The Hidden Route Picked the Friend novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Coast Road
The coast road left the palace by the south gate and ran through meadows for an hour.
Then the trees closed in, and the light turned green and dim, and the road began to bend.
Briony felt it before she saw it.
The pines on both sides were black and old, and they leaned together over the track.
Her hands tightened on the reins.
"This is it," she said.
"Yes."
Sevrin brought his horse alongside hers.
He did not say anything else.
He had ridden this road twice in his life, on the Regent's business.
She understood without being told that he knew every stone of it.
The road curved hard to the left around a mossy outcrop.
At the bend it widened.
There was a patch of packed earth where a coach could stop, and a stump.
A stone marker stood beside it, with a name cut into it too worn to read.
Gallows Bend.
She slid down from the saddle.
Her legs held, which surprised her.
She walked out into the middle of the road in the green gown, with her hair coming down and her travelling cloak flapping.
She stood where the coach would have stopped.
Nothing happened.
A jay called from the trees.
The sun came in slantwise through the pines and lay in bars across the dust.
Someone had left a few wild roses on the stump, red and small, long dead.
She looked at the roses.
She thought of a white collar lying in the dirt of a drawing, and her stomach turned over once.
Then Sevrin got down and came to stand at her shoulder.
He took her hand, and it was warm.
"I was supposed to be standing there," he said, and nodded at the pines.
"With the knife."
"You'd have been late."
"Why?"
"You'd have stopped to wrap my wrist."
She heard him laugh, a short astonished huff of air.
"I would have," he said.
She leaned against him, and the road stayed empty.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Hidden Route Picked the Friend are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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