Page 125 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“Elira.” The name was quiet. This time, it was not a request.

Elira held her gaze for a moment longer, and something almost like fear moved beneath the surface of her composure. “Toward the Deep Root.”

The words settled into the house. Mara’s breath caught softly.

Coren whispered, “Gods.”

Seren did not look away from Elira. “And the thing under the tree?”

Elira said nothing. That, too, was answer enough. Seren turned from her before anger became language. Outside, the village waited with all its impossible emptiness. They searched every house anyway.

At the baker’s, dough had risen over the edge of a bowl and collapsed under its own weight. Flour handprints marked the counter, one large, one small, as though a child had been helping. At the blacksmith’s, iron cooled crooked in the forge. A hammer lay in the snow outside the door. One boot print marked the mud beside it, deep at the heel, turned north. At the chapel, every pew stood neatly in place, but pale roots had pushed between the floorboards and curled up around the altar. The priest’s prayer book lay open, its pages damp from melting snow blown through a cracked window.

Someone had written a line across the margin in charcoal.

not a prayer

a door

Seren did not show the others. She tore the page free and kept it.

At the inn, mugs sat full on tables. The evening stew had burned black at the bottom of the pot. A card game lay abandoned near the hearth. Three coins rested in the center of the table. Someone had been winning. In one cottage near the northern fence, Seren found a cradle.

Empty—still rocking. That was when Mara turned away and pressed both hands against the wall. Coren went outside and vomited into the snow. Seren stayed beside the cradle until it stopped moving.

“Keep searching.” Her voice had gone flat.

Mara looked at her with something like pity. Near dusk, they found the first true sign beneath the well. The planks covering it had been pushed aside from below. Not broken. Lifted. Set neatly against the stone rim. Seren approached with her sword drawn, though she already knew no enemy would be kind enough to stand there waiting.

The well descended into darkness, and no water reflected at the bottom. Roots filled the shaft in pale coils, spiraling down into the earth like the inside of a throat. Green light pulsed faintly far below, traveling downward in slow intervals. South to north. Surface to depth. Mara held a lantern over the edge. The light did not reach the bottom.

Coren stepped back. “That was covered when we left.”

“Yes,” Seren said.

Elira stood on the opposite side of the well, looking down with an expression Seren could not read. Or perhaps could read too well. Seren tightened her grip on Roran’s glove inside her coat.

“Can we follow through there?” she asked.

Elira looked at her sharply. “No.”

“No,” Elira repeated. “Not through a village well opened by force. You would not reach the rootway intact.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is exactly an answer. It simply denies you what you want.”

Seren stepped toward her. “Then give me something useful.”

Elira’s eyes flashed. “Do you think I am withholding a map because I enjoy the architecture of your suffering?”

“I think you withhold things by instinct.”

“And I think you mistake urgency for entitlement.”

“My people are gone.” The words tore out of Seren before she could stop them. The square went silent.

Seren heard the echo of what she had said—my people. Not the village. Not the civilians. Not Briar Hollow.