As I get farther into the woods, the air becomes cold and damp. Misting rain beads on my hair and the fabric of my dressing gown. I come to a place where a winding trail branches off through the trees and veer down it, toward the little valley where the manor’s trout stream rushes and laughs over rapids, rain dimpling its surface.
Scrambling down the muddy, leaf-strewn embankment, I settle beside the stream, trying to ignore the chill that’s growing more bitter with each passing minute. Blinking rainwater from my eyes, I sink my hands into the gravelly soil of the stream bank. It’s an invitation to Burleigh—if anything goes wrong, here I am. A conduit, a channel, a ready vessel for your power. I may not have the key, or a Caretaker’s pure intentions, but I am all you’ve got, House of mine, so set mortar in my blood if you must.
“Burleigh,” I say. “I’m going to ask you a question. And I think you know what it is.”
The wind gusts overhead, moaning in the treetops. Cold rain runs down the back of my neck and I shiver. For weeks we’ve danced around this. For weeks I’ve coddled Burleigh, mindful of its binding and failing health, never wanting to hurt my House even if doing so might save it. But I haven’t the time or the patience or the goodwill left to coddle Burleigh anymore.
“Burleigh,” I ask. “Where is your deed?”
In answer the trout stream bubbles higher, rising against its banks until water laps over the top of my boots. I pull them off and I swallow back frustration.
“Show me, Burleigh. Help me set you free.”
The stream rises again, insistently, and I’m forced further up the bank. But then, darkness falls, so complete that even the shadowy forms of the trees and the occasional glimmer of water from the stream are swallowed up. I pass a hand before my eyes, but it’s as if I’ve shut them. I can’t see a thing.
A smell rises around me, out of place yet still familiar. It’s not the scent of damp earth or rotting wood or forest mosses, but a wild and briny odor—the tang of seawater. My stomach ties itself up in knots, because Burleigh has never shown me anything outside its grounds before. I didn’t even know that it could.
Sounds grow at the edge of my hearing. Waves, crashing against the shore. Gulls, shrieking overhead. And a hollow drip, drip, drip.
This isn’t just a memory the House has for me. Burleigh, desperate to please, is showing me the location of its deed.
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 behind Burleigh 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 SWIMMING across 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 you thinking, Violet? You could have killed yourself.”
“I was thinking that I could do this without you working House magic again,” I tell him. “That you wouldn’t find out until it was done.”
“I feel everything Burleigh feels now,” Wyn says. “I woke up knowing you were pushing at its bond and that the House was about to lose control, with you in harm’s way. Blood and mortar, Vi, why put yourself at risk when you don’t have to? When I can end all of this? I should do it now, while I’ve got the nerve.”
Wyn presses his hands to the earth, as if he’s about to invite Burleigh’s magic to steal yet more of him from me.
“Stop,” I gasp, the words all terror and sharp edges. “Wyn, don’t even say such things. Promise me, right here and right now, that you won’t give yourself over to the House. That you’ll hold out to the bitter end, and give me a chance to try and save you. Just a chance, that’s all I’m asking for.”
He looks at me wearily. “You’ve asked for a lot of promises since coming home.”
“And you’ve made a lot of needlessly self-sacrificing decisions since I came back; what do you expect me to do?” I answer.
Wyn lowers himself down a little, leaning back on his elbows. “To let me finish the job I’m meant for. Do you know what I am, Vi? I’m a Caretaker. That’s what your father intended for me to be. But where you look after the House, I look after you. And so you’re meant to come first. Before Burleigh. Before the countryside. Before my own life.”
A creeping chill runs down my spine and I shudder. “No one ever asked me if I want that.”
Wyn shrugs. “No one ever asked any of us if we want to be in this mess. Not you, not me, not your father, not this ruin of a House—sorry, Burleigh,” he adds as the ground rumbles beneath us. “Not even your mother. We’re just . . . in it. And we’ve got to make the best of the hands we’ve been dealt.”
“Wyn, I’m asking you,” I say. “Do you want this?”
He stares off at the dark and twisted back woods and stays silent.
“Look at me,” I press, edging a bit closer. “Answer the question.”
At last Wyn turns his face toward me, and the restrained fear I’ve seen glimpses of in his eyes is burning there like a torch.
“I don’t want to die, Violet,” Wyn confesses, his voice low and raw. “I’m a coward at heart. Your father—the thing is, I could have saved him, couldn’t I? If I’d just finished the binding with Burleigh and let the House overtake me, the arrest would’ve ended. George could have walked out of here alive. In a way, I’m as guilty of his death as the king.”
I shake my head. “Is that what you think? I would never blame you for what happened to my father. You were a child when all this began—we both were. Listen to me now: none of this is your fault. And you’re not going to die. I’m going to save you.”
The sound of Wyn’s laugh is short and sharp on the night air. He gestures to the tortured ruins of the back woods. “Like you’re saving Burleigh?”
The words cut deep, but I know it’s his fear speaking, and so I let it go. Instead I meet Wyn’s eyes and hold his gaze, refusing to look away.
“This didn’t happen because I’m trying to save Burleigh,” I tell him. “This happened because I’m trying to save you. I asked the House to show me where the deed is. Asked it directly.”
A great creaking of timber rises up from the back woods as I own what I’ve done to Wyn. The enormous brambles twining through the trees writhe and twist like wicked black snakes.
