’t see more than a dozen feet ahead. I’m sure I’d be freezing if not for the fact that I haven’t stopped moving. My breath smokes on the air, and finally the bramble gate appears amid the driving white, the thorns and vines already snaking back, opening the way for me.

Only once I’m through the gate do I slow to a walk.

“I missed you, too,” I tell the House. “But where’s Wyn? You’ve looked after him for me, haven’t you? You haven’t done anything awful?”

The ground beneath me rumbles ominously. Burleigh doesn’tlike that at all, hearing me speak reproachfully to it. But fear has eaten away my softer and more sympathetic parts. It grows wicked and wild within me as I get far enough down the drive to make out Burleigh’s shape through the swirling snow.

The jacaranda tree has lost all its leaves and blossoms. They lie in heaps on the ground around its trunk, filling the cold air with a sour scent of rotting vegetation. And my House. Oh, my House.

When I left, Burleigh was in ill repair. The guest wing was in ruins, and the rest of the roof needed patching, only growing worse day by day. Vines threatened to take over, and here and there, a windowpane wanted replacing. But my House, that looked poorly tended only a handful of days ago, is now a ruin.

Every window has blown out, and shattered glass mingles with gravel and snow on the drive, crunching underfoot as I draw closer. The roof has fallen in entirely, not just over the guest wing, and in places bits of the upper walls are already beginning to crumble. Ivy has been overtaken by wicked brambles. Burleigh would look almost frightening, were it not for the fact that I know it so well.

“Wyn?” I call, climbing the steps and pushing open the door. The corners of the front hall are choked with rubble. The four-lamp kerosene pendant has fallen from the ceiling and lies smashed in the middle of the floor. It’s left a gaping hole in the ceiling above, through which I can see a patch of distant sky. Snow falls softly through the gap, mingling with twisted bits of metal and shards of lamp glass.

“Wyn?” I’m shouting now, picking my way through fallen masonry and leaving a trail of slush in my wake. “Wyn, answer me. Where are you?”

There’s no sign of him, but when I push into the kitchen, Jed and Mira are there, nursing cups of tea and brooding under a great canvas tarpaulin that’s been lashed down where the roof once was. They start out of their chairs at the sight of me, and in an instant, I’ve been engulfed by Jed’s arms. It’s even more like hugging a bear than usual, for in spite of the fire burning on the kitchen hearth, the room’s still frigid, and he’s wearing a greatcoat. Mira gets up and embraces me, too, and I stand for the briefest instant, safe and warm and loved.

I remember how this family was won for me, though. I ought not to have this by rights. It should be Wyn’s, and I should’ve been the one who stayed behind, bound to the House as insurance against the coming end to its long dying.

“Where’s Wyn?” I ask, pulling away from Jed and Mira.

A glance rife with hidden meaning passes between them.

“We’re that glad to see you, Violet,” Mira says. “We thought something might have happened to you as well.”

“What do you mean,as well?” I ask, unable to keep panic from creeping into my voice. “Where is Wyn?”

“He’s out in the family plot by the wood’s edge, visiting with your father,” Jed says heavily. “Here, take my coat, and just bear in mind he doesn’t quite look himself.”

It’s snowing even harder now, but I know this land. I don’t even have to think about the direction to head in or the path to take—my feet know the way.

I let myself in through the low fence that surrounds the cemetery, up against the looming woods. The nearby trees are still choked with brambles, their bare branches limned with streaks ofdried mortar. And I see Wyn at once.

He’s sitting in the snow with his back to Papa’s plain grave marker. He’s got on several bulky layers of tatty knit jerseys to ward off the cold, but the snow is thick on his untidy hair and his shoulders. As I draw closer, he looks different indeed—there’s something gone wrong with his skin. It’s an inhuman shade and texture, more like Burleigh’s walls than anything else. And while there was never much softness to Wyn’s appearance in the first place, what little there was is gone. He’s all unrelenting angles and fierce symmetry, with eyes like the sparks cast off by flint and iron. I wonder if there’s any warmth left to him at all, or if I would find him cold and unyielding as granite. None of that matters to me, though. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and I am unspeakably glad to find him alive.

“Wyn, what happened? I was only gone for a few days,” I say. “What have you done with yourself?”

“It’s... difficult,” he answers, and the words somehow seem muffled, like the House showing me a memory. “I can’t always tell now, where Burleigh ends and I begin.”

I sit down at his side, wrapping Jed’s greatcoat around me. “What did you do?”

“Vi, I know I promised I wouldn’t, but—”

“You were going to finish the binding, weren’t you?”

Wyn turns his face toward me for the first time, and somehow his flintlike eyes still retain their old, patient look. “I was. But Burleigh stopped me before the end.”

He rests his head against Papa’s gravestone. “Three nights ago, I finally got up the nerve to finish what your father and I started. Tooffer myself, everything there is of me, to Burleigh. So that it could carry on somewhere new, without you ever having to try your hand at unbinding it. I’ll spare you the details, but it was dreadful, and it took hours, and then around midnight, Burleigh just... stopped. It was like one minute the House’s whole attention was fixed on me, that crushing weight—you know what it’s like—and then it just turned aside. I still don’t know why, but it left me like this, and left Burleigh as you see it.”

“That’s right about when I found the heartstone,” I say. “The House must have been able to feel it. Burleigh must want the stone back more than it wants a new start.”