Page 110 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Seren’s gaze held steady. “I did not say weak.”

“No. You implied. I object to the familiarity.”

A pause settled between them, thin and deliberate.

Then Seren asked the question Aelira had been waiting for since the chamber. “What did it recognize?”

Seren was learning her too quickly. She did not know the fully, not even close, but enough to become inconvenient—enough to become a risk. Aelira looked toward the stairs. The truth rested beneath her tongue like blood held behind teeth.

My blood, she thought.

My house, she thought.

The dead name your revolution buried, and your Council still digs for in secret.

Instead, her mouth curved with all the elegance of a blade returning to its sheath. “My usefulness.”

Seren did not smile. “To whom?”

“You, mostly.”

Still no smile. How tiresome. Seren’s humor appeared and vanished according to laws Aelira had not yet learned. “Do you ever answer plainly?” Seren asked.

“When the question deserves it.”

“And mine do not?”

“Yours deserve caution.”

Seren considered that. Aelira expected irritation, suspicion, some command dressed as patience. Instead, Seren nodded once, as if accepting a tactical inconvenience. “Fine.”

Aelira’s composure faltered only in the brief closing of her eyes. “Fine?”

“I’ll ask better questions.”

Oh, that was troublesome. How very troublesome indeed. Aelira looked down at the coals so she would not have to look at Seren’s face. There was something far more dangerous than being threatened by a perceptive enemy—being listened to by one. Threat could be answered with a knife. Listening entered by smaller doors.

Seren turned back toward the tree line. “Sleep, Elira.”

The false name moved through the night, thinner than it had been before.

Aelira lay down in her bedroll with her back to the fire and told herself the chill along her spine came from the winter earth. Mara breathed evenly nearby. Coren resumed his alleged dying-goat impression. The horses shifted in their sleep. Beyond the firelight, Seren positioned watch among the stones, sword at her hip, eyes on the ridge.

For a long time, sleep did not come. Aelira listened instead of sleeping. At some point, Seren woke her for third watch with a hand near her shoulder. When Aelira opened her eyes, the distance between them seemed smaller than it had any right to be. The dim light made proximity difficult to judge, or she had simply miscalculated how silently Seren could move.

Either way, the general was close. Close enough for Aelira to see the faint tension at the corner of her mouth, the rain caught along her lashes, the controlled stillness of her breathing. Close enough to watch Seren’s sharp gray focus drop, only briefly, to Aelira’s mouth.

She did not move.

The pause lasted no longer than a breath, which should have made it harmless. A small interruption. A meaningless accident born of cold, darkness, and proximity. Yet their breath touched in the narrow space between them, warm against the winter air, then the moment settled beneath Aelira’s ribs with the quiet, dangerous weight of something that would have been easier to deny if Seren had stepped away first.

“Your watch,” Seren said quietly.

Aelira sat up. “I know.”

“Of course you do.” Seren moved away and settled into her own bedroll on the opposite side of the dying fire. She was asleep more quickly than Aelira expected, or perhaps she had simply mastered the soldier’s art of pretending rest while never fully surrendering to it.

Aelira took the watch, and did not, under any circumstances, look at Seren’s mouth again.