Page 133 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“How presumptuous.”

“Yes,” Seren said. “I am grieving. It has made me bold.”

That should not have hurt—it did all the same.

By the time the sun lowered behind the mountains, they were ready enough to pretend readiness had meaning. The well stood at the center of Briar Hollow’s square, surrounded by rope, lanterns, weapons, packs, and four living people foolish enough or loyal enough to enter a wound in the world because an entire village had been carried through it. The planks over the well had bowed higher while they worked. Green light seeped through the cracks in slow pulses. The roots around the base no longer pretended to be still.

Before they gathered at the rim, Seren handed Mara a sealed note. “If we do not return within three days, ride south to the nearest Coalition post,” Seren started, “Give this to Commander Harlowe directly. No couriers. No village officials. No Council clerks.”

Mara took the note. “Three days.”

“If Harlowe is not there, burn it and find Captain Ives at Greymarch. Tell them Briar Hollow vanished under the same conditions as Eastmere and the other settlements. Tell them Council agents may have entered old sites before us, and no one is to attempt descent without someone who understands rootway structure.”

Mara looked at Aelira. So did Coren, unfortunately.

Aelira smirked faintly. “How flattering to be reduced to a cautionary requirement.”

Seren glanced at her. “You prefer suspect?”

“On familiar ground, yes.”

“Then consider yourself both.”

Mara tucked the note into the inner lining of her coat. “And if we find the villagers before three days?”

“Then we bring them up.”

Coren looked toward the empty healer’s house. “All of them?”

The question hurt the moment it entered the air. No one reproached him for it. Fear had already asked the same thing in every one of them. Fear for the families who might be dead, sleeping, changed, protected, imprisoned, or waiting beneath the world with faces too peaceful to be saved easily.

Seren’s answer came after a silence just long enough to be honest. “As many as we can.”

Aelira looked at her then. Her answer was not heroic. Heroism often lied by promising everything. Seren did not promise everything. She offered a smaller, harsher truth and stood beneath it without flinching.

‘As many as we can.’

How human, Aelira thought, and this time the insult would not sharpen properly.

The well pulsed once and the planks split beneath it. Coren stumbled back and Seren drew her sword halfway from its sheath, then stopped when Aelira raised one hand.

“No steel,” Aelira said. “Not yet.”

The roots thickened around the well. Pale tendrils slid between the planks and curled around them, not breaking the wood so much as taking it apart with patient fingers. One board lifted, then another, then the entire cover folded outward like petals opening from a dark flower.

Freezing air rose from below. It smelled of roots, stale water, and something faintly sweet. The stone rim descended farther than it should have, widening beneath the square into a spiral of root-woven steps lit by green-black light. The passage did not wait passively. It breathed, as if the village had been built over a sleeping mouth and the mouth had opened because it recognized the taste of those gathered above it.

Aelira stepped to the rim. Her signet burned beneath her glove. Seren moved beside her, lantern in one hand, sword sheathed but ready beneath the other. For one suspended moment, they stood shoulder to shoulder above the descending dark. Not touching. Close enough that Aelira could feel the warmth of her anyway, human, and stubborn and alive in defiance of every old thing below.

“Elira,” Seren said quietly.

She did not look at her. If she looked, the old place might learn too much. Or Seren might; or worse, Aelira herself might be forced to admit that the decision forming inside her no longer belonged cleanly to revenge.

She could still turn away.

Not truly, perhaps, because the village was gone. The old road had opened. Whatever waited beneath the tree had noticed her. However, she could still step back from the rim, mount her horse, ride into the snow, and let the Coalition general descend into Ashwood darkness without the last Ashwood alive to guide her.

Vengeance by omission, elegantly cowardly. Elegant, in the way cowardice often was when dressed as patience.