“Walt, you still have what you want,” Edwin pointed out. “You have what you came here for in the first place.”
For a very long time, he thought, he would remember the look that came over Walt’s face when Walt realised that he had won this battle—for his cause, for his passion project—but had lost every scrap of his leverage over Robin, and also lost his ability to threaten Edwin. Ever again. It was a look that meant Walt was seeing something shatter, and what was shattering was the story. The story about the relationship between the Courcey brothers, a story that Walt had built and Edwin had always believed he had no choice but to inhabit. Now it was in pieces.
Edwin thought of the oak-heart: an explosion, and charred splinters on the floor. He put his shoulders back, met his brother’s eye, and did not smile.
“This is my brother, Walter Courcey,” said Edwin. “I am revoking his guest-right. He is not welcome on these lands, and I would like him to remove himself from my property. Now.”
Sutton was an estate that understood warding; more than that, it understood Edwin. And vice versa. Edwin felt it in the soles of his feet, in the whites of his eyes, as the boundary’s warding swept inwards across lawns and hills and ponds and paths, seeking, until it found the target of Edwin’s displeasure and took him in its grip.
Walt’s face went greenish and he stumbled for the door. Edwin felt his brother’s frantic footfalls as Walter shoved his way through the house and out onto the long drive, like fingers tapped on his own skin. He was aware of the servants exclaiming as Walt continued to run, away from the cottage and towards the boundary. He was aware of the golden net of strange, wild spellwork that ran through the roots of trees and spiderwebbed its way across autumn-sleepy rosebushes, through beds of peonies and primroses and asters and violets.
Beneath that, impossibly, he could feel the throb of the ley lines that crossed as they ran through this place and away: south to north, east to west, tugging with their vast tidal strength at the spark of magic in Edwin’s core.
His body fell to its knees. He barely noticed.
Hello, Edwin thought. My name is Edwin John Courcey, and I am determined to do this right.
This wasn’t just an ease of magic and of breathing. This was something ancient and unmapped, the land reminding him that blood-pledge was the oldest contract played out small—power for responsibility, to tend and to mend. Edwin breathed through it, dragging his awareness in from the trees and the hedge-roots, nearly gasping with relief as it shrank and sharpened to only the house itself. Even that was overwhelming for a few long moments: he was the joins of the wooden furniture, he was the skitter of mouse-feet in the gaps between walls, he was mirrors and clocks and dried herbs hung in the rafters and the charms for safety laid around every fireplace.
“Edwin,” Robin was saying.
Edwin dragged it all in until the tendrils of connection were only here in the parlour—and then it was all inside his chest, his throat, the whole world burning there as though if he opened his mouth it would all come pouring out like sunlight— And then it was just him and Robin, kneeling on the floor.
Robin’s face was close to Edwin’s and he looked worried. He was gripping Edwin’s fingers in his own, hard enough to be painful.
“Robin,” Edwin said. Coughed. “May I have my hands back?”
Robin gave him his hands back. Robin gave a grin of open affection and pure relief that brought the sunlight back into Edwin’s mouth for a fleeting moment.
“Are you all right?” Robin asked.
“I don’t know what I am,” said Edwin. “But yes. I’m all right.” In the spirit of enquiry, he sat back on his heels and tried to identify what he was feeling.
Somewhat to his shock, he decided it was joy.
Robin’s hand had mostly stopped bleeding, but one of the kitchen maids was summoned anyway. She cast a ticklish charm, which left the cut looking two days old; Robin supposed a knack for that sort of thing would be useful in her line of work. Edwin was telling Mrs. Greengage the housekeeper why Walter’s bag needed to be brought back down again and sent to London. The explanation was along the lines of the one he’d given to Sutton Cottage itself. My brother. Not welcome here.
Mrs. Greengage had only appeared, with a stately knock, in the wake of Walter’s hasty departure. Unlikely as it seemed, the disturbance in the house had been contained to the parlour alone; Robin should have realised it from the fact that no servants came running to see what the fuss was about when the room shook and the ivy moved. Now the ivy panel looked innocent and flat like all the others.