Page 80 of The Last Rose of Ashwood

“I will be at Listener’s Rise,” Elira said.

Seren went still. The certainty in the answer bothered her more than the defiance. “It was not an invitation.”

Elira met her gaze without flinching. “If the old road opens beneath that hill, your soldiers will not know whether they are standing before a door, a warning, or a mouth.”

The room fell silent. Even Wren stopped drawing.

Seren studied the woman across from her, not the words themselves, but the way she had said them. No speculation. No scholar’s abstraction. No careful perhaps or possibly or according to the surviving texts. Elira had spoken like someone remembering a danger rather than imagining one.

A faint tension had appeared at the base of her throat, and one hand had closed loosely over the other, the same gesture Seren had begun noticing whenever the conversation approached something Elira did not want touched.

“You believe it may open?”

Elira’s eyes flicked once toward the map. Too quick to mean nothing. “I believe the distinction between impossible and unlikely has become increasingly ornamental in Briar Hollow.”

Another answer that managed to be useful and evasive at the same time. Seren felt irritation tighten behind her ribs. That was what unsettled her about Elira. Not merely that she kept secrets, but that Seren could never determine where the secrets ended. Every answer seemed to reveal another locked room behind it.

Roran made a low, dissatisfied sound beside her.

Seren looked back at the map. “Then I take Mara and Coren.”

Elira’s gaze sharpened. “You would be dead without me.”

The words came too quickly. Too personally. Seren looked up. For one beat, something unguarded remained in Elira’s face. Not concern exactly. Not anything Seren trusted enough to name. Then it disappeared beneath that familiar coolness.

“Frequently,” Seren said.

The answer escaped before she examined it. The room did something strange around the word. Elira looked away first, but not before Seren caught the brief tightening at the corner of her mouth.

Seren returned her attention to the map. She told herself the unease beneath her ribs was suspicion. It should have been. Elira Thorn knew too much, explained too little, and reacted to danger as though she had met it before. That was reason enough not to trust her.

Seren only wished it explained why she kept wanting to.

Within the hour, they were ready. Mara met them in the square with her dark hair braided tightly down her back and the severe calm of someone who prepared for danger by becoming less expressive than it was. Coren arrived beside her, younger and eager in the way people often were before experience taught eagerness how to bruise.

Roran spent several quiet minutes instructing Mara near the stable. Seren remained too far away to hear, though she understood the shape of the conversation.

Watch her.

Bring her back.

Do not permit heroism to become stupidity.

All reasonable instructions, though Seren would never grant him the satisfaction of saying so.

She mounted and adjusted the fall of her cloak while Elira climbed onto her own horse with unhurried precision. The scholar wore dark riding clothes beneath a weathered outer layer, with no jewelry or ornament beyond the gloves covering her hands. A narrow blade lay concealed at her waist, subtle enough that most people would have missed it. Seren had noticed it the first day. She noticed most things about Elira, which was becoming a problem best left unnamed until it became useful.

“You should have told me about the drawing when it appeared,” Seren said as they left the square.

The road north was wet from the previous night’s rain, fog clinging low enough to curl around the horses’ legs. Each hoofbeat released the smell of damp leaves and newly opened earth. Briar Hollow vanished behind them by degrees: first the square, then the roofs, then the thin trails of smoke caught among the trees. Seren did not look back until she saw Elira do so. Wren stood beside Elowen at the edge of the road, wrapped in her blanket with one hand lifted in farewell. Elira did not wave. After a moment, however, she inclined her head. Wren smiled as though she had been given something better.

Seren watched the exchange for longer than necessary. “You have made a friend.”

The scholar turned her head, her lips pulling thin in what only could be seen as a scowl. “I collect nuisances.”

“She seems fond of you.”

“Children often mistake danger for novelty.”