Page 79 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“And near the old road,” Seren said.

The hunter trail, the roots, the children wandering north, and now Wren’s drawing all converged upon the same place. Whether the hill was calling to them or merely stood between Briar Hollow and whatever was, Seren could not yet tell.

She placed one hand beside Listener’s Rise. “We need to see it.”

Elira lifted one brow. “Do we?”

“It bears an Earthspeaker mark tied to the roots, the dreams, and whatever keeps drawing children out of their beds, so unless you have developed an alternative explanation during your secret correspondence with the floor, we are going.”

Elowen placed both hands flat against the table. The tremor in them stripped the humor from the room more effectively than any raised voice could have. Seren had noticed it before, usually when another child was brought in half-asleep or when Elowen thought no one was looking at how many sedative herbs remained in her jars.

“If this place is connected to the sleepwalking, then go,” Elowen said. “Please. I cannot keep drugging half the children in this village every night and call it protection.”

Seren looked toward Wren. The girl had already returned to her charcoal, head bent over the page with the serious concentration of someone engaged in an ordinary morning task. Only her eyes betrayed her. Every few seconds they drifted toward the northern windows, not with conscious interest but with the distant obedience of a compass needle answering something beneath the table.

That decided it.

“Roran, you remain here.”

“No.”

Seren did not look at him. She had expected the answer before she finished the sentence. “Keep the roads watched, rotate soldiers through every house with children, and have Elowen wake them at intervals after dark. If anyone hears singing, sees root movement, or finds a child out of bed, I want it reported immediately.”

“Seren.”

Her name stopped her hand above the map. Roran was no longer looking at her as captain to general. That expression belonged to an older history, to mud and blood and the version of Seren who had once mistaken being impossible to kill for the same thing as being safe. He had dragged her from a battlefield before either of them were old enough to understand that surviving someone could become a promise you spent the rest of your life trying to keep.

“The village needs command,” he said.

“It has command.”

His expression hardened. “You.”

Seren finally looked at him. “It needs someone who knows the people, the soldiers, the roads, and exactly when to ignore an order given by someone making a poor decision.”

Roran’s mouth flattened. “That last qualification feels suspiciously tailored.”

“It is.”

He stared at her for another moment, jaw working once beneath the beard. Seren knew what came next. Roran treated obedience as a negotiable condition whenever her safety entered the conversation, and if she gave him room he would begin listing practical reasons why accompanying her was not technically insubordination.

She denied him the opportunity.

The village could not be left with frightened soldiers, exhausted parents, and children who might begin walking north the moment darkness settled. Roran knew that as well as she did, which was precisely why his anger remained in his face rather than becoming an argument.

Seren turned toward Elira. The scholar had gone very still during the exchange. That, more than anything, made Seren hesitate. Elira’s stillness had begun to mean different things depending on the subject. Sometimes it was contempt. Sometimes thought. Around the roots, the old roads, and anything connected to Earthspeakers, it became something else entirely—attention sharpened almost to fear, followed quickly by another carefully measured answer.

Seren had no proof that Elira meant them harm.

That was the problem.

She distrusted people more easily when they gave her something solid to distrust. A lie she could expose. A motive she could trace. A weapon where none should be. Elira offered none of those cleanly. She helped frightened children. She noticed danger before anyone else. She had saved lives without asking for gratitude, yet every useful fact seemed to come from knowledge she refused to explain having. Seren kept finding herself at the edge of a door Elira had already walked through, with no idea who had given her the key.

It was the secrecy, she told herself. Nothing more complicated than that.

“You stay with him,” Seren said.

Elira’s expression cooled immediately. Seren had expected irritation. What caught her attention was how quickly it arrived, as though Listener’s Rise mattered to the woman before Seren had even decided they were going there.