Page 53 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

The footprint beneath them was fresh. Roran did not comment, although his hand settled against the hilt of his sword and remained there as they continued. The forest grew denser around them, its branches catching at their cloaks while the last of the daylight thinned between the trunks and turned the path ahead the dark, mottled color of old bruises. No one spoke above a murmur, and even those quiet exchanges became less frequent as the familiar sounds of the woods began disappearing around them.

After nearly an hour, the trail descended toward the faint rush of running water, and the footprints became visible again near the stream bank. They clustered together so tightly in the mud that Seren could no longer determine how many people had stood there or in which direction they had faced. When the tracks ended they did not fade beneath stone or disappear into the water; they simply stopped at the edge of a patch of soft, unbroken earth that should have held every step taken beyond them. One of the scouts moved toward the stream.

“Wait." The word had barely left Seren’s mouth when something moved at the far edge of the clearing.

A branch bent slowly between the trees, its leaves trembling against one another even though the air beneath the canopy remained perfectly still. The sound that followed was faint and dragging, as though something had shifted its weight across the damp ground and gone motionless the instant it realized it had been heard.

Roran’s sword slid several inches from its sheath, the quiet scrape of steel carrying farther than it should have through the forest. Seren lifted one hand, holding the others in place while she searched the shadows gathering beyond the clearing. For several breaths, there was nothing but the pale weave of roots breaking through the soil and the dark columns of trees standing behind them, close enough together that anything waiting among them could have remained hidden without effort.

Then a strand of silver caught the last of the daylight. The curve of a shoulder emerged beneath it, followed by the outline of a woman crouched beside the exposed roots with her back turned toward them. Elira Thorn knelt so motionless that she appeared less like someone who had only just arrived and more like something the clearing had been concealing until Seren stepped close enough to notice. Her fingers hovered above the roots without touching them. She did not turn.

Seren released the breath she had been holding and closed her eyes for one brief, necessary moment. “Of course.”

Behind her, Roran made a low sound that could have been relief or the beginning of an opinion he had not yet decided was worth the consequences of voicing.

Seren raised one hand without looking at him. “Do not.”

“I said nothing.” Roran’s silence became pointed. Elira’s head tilted slightly, though her gaze remained fixed on the roots beneath her hand. The movement was small, but Seren caught the faint tightening through her shoulders, the restrained awareness of someone who had heard every footstep long before announcing that she had.

“You are both remarkably loud,” Elira said.

Her voice carried calmly across the clearing, too composed for a woman surrounded by soldiers with drawn steel, and Seren found herself studying the line of her exposed profile for some indication that the composure was false. There was none, although the stillness in her hand looked less effortless now that Seren knew to watch for it.

Seren stepped forward, placing each boot carefully between the roots stretched across the ground. Elira’s eyes flicked toward the movement, following Seren’s feet before lifting briefly to her face. “You have an irritating habit of appearing wherever I need answers,” Seren said.

Elira regarded her for a moment, her gaze moving over the mud along Seren’s boots, the damp edge of her cloak, and the hand that had not strayed far from her sword. Whatever conclusion she reached seemed to sharpen the faint line of amusement at her mouth. “That sounds less like a habit of mine and more like a problem of yours.”

Seren watched the corner of Elira’s lips threaten to rise and disliked the immediate urge to answer it with one of her own. “There it is.”

Elira finally turned her head more fully, silver hair sliding back from the sharp curve of her cheek. “What?”

For one brief moment, her attention rested directly on Seren, cool and assessing, though not as indifferent as she likely intended. Her eyes lingered just long enough to suggest she was measuring the distance between them, the soldiers behind Seren, or perhaps something Seren could not see beneath her own expression. “The reason I regularly consider violence.”

Elira’s gaze dropped to Seren’s hand near her sword before returning to her face. “That seems a personal failing.”

The answer arrived smoothly, but Seren noticed the tension at the base of Elira’s thumb where her hand remained suspended above the roots, as though the effort of keeping herself still had begun to ache.

Behind them, Roran disguised a laugh as a cough, although the performance lacked conviction. Seren pointed one finger at him without breaking eye contact with Elira. Elira’s eyes followed the gesture, then returned to Seren with the smallest trace of curiosity, as though she had not yet decided whether their familiarity amused her or made them dangerous together. When she finally turned back toward the roots, the corner of her mouth shifted.

The expression disappeared almost immediately. The tension in her shoulders did not. Seren moved close enough to see that Elira’s fingers were trembling—only slightly.

Elira curled them into her palm before Seren could decide what it meant.

Chapter Ten: Aelira Ashwood

For one breath, Aelira forgot the name she had chosen for herself.

Elira Thorn disappeared so completely that the name might never have belonged to her, taking with it ten years of rehearsed histories, practiced expressions, and careful indifference. The room seemed to shift beneath her feet, and beneath the sudden rush of blood in her ears she was no longer a woman standing among Coalition soldiers, but a girl beneath a burning palace with smoke in her lungs, her mother’s blood beneath her nails, and the name Aelira Ashwood still dangerous enough to get her killed.

The lapse lasted no longer than the flash of a blade in torchlight, but it happened all the same, and the failure opened something violent beneath her ribs.

She had entered prepared for soldiers, suspicion, provincial incompetence, and the ordinary arrogance of frightened men wearing authority like borrowed armor. She had expected Coalition officers fumbling over ancient magic with ink-stained hands and the confidence of people who mistook naming a thing for understanding it. She had expected ignorance, and she had certainly expected danger.

She had not expected the past to turn its face toward her.

Seren Veyr stood across the room with rain darkening the hair at her temples and mud drying along the edges of her boots, so unmistakably herself that Aelira’s body recognized her before thought could intervene. Her fingers locked at her side, her lungs failed to complete their next breath, and a sudden pressure climbed into her throat with such force that for one terrible instant she thought Seren’s name might escape her—not as a title or greeting, but as something torn from a wound that had never closed.

She forced her mouth shut.