Page 123 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

There was no one there to obey. Seren closed her fist around the leather until the split seam bit into her palm. Her mind seized upon that immediately because the mind was cruel enough to manufacture hope from absence. He could be somewhere else. He could have followed the villagers. He could have fought. He could have gone after Wren or Elowen. He could have been dragged north. He could still be alive.

Every possibility hurt worse than death because none allowed grief to finish becoming itself.

“Roran.” His name broke differently the second time. The sound that followed was smaller. Not a sob. Seren did not think she remembered how to make one properly anymore. It was only a fracture in the breath, one ugly little sound escaping around years of discipline, but the instant she heard it she hated it because it meant the pain had gotten out.

She bowed her head over the glove. For several seconds, she let herself fail. She let herself remember Roran sitting beside a fire outside Halewick, stealing half her supper because he insisted rank entitled her to better provisions and friendship entitled him to redistribute them. She remembered him beside her after the palace fell, both of them too exhausted to celebrate while the city burned below. She remembered every time he had stood between Seren and someone with a blade, a title, a threat, or an opinion.

She remembered that she had never once asked whether he would follow her. She had simply looked back. And he had always been there. The grief came then, not cleanly and not mercifully, but as pressure so deep she thought for one terrible moment it might fold her inward. Seren gripped the edge of the table.

She could not lose him. The thought was childish. She had lost too many people to tell herself loss became easier through repetition. It did not. The heart did not become wiser. It merely learned where to place the bodies so there remained enough room to keep beating.

Seren shut her eyes. Then she saw the unfinished note again.

Wren says singing changed.

Her eyes opened. The grief did not leave. That was not how grief worked. It remained beneath her ribs, raw and expanding, but something colder began forming around it.

Structure.

Direction.

Purpose.

Seren straightened slowly. She looked at the map, then at Roran’s glove in her hand. If he was dead, she would find out how. If he was alive, she would find him. If every person in Briar Hollow had been pulled beneath the mountains, she would follow them into whatever old darkness had taken them.

The pain settled deeper, compressed beneath discipline until it became something she could carry. She had done this before. Turned terror into orders. Turned grief into movement. Turned rage into something sharp enough to survive using.

Seren tucked Roran’s glove inside her coat and looked again at his unfinished notes and let herself read the final line until each word burned itself into memory.

The singing changed—so had she.

Whatever had taken Briar Hollow had mistaken her absence for safety. Seren intended to correct that misunderstanding. Work could hold the body upright when grief tried to take the bones out of it. Work could give her hands something to do besides shake. Work could keep the others alive, and if there was anything left of Roran to find, anything at all, she would find it.

Outside, Mara crossed the square at a run. Her face gave the answer before she spoke.

“No one east,” Mara said. “Doors open. Fires lit. Found meals on tables. A woman’s shawl caught on a chair. No blood.”

Coren emerged from the southern lane moments later, breathing hard. “Road is empty. No tracks leaving. No wagon marks. Nothing past the old mill except our own trail from earlier.”

Seren nodded once—the movement felt mechanical. “Elowen’s house,” she said.

They went together. The healer’s door was unlocked. Inside, warmth remained. That nearly undid her. Elowen’s house smelled of herbs, milk, ashes, and the faint sweetness of dried lavender. A kettle sat near the hearth, not boiling now but still warm when Seren touched it. Blankets lay spread across the floor where children had slept in groups after the night terrors began. Blue threads were tied around several small pillows, little wrist loops left behind like charms that had failed their purpose.

A bowl of green soup sat on the table beside a spoon. A chair had tipped backward. On the floor near the hearth, Wren’s charcoal sticks lay scattered. Seren stopped breathing.

Elira entered behind her and went utterly still. Seren moved toward the hearth. A fresh drawing lay half-crumpled beside the ashes. She picked it up carefully. The charcoal had smeared at the edges, as if Wren had been interrupted while drawing or someone had stepped on it in passing. Still, the image was clear enough.

Briar Hollow. Not as it appeared above ground—below.

The houses were drawn small and crooked, each wrapped in thick black roots. The well extended downward like a throat. Beneath the village, deeper than the child had ever drawn before, roots formed a tunnel. Along that tunnel moved tiny figures, all in a row. Men, women, children. No faces. Only bodies held upright by roots around their wrists. At the bottom of the page, Wren had drawn a tree. Not the underground tree from before. This one was larger. Darker. Its branches reached down instead of up. Beneath it, two eyes watched from a black shape full of thorns.

Seren’s vision blurred. She blinked once, hard. She turned the page. On the back, in uneven letters, Wren had written:

it said not to be scared

it said the roots remember the way

it said elira came too late