Page 20 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

Roran pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wonderful. Excellent. Nothing says, 'sound leadership' like vanishing into ancient roads after a village has vanished first.”

He was not wrong; she admitted only to herself. “I need answers.”

“We need answers,” Roran raised his eyes to her, and she tried not to scowl at the disapproving set of his mouth

He had chosen the word deliberately. We. That was the trouble with Roran. He made loyalty sound like evidence. “I need someone here who can keep soldiers from doing something stupid,” she stated.

“Then choose someone stupid to supervise them. I’m going with you.”

“No.”

Roran drew himself to his full height, broad shoulders squaring until he seemed to occupy more of the room than any one man had a right to. The muscles along his jaw tightened beneath the shadow of his beard, and his brows lowered over eyes that had frightened better-trained soldiers into immediate obedience. One hand settled at his hip while the other hung loosely at his side, though there was nothing relaxed about him. He looked carved from something denser than flesh, all hard angles, old scars, and barely restrained irritation.

If the man could have made himself appear more intimidating, Seren suspected the walls would have begun apologizing.

“Compelling argument,” he said. “Well reasoned.”

Seren’s patience thinned. “You are the only person here I trust not to let fear turn this excavation into a massacre.” She disliked using the truth against him. She disliked more that it worked.

“The men are frightened,” she continued. “The engineers are curious, which is worse,” she sighed. “If the Council sends riders, they do not touch the chamber without my order. If the roots spread beyond the square, you pull everyone back to the southern ridge. If another village sends word, you send one scout to confirm and one rider to me. Quietly.”

He studied her for a long moment, his expression settling into the hard, unreadable stillness that had unnerved soldiers twice as reckless as she was. Rain tapped against the broken stones behind them, gathering along the broad line of his shoulders before slipping from the dark fabric of his coat. Somewhere below the temple, the roots remained silent, which Seren trusted far less than movement.

“You do not have to do every dangerous thing yourself,” Roran replied.

His voice had lost its edge. That softness irritated her more than the argument had.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Seren’s jaw tightened.

Roran exhaled through his nose, the tension leaving neither his posture nor the deep furrow between his brows. He stood close enough that she had to tilt her head slightly to meet his gaze, all broad shoulders, weathered features, and the quiet strength of a man accustomed to placing himself between danger and everyone else. A pale scar cut through one eyebrow, sharpening the severity of his expression, though the concern beneath it ruined the effect.

“There’s that face,” he said.

Despite herself, her mouth curved. “I need you here.”

He hated that answer. She saw it in the muscle jumping beneath the rough shadow along his cheek, in the way his large hand flexed once at his side before curling slowly into stillness. His shoulders remained squared, but something in him seemed to draw tighter, as though every instinct he possessed had urged him to follow her and she had just ordered him to stand aside. He hated it because it was the one argument he could not dismiss as pride.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“The archive station on the ridge road. It may have records on old temples, Earthspeaker sites, Ashwood symbols, or whatever the Council decided to slice out of that report.”

Roran nodded. “And if whatever emptied this village is waiting there?”

She paused at that, though only to let out something that could have been a laugh under better circumstances. “Then I will be very annoyed.”

“Seren.” The use of her name stopped her more effectively than any title or rank could have. Roran was no longer looking at her as her captain, but as the man who had once dragged her bleeding from a battlefield when she had been too young to understand that survival could become its own kind of debt.

She gave him the timeline. He argued with it, naturally. Roran had always considered obedience negotiable whenever her safety was involved. One hour became two, then narrowed to one and a half, and they settled there with the grim familiarity of people who had bargained with danger before. If she had not returned by then, he would come after her. Seren knew better than to doubt it, so she told him to bring rope.

Roran’s mouth twitched despite himself. “I always bring rope when you’re involved.”

She gathered a small pack, tucked the stone fragment into it beneath its wrapping of cloth, and left by the northern road before anyone else could decide to become sentimental. The village watched her go. She hated the thought, but it followed her anyway. Eastmere stood silent behind her, lanterns still burning in pale daylight, roots spreading beneath its streets. The northern road climbed away from the square and into wet forest. Snow lingered in shaded patches beneath the trees. The air smelled of rain, pine, and earth turned newly open.

For the first half mile, Seren followed old wagon ruts and recent scout tracks. Then the road narrowed, becoming less a road than a memory of one. Fallen branches tangled across the path. Moss covered stones once set in careful lines. Here and there, half-buried markers leaned from the ditch, their carvings too worn to read. Her horse picked carefully through the mud. The archive station appeared just as the map said it would, tucked into the shoulder of a hill overlooking the old imperial road. Most of the roof had collapsed and ivy strangled the walls. The front door hung crooked, swollen from the damp, and marked by the faded remains of a seal that had once declared the building property of the Ashwood Dominion.