Page 129 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“Try.”

Elira looked away. Her gaze moved first toward the covered well, then beyond the rooftops to the dark shape of the northern mountains, and finally across the empty village where unfinished lives waited behind every door. For once, she had no clever answer.

Seren stepped closer again, though this time there was no threat in the movement, only the terrible steadiness of someone who had already decided what she was willing to lose.

“I will find them,” she said. “Roran. Wren. Elowen. All of them. If they are alive, I will bring them back. If they are dead, I will bring back proof enough that no one gets to call this unfortunate and move on.”

Her voice threatened to break on Roran’s name. Seren forced it steady. She would not allow grief to make her smaller. “If the Council touched whatever did this, I will drag the truth out of them until they choke on it. If the roots took these people, I will follow the roots. If whatever waits beneath that tree has them, then I will go beneath the tree.”

Elira’s eyes widened. For one unguarded moment, the woman disappeared behind the scholar. The mask broke cleanly enough that Seren saw fear beneath it. The realization struck somewhere dangerously close to tenderness, and Seren hardened herself against it before it could become another wound.

“Do not say things like that,” Elira whispered.

The softness in her voice unsettled Seren more than shouting would have. “Why?”

Elira looked toward the ground. “Because old things listen.”

The earth pulsed beneath them. It was not violent. Nothing cracked, no roots tore through stone, and the well remained covered. That almost made it worse. The pulse moved through the square slowly, deeply, with the deliberate weight of something turning in its sleep. Snow loosened from the lip of the well and fell in soft pieces. Somewhere behind Seren, Mara stopped moving. Coren’s breath caught.

Then every lantern in Briar Hollow trembled. One by one, the flames bent toward the well. Dozens of small golden lights leaning together in the same direction, as though the entire empty village had inhaled. Seren felt the pulse climb through her boots and settle into every scar the war had left behind. Fear moved through her with it, clean and cold and perfectly rational.

For one moment, she thought of Roran’s glove inside her coat.

Of his unfinished handwriting.

Of Wren’s blue mitten beneath the snow.

Of Elowen’s tea cooling somewhere it would never be finished.

The pain threatened to open again. Seren closed her hand around the worn leather until the seam pressed into her palm. The grief did not disappear. It condensed. It became something denser than sorrow, something hard enough to hold without breaking, and in that moment Seren understood that determination was not the absence of pain. Sometimes it was what pain became when there was nowhere safe to put it.

Elira was watching her with an intensity that bordered on pleading. Her face had gone pale, and one hand had lifted halfway from her side as though some instinct had urged her to reach for Seren before caution caught it.

She let the hand fall—that mattered. Seren hated that it mattered. She stepped closer anyway. The well gave another faint pulse beneath the stones. The lantern flames leaned farther.

“Good,” Seren said.

Elira’s eyes searched hers.

Seren’s fingers closed more tightly around Roran’s glove. “Then let them listen.”

Something changed in Elira’s face, not fear this time. Recognition, perhaps—or grief.

Seren no longer cared which. “I am going after them.”

The words entered the square and did not disappear. For a long moment, Elira said nothing. Snow gathered silently along her shoulders. The empty houses waited around them, warm lanterns burning for people who were no longer there, while somewhere beneath stone and root an ancient thing seemed to hold itself perfectly still.

When Elira finally spoke, her voice was so quiet Seren almost mistook it for the wind. “Then we will need more light.”

Chapter Twenty-One: Aelira Ashwood

The general moved through Briar Hollow with grief held so tightly inside discipline that the discipline itself seemed near to breaking. She checked the inn first, then the healer’s house, then the eastern cottages and the village hall. She did not run. Running would have admitted panic, and Seren Veyr appeared willing to concede many things before granting panic the dignity of visible form. She entered each doorway, called each name, listened for each impossible answer, then emerged colder than before. Mara returned from the eastern lane with her jaw set and eyes wet in a way she clearly resented. Coren came back from the southern road pale and shaking, carrying nothing, which was answer enough.

Aelira stood near the well and watched Seren finish the last search because she had no better use for her hands. At first she told herself she was watching for practical reasons, that Seren might miss a root-mark beneath grief, that some trace of the old road might show itself in the places human eyes refused to look. That was not entirely false. It was simply not the whole truth, and Aelira had grown weary of being skilled at arranging partial truths into respectable shapes.

She watched because Seren’s grief had become unbearable to ignore.

Roran’s glove had changed the general. Seren had crouched beside the well, reached into the snow, and lifted the worn leather as if it weighed more than a body. For one breath, all command had left her face. Only one breath. Long enough for Aelira to see the wound before the armor returned. Then Seren had folded the glove carefully and tucked it inside her coat, near the place where a heart would continue doing its vulgar, stubborn work regardless of what it had been asked to endure.