Chapter 63: An Unauthorized Visit

Mai could not sleep. The settlement had gone quiet hours ago. Lamps along the walkways had been banked to low embers, families had closed their doors, even the night insects seemed to keep a respectful distance from the higher platforms. She lay on her back in her own small dwelling and stared at the ceiling beams until the grain of the wood became a map she could have drawn from memory.

Asher Brown would not leave her head. She turned onto her side, then onto the other. She sat up, drank water, lay down again, but every time her eyes closed, the same pieces returned: the image of Asher, his smile, his stubbornness.

He had been trouble, the reports had undersold it. Still she kept circling back to the question of whether he had reached the human capital in one piece, whether the Vampire Lord who followed him had kept his word, and whether the world outside the forest had already tried to claim him again.

Beastkin did not do this. Her people stayed out of the spotlight. They avoided unnecessary contact with humans, vampires, and wolves precisely because entanglement with the louder races always ended in someone else’s war. Mai had been raised on that rule, and she had enforced it.

She had crossed the border to find Asher only because the Matriarch ordered it, and she had brought him in under clear terms. The work was finished, the ring was gone, he had made his choice and left with an escort to the border. There was no professional reason to think about him anymore. But she thought about him anyway.

By the time the moon had shifted past the gap in her window, Mai stopped pretending rest would come. She rose, pulled on practical clothes, and took a dark cloak from the peg by the door. The hood shadowed her ears and the silver of her fur.

She left her dwelling without waking the neighbors, crossed the lower walkways on silent feet, and passed the outer markers of the territory without announcing herself to the night watch. One of them saw her. She lifted two fingers in a signal that meant personal business, not alarm, and he let her pass without trouble.

The forest routes back toward the human capital were familiar now. She moved faster alone than she had with an injured body and a human in tow. Bandits did not trouble her. A distant Feral scent kept to its own range. By the time the lower districts’ uneven rooftops rose ahead of her, the sky had begun to pale at the edges.

Cinder Street smelled the same—damp stone, and cheap food. Mai kept her hood forward and her hands visible. A bunny beastkin in the human lower districts was rare enough to draw stares if she was careless.

.

The boarding house looked unchanged. Weak light in the front windows with the same crooked sign. She climbed the steps and pushed the door open. The woman at the reception counter glanced up, then looked a second time, more carefully. Mai did not waste time on soft approaches.

"I’m looking for a human who stayed here," she said. "Asher Brown. Young, dark hair, he would have come back within the last few days, possibly with a vampire."

The receptionist’s expression tightened. "That one. Paid in advance, left in a hurry, came back once with company, then left again." She leaned a fraction closer, lowering her voice as if the walls had opinions. "Two of them this time. Vampires. Tall with dark coats. The first one had been waiting in the lobby for hours before the boy showed up with the other. They talked, then the boy left with the one who’d been waiting. Haven’t seen him since."

Two? Mai’s ears tried to angle under the hood and she forced them still. Adrian had been the one on the road with them, but the receptionist was describing a second vampire already waiting when they arrived.

"Did they say where they were going?" Mai asked.

"Not to me. The older one looked like the type who doesn’t explain himself to boarding-house staff. They left the same evening." The woman shrugged. "Paid through the week anyway. Room’s still technically his if he comes back. You want to leave a message?"

Mai did not want to leave a message. She wanted a direction, a scent trail, anything more useful than the information she had just gotten.

"No," she said. "Thank you."

She stepped back into the street. Two vampires. Asher had left the beastkin border with one and somehow departed this place with another.

Was he in trouble?

She had no way of confirming the answer to that question. Who could the other vampire possibly be? Was it Marcel? That was likely the case. The stories of the fortune teller and the Vampire Lord weren’t exactly a secret to her, especially not when the Matriarch had told her the visions she’s seen about the two.

Mai stood and thought for a while. She could return to the Matriarch and report that Asher had left the districts in vampire company. That was the correct institutional move. It was also slow, and something in Mai’s chest rejected slow with a force that surprised her. If Asher was really in trouble, things could get worse before she reached the Matriarch and made a report. Besides, she would be admitting she paid the human an unauthorized visit.

She started walking without a clear destination, letting the lower district’s morning noise rise around her. Her thoughts kept snagging on the same points: who was the second vampire? Was Asher safe?

She did not notice the street emptying until it had already happened.

One moment there were voices and foot traffic at the edges of her attention. The next, the lane she had turned into was too quiet, the morning light cut by close walls, and the air carried a shift she recognized a fraction of a second too late—

A hand closed on her from behind, strong and precise, covering enough of her shoulder and upper arm to control her first turn. Mai’s body reacted before her mind finished the assessment, but the grip adjusted with her, not like a random cutpurse, like someone who had expected the counter and planned past it.

Her hood slipped. Silver fur caught the light, and a few seconds later, light faded from her vision.