Page 76 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“You asked with very little charm," she replied, swift as silk.

“I asked clearly.”

“Tragic that clarity and charm remain strangers to one another.”

Seren rose. Aelira followed immediately, unwilling to remain kneeling while the general stood over her. Up close, the difference in their height became mildly irritating, though the true disadvantage had nothing to do with inches. It was Seren’s attention. Those gray eyes settled upon her with the relentless steadiness of someone accustomed to waiting out fortified positions.

“Do you ever answer directly?” Seren asked.

“When people ask questions they deserve answers to.”

Something hardened in Seren’s expression. “And who decides what people deserve?”

Aelira drew her cloak closer, concealing the hand that had almost betrayed her. “Usually the person who understands whether the answer will cause more harm than ignorance.”

“That is convenient.”

“No.” The coldness in her own voice surprised her, cutting cleanly through what remained of their banter. “It is experience.”

The forest held the silence after her. The scouts lingered near the clearing’s edge with hands resting close to their weapons. Tommen had pressed his back against a tree and stared at the roots as though expecting them to climb his boots. Roran’s earlier amusement had vanished entirely; his attention moved between Aelira and Seren with the alertness of a man who understood that danger often entered a conversation before anyone reached for steel.

Seren studied Aelira. Lying beneath that gaze felt increasingly like standing beneath a suspended blade and pretending not to notice its weight. Aelira knew what Seren must see. A scholar who knew too much. A woman too composed around impossible things. Someone who had reacted to Council cloth before denying she recognized it. A stranger withholding information with the practiced ease of a person who had learned that truth carried consequences.

“You’re suspicious,” Aelira said quietly.

Seren’s fingers tightened around the scrap of cloth. “You know an extraordinary amount about what is happening.”

Aelira waited half a heartbeat too long. Seren’s left brow lifted. It was an ugly, accusatory little thing, and Aelira found herself bizarrely distracted by how poorly it suited an otherwise disciplined face.

“You always seem to be one step ahead,” Seren said.

The words struck where exhaustion had worn Aelira thin.

One step ahead.

For an instant, the clearing disappeared. She saw Ashwood beneath fire. Roots writhing beneath palace stone. Her mother’s blood running bright over an ancient door while the old bindings screamed through the earth. If Aelira had been one step ahead ten years ago, perhaps she would have recognized the fractures in the seals before the palace burned. Perhaps she would have understood why the Worldroot opened passages that had slept for centuries only after there was no kingdom left to save.

Perhaps her mother would not have died holding a door closed with blood and bone while Aelira fled through the dark.

One step ahead.

What a lovely phrase for the living to use when they had never spent a decade wondering which single moment they should have understood sooner.

Aelira turned toward the roots before Seren could read too deeply into her face.

“Trust me,” she said, and the exhaustion in her voice escaped before she could stop it, “if I were one step ahead of this, I would be considerably happier.”

Too honest. She knew it immediately. Seren’s attention changed. Suspicion did not disappear, but it loosened enough to make room for something quieter—belief. Aelira preferred suspicion. Suspicion created distance. It kept Seren sharp and Aelira armored. Belief was more dangerous because belief invited sympathy, and sympathy was merely curiosity after setting down its weapons.

Seren looked toward the roots before speaking again. “Wren said they recognize you.”

Everything inside Aelira stopped. Her body remained perfectly still; that response had been trained into her too thoroughly to fail now. Yet beneath the controlled surface, Elira Thorn fractured along every carefully maintained seam. A branch creaked somewhere deeper in the woods.

Seren continued, and infuriatingly, her voice had softened. “She said the roots speak differently when you are near. As though they remember something.”

Aelira looked at her. There was no triumph in Seren’s face. That would have been easier. She was not presenting evidence to corner a liar or enjoying the discovery of weakness. Concern had entered her expression instead, restrained beneath caution but unmistakable.

Aelira resented it with unreasonable force. “Children hear many things,” she said. The answer sounded weak even to her.