Page 75 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Aelira looked at him. Perhaps the captain possessed more intelligence than his humor suggested. “Precisely.”

Seren returned her attention to the roots twisting through the mud. “And these remember Briar Hollow?”

Aelira felt the truth settle heavily against the back of her tongue. The roots beneath them had crossed kingdoms before borders possessed names. They remembered the first agreements between blood and land, the seven doors, the bindings beneath the sacred tree, and every act of violence committed by people foolish enough to believe burial and death were the same thing.

Buried things were rarely dead. They were merely given time.

“They remember more than Briar Hollow,” Aelira said and pointed north. “The roots beneath the houses were spreading upward and inward, moving through foundations and following warmth. These are different. They are traveling in a single direction, as though something farther north has become strong enough to alter the movement of the entire network.”

Seren followed the angle of her hand. “The mountains.”

“Something beneath them.”

Roran shifted toward the place where boot prints converged with the pale growth. “The tracks stop here.”

“Yes,” Aelira said.

Seren leaned over the mud. “There should be prints beyond them.”

“There are not.”

Roran looked at Aelira. “Can roots erase footprints?”

An interesting question. Her mouth twitched. “Ordinary roots cannot.”

“And these?”

A faint ripple moved beneath the nearest strand, barely visible where damp soil clung to its surface.

Aelira watched it disappear. “I am beginning to find the word ordinary increasingly useless.”

The roots were thick as fingers in places, braided through the bank with such precision that the soil rose over them like skin stretched across tendons. Human tracks followed their course for several yards before disappearing entirely at the densest growth. The old rootways had once carried more than water and memory. The earliest Ashwood records spoke of priests entering one sanctum and emerging leagues away from another, though not all returned unchanged. Some came back older. Some returned with decades missing from memory. A few had emerged unable to remember the names they entered with.

The rootways did not move bodies as roads moved travelers. They persuaded distance to become uncertain. Her ancestors had sealed most of them for a reason.

A faint vibration passed through the network. Aelira straightened before instinct could make her reach for it. Near the largest cluster, a thornlike spur had curled around something dark—fabric. Seren saw it in the same instant.

They both reached. Aelira stopped herself before her fingertips made contact.

Green—Council green. Recognition struck so quickly that she had no time to prepare her face. The cloth was too finely woven for soldiers or villagers, the dark formal shade favored by Coalition clerks and senior administrative offices—the kind worn by men who preferred to destroy bloodlines through records, decrees, and sealed orders because ink kept one's hands cleaner than blood.

Aelira had seen enough of it to hate the color. Seren lifted the cloth carefully from the thorn and examined the mud-darkened edge.

Then she looked at Aelira. “You recognize it.”

Aelira gathered her expression into stillness, though the mask arrived a fraction too late. “No.”

The lie was immediate and therefore poor, but hesitation would have been worse. Seren already suspected the Council. Aelira could not explain why Coalition clerics might be searching for a rootway connected to one of the old seals without explaining how she knew those rootways existed—and that question had teeth.

Who taught you?

Where?

When?

Under what name?

Seren folded the cloth into her palm. “That answer was terrible.”