“I found it,” I blurt out. “Wyn, I found what I’ve been looking for. Burleigh showed me. I know where the—where it is. You don’t have to end anything. I can do this. I can unbind the House, and free you both from each other, and from the king.”
For the first time since seeing Burleigh’s vision of the Cornish coast, elation swells within me. I found the deed. Or I’ve as good as found it. Everything is going to be alright.
But Wyn looks unconvinced. In fact, there’s more anguish in the lines of his face than ever.
“It’s not dying I’m most afraid of,” he says. “I don’t want that, but it isn’t what I can’t get out of my head. The House is bound to kill you if you do what you’re set on, Violet. And what if I have a chance to save you by giving myself up, and in the moment, I haven’t got the courage to do it? I never did, with George.” Wyn runs a hand across his face. “Stay here. Don’t go after the deed and put yourself in harm’s way. Let things run their course. Let Burleigh get to the point where it can’t afford to take my will into account any longer—where it has to make the decision for me, without any danger to you.”
My desire to see Wyn safe and well and in a place where he can put all this behind him is so fierce it sets a consuming ache in my chest and throat.
“You know I can’t do that,” I say, taking care to keep my words soft and reassuring. But Wyn still shuts his eyes as if he’s been struck, and his jaw tightens.
“I’m not going to fail, and I’m not going to die,” I promise. “You’re the one who said that you think I can do anything I set my mind to. Well, I’ve never wanted something more than I want this—not just because it’s for Burleigh, but because I hope unbinding the House will unbind you, too. I need you to have enough faith in me to let me try, and to swear that you won’t do anything rash until I’ve had my chance.”
As certain as I sound, I’m desperately afraid. But I refuse to let it show.
Wyn looks at me for a long time. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I look back, because I want to memorize his face in this moment.
“Very well,” he says at last, his voice toneless. “I promise I will not finish giving myself to Burleigh unless you’re in mortal danger, or the House forces it. Can you live with that?”
“I’ll have to,” I say. I inch closer to him until he puts his arm around me and I rest my head on his shoulder. As I do, I realize the only thing that makes me feel safe anymore is being close to Wyn.
I cannot and will not lose him again.
“Do you think we’ll ever just be ordinary?” I ask after a long silence passes between us. We sit together, staring sadly at the ruins of the back woods. “Just Violet and Wyn, a girl and a boy, who can sort out who they are, both apart and together?”
“I don’t know, Vi,” Wyn says. He kisses the top of my head and I sigh. “I really don’t know.”
24
I WAKE FROM A SCANT TWO HOURS OF TROUBLED SLEEP, the smell of old leaves and river mud still clinging to my skin, and find myself plunged into memory.
Burleigh’s wintry woods are all around me, and the wicket gate at the edge of the grounds is within arm’s length. But its frame of twining branches does not show views of the countryside beyond, as it did when I was a child. Instead, it’s filled in with honey-colored stone, as if a bit of the House’s wall has come out to the woods to bar anyone from entering and exiting by the back way. As I sit and watch, Wyn appears.
It’s the Wyn I’ve come to know through Burleigh’s eyes, the boy I never knew who spent seven years locked within these grounds. He wears a moth-eaten, cast-off coat of Papa’s, and snowflakes have gathered on his shoulders and in his hair. He walks down the woodland path, hands shoved deep in his pockets, and often glances back worriedly, as if expecting something to stop him.
Wyn draws abreast of me, and his breath smokes on the cold air. He holds out a hand and presses it to the unyielding stone that fills the wicket gate.
“Open,” he says, and his voice cracks on the word. “Open, please. Let me be free of this place.”
There’s a grinding of stone and Wyn’s eyes light. But the bricks split only a little, and he jumps back with a shout as black spid
ers pour out over his hand.
Wyn brushes frantically at his sleeve and stumbles backward, tripping over a raised tree root and falling to the ground. It’s then that I notice Papa, slinking down the forest path.
He’s unshaven, with a thin, snarled beard, and wearing ragged, filthy clothes. Even from a distance, I can see the grey pallor of his skin and unnatural sunkenness of his eyes, which glitter darkly in the winter light. Mortar weeps from them constantly, so that every minute or two, he’s forced to raise a hand and wipe it from his face.
“It’s no good,” Papa says, his voice dry and hollow. “You can’t get out that way. I’ve tried.”
Wyn scrabbles around to look at my father, and I see naked fear on his face. “George, what are you doing out here?”
Papa crouches in front of Wyn. “The House let me out. Because it doesn’t like what you’re trying to do.”
“Let me go,” Wyn begs again, this time of Papa. “I’ve had enough. Please.”
My father puts his head to one side, considering, and the gesture is strange, for I never saw him do so as a child. “Where will you run, if I set you free? Would you go to her? Would you bring her back, to take your place so that you can walk away unbound?”
“I would never,” Wyn says, and there’s ferocity behind the words. “I’d keep her away from here altogether.”
Papa glances up, at the branches, the sky, the air.
“And Burleigh would have no one,” he says. Then his attention returns to Wyn with a fixed intensity that makes me shudder.
“Why the gate?” Papa gestures to the trees, and the open spaces between them, through which hedgerows and sloping hills are just visible. “You’ve lived here for too long, boy. You’re so fixed on the idea of needing a doorway to come and go. If you want your freedom, steal it. Creep out through the trees, like a fox, like a stoat, like a beast of the fields.” The whites of his eyes gleam, and he waves a hand wildly. “What you covet is before you. Reach out and take it.”
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