13. Chapter Thirteen Seren Veyr #4
The forest went quiet enough for Mara to hide a smile.
Seren’s mouth threatened to move. Elira dismounted with wounded dignity.
Mara and Coren positioned themselves near the thicker end of the branch.
Seren remained close to the doe’s head, speaking softly while watching the tremors move through her body.
The animal’s fear filled the clearing without magic.
It lived in the frantic rise of her ribs, the foam at her mouth, the way each attempt to escape made the trap worse.
Seren had seen the same terror in soldiers pinned beneath horses, prisoners waiting behind barred doors, and villagers listening for verdicts from officials who had already made them.
Trapped was trapped, whatever shape the body wore.
“Lift,” Seren ordered.
The branch rose barely an inch before slipping. The doe screamed. Seren moved closer despite the risk of being kicked, one arm raised against her face.
“It may break the leg,” Mara said.
“It may already be broken,” Coren replied.
Elira stood several paces away, her attention fixed not on the deer but on the ground beneath the fallen limb.
Her gaze followed the branch to where its broken weight had driven deep into the rain-softened earth, studying the moss, the exposed roots, and the dark hollow carved by the animal’s struggling.
For a moment, Seren thought she had simply withdrawn into that private silence she wore whenever the world offered a question she did not intend to answer.
Then Elira moved around the far side of the branch and crouched beside it. “Whatever objection is gathering in your mouth,” she replied without looking up, “you may preserve it for a more deserving occasion.”
Seren’s attention remained on the deer, though she caught the small, careful movement of Elira’s hand disappearing beneath the fall of her cloak. “What are you doing?”
“Observing that your scouts are lifting from the wrong place.”
Mara’s expression tightened. “We are lifting where the branch is narrowest.”
“And driving the broken end farther into the bank each time you do.”
Elira brushed wet leaves from the earth near the trunk, revealing where one splintered section had lodged beneath a thick web of roots. Her glove was missing from one hand, though Seren could not remember seeing her remove it. A strip of clean linen crossed her palm, already darkened at one edge.
Seren narrowed her eyes. “A paper cut?”
“From a particularly hostile book.” Elira leaned closer to the earth, her ungloved hand hidden behind the branch. Seren could see only the line of her wrist and the faint tension moving through her shoulders as she examined whatever lay beneath it.
The deer cried out again. Seren turned back at once, lowering her voice and placing one hand near the animal’s neck without touching. “Easy. Hold still for me.”
The words were absurd. The doe understood neither language nor intention, only pain and the approach of predators wearing human faces. Behind the branch, something shifted with a low, wet sound.
Elira rose halfway. “Lift from the base now.”
Mara looked toward Seren.
She hesitated. The limb had settled deeper with every previous attempt, yet the soil beneath its broken end now appeared looser, the moss torn back from a shallow pocket Seren had not noticed before. Whether Elira had found the weakness or created it, Seren could not tell.
“Do it,” she ordered.
Mara and Coren changed their positions, bracing near the thicker end of the branch.
“Slowly,” Seren warned. “If it slips, stop.”
They lifted. For an instant, nothing happened. Then the broken end tore free of the earth with startling ease, mud and fine roots falling from it as the weight rose cleanly away from the deer’s leg.
“Now.”
Seren caught the doe at the shoulder, steadying rather than restraining her as she pulled the trapped limb free.
The animal stumbled upright, trembling so violently that Seren expected the leg to fold beneath her.
Instead, the doe lurched forward. She vanished into the undergrowth in a crash of branches and wet leaves, leaving behind churned mud, a streak of blood, and the fading sound of frightened life forcing itself onward.
Mara lowered the branch and rolled one aching shoulder. “Lucky.”
Seren looked toward the place where it had been lodged.
The hollow beneath the trunk appeared deeper than before, the surrounding moss folded back from a knot of fine roots.
Nothing about it was impossible. Rain had softened the bank.
The deer’s struggling might have loosened the earth.
Elira might simply have seen the correct angle when the rest of them had not.
All perfectly reasonable explanations. Briar Hollow had made reasonable explanations feel increasingly like deliberate acts of denial.
Elira stood several feet away, drawing her glove back over the bandage with slow, meticulous care.
By the time she raised her head, her expression held nothing beyond cool impatience.
“Yes,” Seren said, still studying the disturbed earth. “Remarkably lucky.”
Elira met her gaze without blinking. “You sound disappointed.”
Seren glanced once more at the loosened roots, then at the hand Elira had concealed beneath her cloak. The scholar’s face remained calm and challenging, offering Seren all the time in the world to accuse her of something she could not prove.
Seren let that question remain unasked.