Page 81 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“Is that what you are?” The question came more softly than Seren intended. "Danger?"

Elira looked at her then, pale eyes sharpening around the answer. “I thought you had not decided.”

“I haven’t.” That was becoming less true in ways Seren could not explain. Danger, yes. Elira was certainly that, but the word no longer accounted for the tenderness she offered children when she believed no one important was watching, or the fear compressed beneath her stillness whenever the old roots moved.

The road narrowed after the final pasture, its stonework half-swallowed by moss and pale growth. Remnants of older engineering appeared beneath the decay: drainage channels cut with improbable precision, leaning boundary markers, and fragments of fitted stone too deliberate to be natural and too old to belong to any village still standing.

Seren studied them as they rode.

“You are familiar with old roads,” Elira observed.

“I have marched over enough of them.”

“That is not the same."

“No.” Seren looked toward a line of stones disappearing beneath the undergrowth. “It teaches respect for whoever built something that survives armies.”

Elira’s hand tightened on the reins. “Survival is not always evidence of virtue.”

“No,” Seren said. The word carried more than she meant to reveal.

For a while, they rode without speaking. Mara kept several lengths ahead, while Coren followed behind with a concentration so determined it advertised his inexperience. Silence usually offered Seren relief; it required no performance and made fewer promises than conversation. With Elira, silence felt occupied. It held every unanswered question between them, each one awake and listening.

The old road curved toward a shallow ravine, its weathered stones disappearing beneath moss and the dark lacework of roots. Below, a narrow stream threaded between slabs of black rock, the water so clear and shadowed that it seemed less to reflect the forest than carry some deeper darkness through it. Moisture silvered the ferns along the banks, and the air smelled of wet bark, cold stone, and the faint mineral sharpness of earth disturbed somewhere beyond sight.

The horses slowed before the descent, their ears turning restlessly toward the trees.

Mara dismounted and led her mare to the edge of the crossing, testing the submerged stones with one boot before crouching to study the current. Coren remained mounted behind them, his hand resting near his bow while he searched the branches with determined vigilance, as though the forest might become less ancient and impenetrable if he watched it sternly enough.

The woods offered him nothing. Wind moved through the canopy high overhead, whispering among pine needles and bare oak limbs, yet the growth near the road remained unnaturally still. No birds called. Even the stream seemed to quiet where it slipped beneath the old bridge stones.

Then a cry tore through the trees. The horses lurched beneath their riders. Seren’s mount threw up its head, reins snapping tight against her gloves as the sound broke off abruptly and left the ravine ringing with its absence. A moment later, it came again. High, ragged, and raw with pain. Not human, though close enough in its suffering that Seren’s body had already prepared to move before her mind made the distinction.

She turned her horse toward the sound. “This way.”

Elira closed her eyes for one brief moment, her expression settling into the patient misery of someone whose worst expectations had just been confirmed. When she opened her eyes again, she looked toward the dense growth beyond the road, where thorn and pine crowded together beneath the gray afternoon light. “I was merely considering the impressive persistence with which you seek out additional responsibilities.”

Something cried again from the forest, weaker now.

Seren guided her horse between two leaning trees. Low branches dragged across her cloak, scattering cold droplets over her shoulders. “You may remain on the road.”

Seren looked back long enough to find Elira following her.

Mara led her horse behind them while Coren brought up the rear, his earlier vigilance acquiring a less performative edge as the old road vanished between the trees. The ground sloped sharply toward the stream, softened by rain and layered with wet leaves that concealed roots, stones, and hollows deep enough to turn an ankle. The horses picked their way with nervous care, their breathing loud in the hush.

The cry came once more, this time from somewhere below them.

Seren dismounted before the terrain could make the decision for her and passed the reins to Coren. She moved ahead on foot, one hand keeping branches from striking her face while the other remained near her sword. Behind her, Elira stepped down from the saddle with considerably more grace than the slope deserved.

They found the deer in a narrow hollow beside the stream. A young doe lay beneath a fallen limb, barely past her first winter if the delicacy of her frame meant anything. The branch had torn free from an old pine and come down across her hindquarters, pinning one leg beneath its weight at an angle that made Seren’s stomach tighten. Broken bark had opened a long wound along the animal’s flank, and blood had soaked through the pale fur before thinning into pink rivulets beneath the rain.

The doe’s sides heaved with frantic, shallow breaths. Foam gathered around her mouth, and every attempt to wrench herself free drove the branch deeper into the mud. The leaves around her had been churned into a dark paste by her struggling, while one foreleg had scraped a raw trench through the soil.

At their approach, she thrashed again. The branch groaned. Her scream passed through the hollow with a terrible, almost human sharpness before fading into exhausted panting. Seren stopped several paces away.

The animal’s eyes rolled toward her, showing white around the dark irises. Terror had consumed everything else within them. There was no understanding left, only the certainty of pain and the conviction that every approaching shape had come to worsen it.

Behind Seren, Mara exhaled softly. “That limb is heavier than it looks.”