Chapter 44: Word of Seris’s Sister
The rider was one of Renka’s own contacts, a wiry human courier who’d worked the Millhollow routes for years, and he arrived at the gate breathless enough that Ryuji knew the news before a single word left his mouth.
"Found her," the rider gasped, dismounting hard. "Your sister, the one your scout’s been asking about. Living in a village two days south. Weaver’s apprentice. Goes by Talia."
Seris’s whole body went rigid, gray eyes wide with something raw breaking through her usual careful composure.
"Is she safe," Seris said, voice tight.
"For now." The rider caught his breath, hands on his knees. "But there’s a problem. Someone else has been asking about a weaver’s apprentice matching her description. Started three days ago. Same village."
The kitchen went cold despite the fire burning steady in the hearth.
"Who," Ryuji asked, though the old machinery in his head had already begun assembling the shape of an answer he didn’t want confirmed.
"Don’t know for certain. But the questions came from a man carrying Aldenmarch coin. Paid well for information nobody local would have bothered giving up otherwise."
Seris’s hands curled into fists, knuckles white, the particular fury of someone watching a threat close in on the one person she’d spent years trying to keep separate from her actual life.
"Ashcroft," she said. "Or whatever he answers to now."
[System Log: Day 56]
[SERIS’S SISTER HAS BEEN LOCATED]
[SIMULTANEOUSLY, AN UNIDENTIFIED PARTY WITH ALDENMARCH FUNDING HAS BEGUN INVESTIGATING THE SAME LOCATION]
[THIS TIMING IS EITHER COINCIDENTAL OR PROOF THAT ASHCROFT’S NETWORK HAS ALREADY IDENTIFIED SERIS’S VULNERABILITY]
[GIVEN THE ESTABLISHED CONNECTION BETWEEN ASHCROFT AND SERIS’S ORIGINAL BLACKMAILER, COINCIDENCE SEEMS UNLIKELY]
[...]
[THE HOUSEHOLD MUST NOW MOVE FASTER THAN THE THREAT THEY ONLY RECENTLY LEARNED TO NAME]
"How much time," Ryuji asked.
"Don’t know," the rider admitted. "The man asking questions hasn’t returned since. Could mean he found what he needed and left. Could mean he’s still watching, waiting for the right moment."
Selene stepped forward, void energy already gathering faint at her fingertips despite the exhaustion still weighing on all of them from the previous night’s revelations.
"We go tonight," she said. "Before whoever’s watching decides waiting no longer serves them."
"Selene," Ryuji said carefully, "we just spent last night confronting something that could erase either of us without effort. We’re tired. If we move recklessly—"
"If we wait," she cut in, sharp, "Seris’s sister may already be gone by the time we arrive rested and prepared. Some risks are worth taking exhausted rather than losing entirely by hesitating."
He studied her for a long moment, recognizing the particular fire behind her exhaustion, the fresh grief from confronting her mother’s killer still raw enough to fuel a fierce, protective urgency toward anyone else facing a similar threat.
"Alright," he said. "Tonight. But we move smart, not just fast."
Seris crossed the kitchen and gripped Ryuji’s arm, something desperate and grateful tangled in her gray eyes.
"Thank you," she said. "I know what I’m asking. Everyone here is already stretched thin."
"You’re not asking," Ryuji said. "You’re family now. Family doesn’t get left exposed because the timing’s inconvenient."
Something in Seris’s carefully guarded composure cracked fully at that word, and she looked away quickly, blinking hard, unused to the particular vulnerability of being claimed rather than simply tolerated.
They moved fast after that, Renka mapping the route to the village with practiced efficiency, Alexei preparing supplies for a rapid overnight journey, Marro packing medical provisions with the particular thoroughness of a man who’d learned, over months, exactly how badly these missions could go.
Selene found Ryuji alone in the training yard, checking his gear one final time before departure, and pressed close enough that her presence registered before her voice did.
"You are worried," she said.
"Always am. Comes with the job description." He glanced at her, exhaustion and determination both etched clearly into her familiar features. "You should stay. Rest. You confronted your mother’s killer twelve hours ago."
"I am coming," she said, no room for argument in her tone. "I have spent four hundred years being told what I am too fragile to face. I refuse to let exhaustion be the excuse that finally makes that true."
He reached for her hand, steady despite everything, and felt her grip his back with the particular fierce certainty that had grown between them across months of shared danger.
"Selene."
"What."
"I wasn’t trying to protect you from danger. I was trying to protect you from carrying more than you should have to carry in one day."
Her expression softened, the sharp edge easing into something warmer, more vulnerable.
"I know," she said. "But I would rather carry too much beside you than carry too little apart from you."
The words landed heavy and warm in his chest, and he pulled her close despite the urgency of the coming departure, pressing a kiss to her forehead, the particular tenderness that had grown easier between them with every week that passed.
"Selene."
"What."
"Stay close tonight. Please."
"I always do," she said, and the certainty in it carried more weight than any promise either of them had made before.
They departed within the hour, the household splitting once again, Marro and Alexei’s second-in-command remaining to hold the estate while Ryuji, Selene, Alexei, Renka, and Seris rode hard through the fog toward the village two days south.
The journey compressed under urgency into a single hard day of riding, horses pushed to their limits, the household stopping only briefly to rest before continuing through darkness that felt heavier than usual, weighted by everything they’d learned about the ancient enemy still circling their lives.
They reached the village as dawn broke, gray light filtering through modest thatched roofs and quiet streets just beginning to wake, and Seris led them directly toward a small weaver’s shop at the village’s edge, her pace quickening with every step.
The shop was empty.
Not ransacked. Not violent. Simply empty, looms silent, workspace tidy, the particular emptiness of someone who’d left in an ordinary hurry rather than been taken by force.
Seris’s face drained of color entirely.
"She’s gone," she said, voice cracking. "Talia’s gone."
Renka moved through the space with practiced efficiency, checking for signs, and found a note pinned carefully to the loom’s frame, addressed simply to "whoever comes looking."
Selene read it aloud, voice tight with growing dread.
If you are reading this, you have come too late to protect her the easy way. She is safe, for now. Whether she remains so depends entirely on how quickly you abandon your current investigation. I will not repeat this warning.
No signature. No seal. Just the same cold, precise threat the household had already learned to recognize from every direction Ashcroft’s network extended.
"They took her as leverage," Seris said, the words coming out hollow, devastated. "Exactly as I feared they would."
Ryuji felt the old machinery in his head shift instantly from grief into calculation, the particular focus that came from facing a problem that demanded solving rather than simply mourning.
"We find her," he said. "Same as we’ve found everything else this household needed to find. This isn’t over."
Seris turned to him, eyes bright with unshed tears and fierce determination fighting for the same space.
"Promise me," she said. "Promise me we get her back."
He met her gaze steadily, the particular honesty he reserved for things that mattered too much to soften.
"I don’t make promises I can’t keep," he said. "But I promise you this. We’re not stopping until we know exactly where she is and exactly what it takes to bring her home."
Selene’s hand found his, steady despite everything the morning had revealed, and the household stood together in the empty weaver’s shop, grief and determination both settling into something they could carry only because none of them carried it alone.
Outside, past the village’s quiet streets, a fresh trail of hoofprints led east, toward a destination none of them yet recognized, carrying a young woman who had spent her whole life believing her sister was simply a merchant’s courier, now caught in the center of a conspiracy that stretched back centuries and reached forward into a future none of them could yet fully see.