Page 99 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Behind them, Mara cleared her throat. “Are we going down,” she asked, “or should Coren and I give you both privacy with the terrifying hole?”

Coren stared at her. “Could you stop calling it that?”

Aelira’s mouth threatened to curve. Seren looked away first. Coren was ordered to remain above with the horses and ride for Briar Hollow if the others failed to return by sundown. Once that was settled, Aelira approached the stairs with Seren and Mara close behind.

At the threshold, Seren stopped beside her. They stood shoulder to shoulder before the green-tinged dark, close enough that when Seren shifted, the back of her glove brushed Aelira’s hand. It was nothing. Leather against leather. Aelira had endured far more intimate contact from people who mattered considerably less.

Yet neither of them moved away immediately. She could feel Seren beside her without any magic at all, only warmth and breath and the nearness of another body where Aelira had spent years expecting only ghosts. Something beneath the hill turned toward her. The sensation moved through stone and root until it reached the oldest part of her blood.

Ashwood—the place knew what stood above it.

Aelira’s breath caught softly.

“Elira?” Seren turned toward her.

The general's voice entered the stairwell and felt impossibly fragile there. For one moment, Aelira imagined leaving. She could let Seren and the Coalition descend without her and discover what their victory had disturbed beneath the world.

Ten years ago, perhaps she would have. But Briar Hollow waited behind them. Wren waited. Elowen waited. People who had become inconveniently real despite Aelira’s determination not to care for them. And beside her stood a general who had asked whether Aelira was well enough to descend before asking whether she was useful. The living had become more troublesome than ghosts.

Aelira stepped onto the first stair.

The darkness received her not as a stranger, but like an old court opening its doors for the final guest it had spent ten years waiting to welcome home.

Chapter Sixteen: Seren Veyr

The stairs did not feel like a passage meant for human feet.

That was Seren’s first thought as she followed Elira Thorn beneath Listener’s Rise, lantern lifted in one hand, the other near the hilt of her sword. The steps were even enough, deliberate enough, but there was something in the shape of them that unsettled the body before the mind found words. They did not merely descend—they narrowed. They drew inward. The walls curved close on either side, dark stone veined with green, roots threaded through it in thin black lines as if the hill had grown around the passage rather than buried it.

Seren had seen catacombs before. Cellars beneath burned estates. The underground chambers where nobles hid food, jewels, prisoners, and shame. She had walked through darkness made by human fear and human greed, and she knew the smell of places built to hide things from the world.

Elira moved ahead of her with one hand grazing the wall. She noticed too much about the woman, which was becoming inconvenient in ways she did not care to examine. Elira’s posture was controlled, her pace careful, her silver hair dimmed by shadow and lanternlight. She looked like a scholar if scholars carried themselves like blades wrapped in silk.

She looked fragile only to someone eager to die of underestimation.

Mara followed behind them, quiet as a held breath. Above, Coren and the horses disappeared into silence. The stone closed around the three of them. Seren counted the steps without meaning to.

She counted more than just the steps. She measured the distance from the entrance, the width of the passage, and noted the places where two fighters could stand shoulder to shoulder. Seren counted the places where only one could hold a line, the angle of descent, the quality of the air, whether smoke would rise or gather, and whether panic would spread forward or backward if the dark decided to move.

A poor commander feared enclosed spaces. A good one planned how to kill inside them.

Seren did not like that the passage offered so few answers. No discarded tools from whatever hands had opened it last. The stair had not been used recently, not by ordinary bodies, and yet it felt awake beneath her boots. Ahead of her, Elira touched the wall as if asking permission from something Seren could not hear.

Seren added that to the list of things she noticed. She was beginning to hate the list.

Twelve steps, then.

Seventeen steps after that.

Twenty-three before the turn.

At twenty-four, the air changed. It was subtle, but subtle things had killed more soldiers than obvious ones. Pressure gathered behind Seren’s ears. The lantern flame bent inward, though no draft touched it. The sensation was not quite sound, not quite presence, but something vast and patient shifting attention toward them.

Her hand moved closer to her sword. Elira did not turn, but Seren saw the slight angle of her head, the almost imperceptible tightening of her shoulders. She knew Seren had noticed. Elira noticed everything, too.

“Do you feel that?” Seren asked.

Mara answered from behind, voice low. “Yes.”