Page 121 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Will we make it in time?

The roots beneath the road pulsed again. Stronger now. Closer. Aelira did not answer aloud. Some truths did not become kinder when spoken. They rode hard through the falling snow while beneath them, unseen and impossibly swift, something moved through the old rootway toward Briar Hollow. This time, Aelira knew exactly what kind of silence would be waiting if they arrived too late.

Chapter Twenty: Seren Veyr

They reached Briar Hollow too late. Seren knew it before the village came fully into view, before the first rooftop appeared between the snow-heavy branches or the old chapel tower rose above the trees. She knew because the forest had stopped speaking.

All through the hard ride back from Tel’Mara, the world had been loud with urgency. Hooves struck frozen stone beneath fresh snow, branches snapped against cloaks, and the horses breathed in harsh white bursts as they climbed and descended the old road. Mara swore whenever the trail vanished beneath drifts deep enough to swallow the path, while Coren prayed under his breath with the concentrated embarrassment of someone hoping no one would notice. Beneath it all had moved that terrible pulse, southward and swift, a rhythm Seren felt more than heard, something hidden beneath road and root traveling toward Briar Hollow faster than they could follow.

Then, less than a mile from the village, it stopped. The silence arrived so completely that Seren pulled hard on the reins before she understood why. Her horse skidded sideways across the packed snow, iron shoes scraping stone beneath the white. Mara halted beside her at once, one hand already moving toward the bow at her back, and Coren nearly rode into them before wrenching his own mount to a stop with a strangled curse.

No crows watched from the upper branches. No squirrel fled the sudden arrival of horses. No winter birds called from the hedges bordering the road. Even the wind seemed to lose interest in the trees. It moved between the pines without disturbing the snow caught along their limbs, slipping through the forest with such unnatural gentleness that Seren felt the silence settle against her skin.

Ahead, Elira sat rigid in the saddle, facing the final bend in the road. Seren followed her gaze.

Briar Hollow lay beyond it. Something cold and precise slid beneath Seren’s ribs. This felt like knowing.

She urged her horse forward.

The village looked normal at first. Briar Hollow still rested in the shallow valley beneath a pale winter sky, rooftops softened beneath snow and narrow trails of smoke rising from chimneys in delicate gray threads. Lanterns burned behind window glass where the afternoon had begun fading into evening. The tavern sign moved slightly above the door. Elowen’s garden wall remained half buried along the road, and the chapel bell hung dark and still inside its little tower. The well stood covered in the square, its wooden planks shining with meltwater.

A living village, if viewed from far enough away.

Seren dismounted before the horse came to a complete stop. Her boots struck the stones of the square, and the sound traveled farther than it should have. No one opened a door. No one called out. No child ran toward them demanding to know where they had been, and Elowen did not emerge from the infirmary with her sleeves shoved to the elbow, some bitter cup of tea already prepared for whoever looked most exhausted.

Wren did not appear.

Roran did not appear.

That absence lodged itself inside Seren more deeply than the silence.

Behind her, Mara and Coren dismounted. Elira said nothing, though Seren felt her presence several paces away with the strange awareness she had developed for the woman over the past few days. Seren forced herself to remain still. Stillness kept the body from betraying the mind. It allowed a commander to separate terror into observable pieces, to take apart a battlefield before the whole of it became too large to survive. Seren had learned that years ago among fire and mud and bodies whose names she had known before they became numbers on reports.

A basket lay overturned beside the inn steps, clean laundry spilling across the snow. Shirts, stockings, a child’s undershirt with one sleeve folded inward. Nothing had been trampled. There were no footprints scattering from the square, no sign of panicked flight. The laundry had simply been dropped. The blacksmith’s forge still glowed inside its open doorway, iron resting forgotten among coals that had faded to a dull red. Near the village hall, a pot hung above the communal fire, whatever had been cooking reduced to a scorched layer along the bottom.

Seren’s gaze moved toward the well. A blue mitten lay half buried beside it. Small. Wren-sized, perhaps. She did not allow herself to decide.

Lanterns burned in windows all around the square. Through one open doorway, Seren could see bowls waiting on a table and a chair pushed backward as though someone had risen midway through a meal. Another house held a half-folded blanket abandoned across a bench.

The people of Briar Hollow had not fled. They had risen. All at once, perhaps. The realization entered Seren slowly enough that she felt every edge of it.

This was not Eastmere.

It could not be Eastmere because Eastmere had been horror at a distance, an empty village Seren had entered after everyone inside had already become strangers to her. She had not known the baker’s wife there. She had not listened to children argue over who slept nearest the hearth because they were frightened of the singing. She had not watched Elowen bully half the village into drinking remedies she swore tasted worse than the illness they treated.

She had not known Wren.

She had not left Roran there.

Eastmere had been horror.

Briar Hollow was hers.

The thought came with such violence that Seren almost hated herself for it. She had given the orders. She had decided who stayed and who left. She had put Roran in charge because there was no one in the world whose judgment she trusted more than his, then ridden north after answers while something beneath the earth moved faster than any of them understood.

“Mara.” Her voice held. Barely.

The scout turned at once.