Chapter 54: His Choice II

Marcel did not answer immediately.

His black eyes moved over Asher in a single, thorough pass—travel dust, the healed line on his throat, the absence of fresh bruises, and the way he stood too close to Adrian in the narrow lobby. Then his gaze dropped to Asher’s left hand and stopped.

The claim ring was gone.

For a moment Marcel looked as if the fact had not fully arranged itself in his mind. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them without hurry, and took Asher’s hand in his own. His fingers were cool, precise, turning Asher’s hand toward the weak lantern light of the boarding-house reception as if confirmation required touch as well as sight. The pale circle of skin where the ring had sat was unmistakable, but the ring wasn’t there anymore.

"How did you get it off?" Marcel asked quietly.

Asher pulled his hand back—not sharply, but firmly enough to reestablish the space between them. "You haven’t explained why you’re here. Did you come to take me back?"

Marcel’s attention lifted from the bare finger to Asher’s face.

"No," Marcel said. "I came because the human palace sent an urgent royal letter. Aaron is demanding your return. He still considers you his claimed partner under the binding of a royal claim ring, and the palace gave me three days from receipt of the notice to bring you back. Failure to comply would be treated as deliberate interference in a royal claim, with appropriate consequences."

Asher stared at him for a beat. Then he laughed—short, incredulous, and edged with the particular exhaustion of someone who had already survived too many versions of this conversation.

"There’s no longer a claim," he said. "So you don’t need to worry. The ring is gone. Whatever paperwork they’re waving around is out of date."

"As far as they are concerned, you are still wearing it." Marcel’s voice remained level. "I did not come to drag you back to the palace. I came because you deserved to know what was happening, and because the palace may soon begin searching for you themselves. A formal demand with a deadline is not a bluff. If I reply that I do not have you, they will not simply apologize for the inconvenience and forget the matter. They will look, and I’m certain it wouldn’t take long before you’re found"

Asher’s amusement faded. Marcel was right, and that realization troubled him. Even if he wrote a letter informing the palace that the ring was gone, they would probably still ask for visual and physical confirmation. Which meant one way or another, he still had to be brought to that palace. ℴ

He glanced once at Adrian, who had not moved from his position near the door, then back at Marcel.

"Do you intend to take me back to the royal palace?"

"No." The answer came without hesitation. "If you choose to return, that will be your decision. If you refuse, I will not force you. I gave you my word on that point, and I am not here to break it."

Something in Asher’s shoulders eased. Not fully, trust was still a currency he spent carefully, Marcel had found him, had touched his hand to confirm the ring was gone, and had still put the next move back in Asher’s keeping. That mattered more than Asher wanted to admit out loud.

The moment of relative calm did not last long because Marcel’s attention finally shifted.

He looked past Asher to the Vampire Lord standing a pace behind him, travel-worn and entirely too present for someone who had claimed a day ago to be handling inventory at a family holding.

"How long have you been traveling with him?" Marcel asked.

Adrian’s expression was the picture of mild inconvenience. He knew that eventually he’d have to face his brother, after all he had disobeyed his orders, and now he had been caught.

After a few seconds of thinking and running over different thoughts, Adrian finally replied. "Long enough."

The silence that followed was colder than the previous one. Marcel did not raise his voice. He did not step closer to his brother or list the specific orders that had been ignored. He simply looked at Adrian with the particular stillness that, in Asher’s limited experience, meant a conversation was being postponed rather than cancelled.

"We will discuss your disobedience later," Marcel said.

Adrian’s mouth tilted. "I’d prefer that we don’t."

The dry remark landed in the lobby and, against all odds, took some of the edge off the air. Asher felt a slightly hysterical urge to laugh again and swallowed it. The situation was absurd when viewed from any reasonable distance: a Vampire Lord who had promised not to follow him standing in a lower-district boarding house with a royal deadline in his pocket, another Vampire Lord who had followed him anyway and was now being scheduled for a private reckoning, and Asher himself in the middle, travel-stained, and still not entirely sure which problem was going to reach him first.

Marcel turned back to him as if Adrian had been temporarily filed under unfinished business.

"I came to warn you," he said. "The palace believes you are still bound. They have given me three days. After that, their methods of retrieval may become less polite than a letter." His black eyes held Asher’s without demand. "What do you plan to do next?"

Asher stood in the shabby lobby of the Cinder Street boarding house with both Thorne brothers waiting on his answer. Things just never seemed to go his way for some reason. There weren’t many options left for him to take. It was either he returned to the palace himself and let them know that the ring was gone and that he was no longer bound to Aaron. Or simply wait for them to find him and see for themselves.

The former seemed like the better option, after all it meant doing it on his terms. He took a deep breath, finally certain of his answer. "I want you to take me back to the royal palace."