Page 12 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Aelira crossed to the window and looked down. A rider stood at the base of the tower, horse lathered and trembling, both of them soaked by rain. The rider wore the gray cloak of a Coalition messenger. The sight was absurd enough that, under less troubling circumstances, she might have enjoyed it. Ten years of silence and carefully maintained distance, and now the Coalition had come knocking at her door like a beggar in a storm.

“The world must truly be ending,” Aelira sighed.

The messenger looked human. She assessed him through the window. He appeared middle-aged and tired. More importantly, he looked afraid. Aelira found that oddly reassuring. She descended the tower stairs with measured steps, one hand trailing along the cold stone wall. The tower spiraled downward in narrowing circles, each floor built smaller than the last, a crown in reverse. She had chosen it partly for that reason. It reminded her of the palace spires she had grown up in, though there the stone had sung beneath her touch. Here it remained cold.

At the door, she stopped, and her expression settled. Her fingers closed around the blade hidden in her sleeve. She opened the door just as the messenger raised his fist to knock again. For several heartbeats, neither spoke. The messenger stared at her face. His eyes flicked around the features immortalized once in portraits across the continent and later in propaganda woodcuts with horns, fangs, flames, or other artistic liberties depending on the printer’s imagination.

Recognition dawned on him immediately. He had expected her to answer.

“So—” Aelira spoke, and if they had not been mere steps apart, the sound of rain would have drowned out her voice, “—either the Coalition has become remarkably inefficient, or this conversation is about to be very unpleasant.”

Apparently, that had not been the greeting prepared for him.

“You are Lady Ashwood?”

Aelira tilted her head, the faintest trace of amusement touching her mouth while the rest of her remained carefully, dangerously still. “No.”

His brow creased. “No?”

“No one has called me that in nearly a decade. You will have to be more specific.”

The messenger looked as though he regretted every decision that had brought him up the mountain. His hand slipped beneath the fold of his cloak. By the time his fingers found whatever he had hidden there, Aelira’s blade was already beneath his chin. It appeared as though the steel had always belonged there, waiting patiently against the vulnerable line of his throat. She had not lunged. She had not startled. She had simply moved, and the world had rearranged itself around the certainty of her violence.

The messenger went still.

Aelira watched him with the calm of old courts and older forests, her expression untouched by anger. Anger was loud. Anger wasted breath. This required neither. The knife rested lightly against his skin, its edge close enough that when he swallowed, his pulse trembled against it. “If you produce a weapon,” she said softly, “I will remove the hand responsible.”

The man’s face drained of color. Beneath his cloak, his fingers remained frozen in place, caught between obedience and terror. “It is a letter,” he whispered.

Aelira’s gaze did not lower. “Then you will retrieve it slowly,” she said, her voice as smooth as silk drawn over a blade. “And you will understand that I am choosing, with great restraint, to believe you.”

The messenger gave the smallest, frantic nod, though even that slight movement dragged his throat against the knife’s edge and made his breath catch. Sweat gathered at his temple. His eyes remained fixed on hers, wide and glassy, as if looking away from Aelira might be the mistake that ended him. With exaggerated care, he withdrew his hand from beneath his cloak.

A sealed document trembled between his fingers.

For a moment, Aelira let him feel the full weight of that mercy. She did not lower the blade at once. She allowed the silence to stretch, allowed his fear to settle properly into his bones, allowed him to understand that his survival had not been earned by innocence, but granted by her restraint. Then the knife vanished back into her sleeve as if it had never existed.

The messenger swayed where he stood, one hand rising halfway toward his throat before he seemed to remember she had not given him permission to move. Color had abandoned his face entirely, leaving him pale beneath the gray morning light, his mouth parted around a breath that would not quite steady. Aelira accepted the parchment and studied the seal.

Coalition. Official. Arrogant in red wax. She stared at it for several moments, feeling the absurdity of the moment settle over her like snow. “You’re staring,” she observed. The messenger immediately looked away. Aelira fought the urge to laugh. She had nearly forgotten how uncomfortable people became around power. Not position granted by vote, seal, or sword—Real power.

The kind that lingered in the bones of a room even after kingdoms died.

“You know who I am.” It was not a question.

The messenger hesitated for a single breath, then spoke. “Yes.”

She accepted that, then asked, “Does your government?”

“Some people.”

His honesty surprised her. "Interesting."

“They told me you would ask that,” he said, before shifting as if he regretted speaking.

Aelira broke the seal with her thumb. The wax cracked cleanly. A forgettable sound. Yet something inside her tightened all the same. She unfolded the parchment and began to read. Her expression remained unchanged. Years of court politics had taught her how to wear stillness like armor. Entire wars had been negotiated across tables while kings and generals searched her face for reactions she refused to give them. The habit remained.

The messenger waited in silence as rain whispered against the tower stones. The fire crackled softly behind her, and for several heartbeats, the world continued exactly as it always had. She had not reached the end, however she stumbled upon a single sentence that had rooted her in place. Her gaze lingered there, motionless. The words themselves were simple—the implication was not.