Page 83 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Elira rose halfway. “Lift from the base now.”

Mara looked toward Seren.

She hesitated. The limb had settled deeper with every previous attempt, yet the soil beneath its broken end now appeared looser, the moss torn back from a shallow pocket Seren had not noticed before. Whether Elira had found the weakness or created it, Seren could not tell.

“Do it,” she ordered.

Mara and Coren changed their positions, bracing near the thicker end of the branch.

“Slowly,” Seren warned. “If it slips, stop.”

They lifted. For an instant, nothing happened. Then the broken end tore free of the earth with startling ease, mud and fine roots falling from it as the weight rose cleanly away from the deer’s leg.

“Now.”

Seren caught the doe at the shoulder, steadying rather than restraining her as she pulled the trapped limb free. The animal stumbled upright, trembling so violently that Seren expected the leg to fold beneath her. Instead, the doe lurched forward. She vanished into the undergrowth in a crash of branches and wet leaves, leaving behind churned mud, a streak of blood, and the fading sound of frightened life forcing itself onward.

Mara lowered the branch and rolled one aching shoulder. “Lucky.”

Seren looked toward the place where it had been lodged. The hollow beneath the trunk appeared deeper than before, the surrounding moss folded back from a knot of fine roots. Nothing about it was impossible. Rain had softened the bank. The deer’s struggling might have loosened the earth. Elira might simply have seen the correct angle when the rest of them had not.

All perfectly reasonable explanations. Briar Hollow had made reasonable explanations feel increasingly like deliberate acts of denial. Elira stood several feet away, drawing her glove back over the bandage with slow, meticulous care. By the time she raised her head, her expression held nothing beyond cool impatience.

“Yes,” Seren said, still studying the disturbed earth. “Remarkably lucky.”

Elira met her gaze without blinking. “You sound disappointed.”

Seren glanced once more at the loosened roots, then at the hand Elira had concealed beneath her cloak. The scholar’s face remained calm and challenging, offering Seren all the time in the world to accuse her of something she could not prove.

Seren let that question remain unasked.

Chapter Fourteen: Seren Veyr

The weather turned before they regained the road.

Clouds had gathered low over the mountains while they were beneath the trees, thickening into a dark shelf that swallowed what remained of the afternoon light and drained the forest into colder shades of green and gray. The wind changed next, slipping down from the higher slopes with a sharpness that carried the metallic scent of snow long before the first flake appeared.

Mara noticed before anyone else. She stopped near the road and lifted her face toward the sky, dark braid sliding over one shoulder as she studied the movement of the clouds between the ridgelines. She did not squint or shade her eyes, only stood there listening with the same stern concentration she gave tracks and unfamiliar doors, as though weather were simply another opponent careless enough to reveal its intentions.

“Storm coming.”

Seren looked toward the mountains. “How long?”

Mara rubbed two fingers together, testing the dampness gathering in the air, then glanced toward the treetops. “Soon.”

“That is not a measurement.”

Mara gave her the flat look of someone who had already provided all the information required for survival and resented being asked to decorate it. “It is in mountains.”

A small gust swept loose strands of hair across her cheek. Mara tucked them back without taking her eyes from the ridge.

“Wind’s dropping from the north,” she added. “Temperature’s fallen twice since the stream, and those clouds are sitting too low to pass over us. Once it starts, we’ll lose the road quickly.”

Seren studied her for a moment. Mara rarely offered more explanation than necessary. She was not quiet from shyness or uncertainty; she simply seemed to regard most words as tools and disliked using six where three would hold the structure together. Seren had chosen her for precisely that reason. Mara did not dramatize danger, which meant when she bothered to name it, Seren listened.

Elira tilted her head toward the mountains. “Your scout is correct.”

Mara glanced at her. “I’m relieved.”