Page 92 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Coren sighed, “Good. Just checking.”

Mara closed the door against the storm. “The weather is worsening.”

“Then we wait.”

“And afterward?”

The scholar’s hand had closed around the stone key, her face returning to its customary calm, though Seren could see the cost beneath it now—the pallor, the tension around her mouth, the way she held the cloth as though loosening her grip might allow the earth to reclaim what it had given. “At first light, we go to Listener’s Rise.”

Coren looked as though he disliked that plan but trusted every alternative less. Mara nodded once.

“You are coming with us,” Seren said.

Her gaze lifted. No immediate barb arrived, only that dark, watchful stillness. “You say that as though I intended otherwise.”

“I am not convinced you intend anything I understand." Seren moved closer. “But I am convinced that whatever is happening here has decided you matter.”

Elira looked back toward the fire, not quickly enough to hide the old, exhausted resignation moving beneath her composure. “Many things have made that mistake.”

Seren almost asked what she meant, but the scouts were watching, the storm surrounded them, and the stone had emerged from the floor like a verdict.

Some questions required darkness and privacy. Others needed daylight and proof.

Despite Roran’s frequent claims to the contrary, Seren could practice restraint when it remained useful. The cabin settled into uneasy quiet. Mara took first watch near the door. Coren finally surrendered to exhaustion on one of the narrow platforms, his bow within reach even in sleep. Elira sat near the hearth with the stone wrapped and hidden inside her coat. Seren occupied the rough table across from her, spreading Wren’s drawing beside the map. She compared the child’s charcoal lines with the old road, the hunter tracks, and the direction of the roots beneath Briar Hollow.

The pattern became clearer when placed together. The roots were not spreading randomly. They joined the village to Listener’s Rise, though Seren could not yet tell whether they reached from the hill toward Briar Hollow or from Briar Hollow toward the hill.

The distinction mattered.

Her gaze drifted toward Elira. Firelight passed over the scholar’s pale hair and cast shadows beneath her lashes. She looked carved from winter and old grief, beautiful in a way that had little to do with softness and far more to do with danger given an elegant shape.

A scholar, Seren thought again, less convinced than she had ever been.

When the root emerged, Elira had spoken her name—that mattered. People revealed themselves most clearly when startled, before discipline could recover what instinct surrendered.

Outside, the storm raged, but within the cabin the shape of the mystery had begun to change. It was no longer only about vanished villages, pale roots, sleeping children, or marks left by dead Earthspeakers. There was a person at its center now.

She sat across the fire with secrets in her mouth, an ancient key hidden inside her coat, and the earth responding whenever her bare skin touched it. Seren returned her attention to the map.

At first light, they would climb Listener’s Rise, and whatever waited beneath the hill—whatever truth Elira Thorn had spent two days avoiding—Seren intended to drag it into the light.

Even if she had to pull it out by the roots.

Chapter Fifteen: Aelira Ashwood

By morning, the storm had dressed the world for burial.

Aelira could have left before dawn. The cabin slept badly around her. Mara kept watch near the door with one knee drawn up and a knife resting loose in her hand. Coren had finally surrendered to exhaustion on one of the sleeping platforms, though his bow remained within reach even in sleep. Seren sat at the table with Wren’s drawing spread beside her maps, one arm folded beneath her head, the stubborn angle of her body suggesting she had meant to stay awake and lost the argument only because the body was an inelegant, demanding thing.

Aelira stood outside in the thinning dark, her cloak pulled close against the cold. Her horse waited saddled beneath the slanting lean-to beside the old cabin. Aelira had done it herself. No one had seen. That, too, was almost disappointing.

The road south was not impossible. Difficult, certainly, and watched in places, but not impossible. It would carry her back through the trees, past Briar Hollow, then beyond the reach of frightened villagers, old stones, and a general who had begun asking questions with a precision Aelira found increasingly inconvenient. She had maps no Coalition officer possessed. She had names that still opened doors in towns where loyalty had learned to lower its voice. She had enough gold sewn into the lining of her cloak to buy silence from anyone sensible, and fear from anyone who was not.

She could still leave. It would not even be difficult. She could be gone before Seren woke, before Mara’s knife shifted in her hand, before Coren opened his young, frightened eyes to another day that had already asked too much of him. She could leave Briar Hollow to its roots and its grief. She could let the Coalition’s favored general descend blind into an old hunger wearing the shape of a village mystery. She could call it strategy. She could call it survival. She could even call it justice, if she were feeling especially cruel.

The old Aelira Ashwood would have known how to make that choice beautifully.

The woman standing in the snow did not move.