Chapter 23: A Choice

Marcel found him still leaning against the cold stone wall of the lower corridor.

Asher’s face was pale, his breathing uneven. One hand was pressed flat against the wall as if he needed the solid surface to keep himself upright. The other hung at his side, fingers still faintly trembling.

Marcel stopped a few paces away. The irritation that had been simmering since he discovered Adrian had taken Asher downstairs vanished, suddenly replaced by concern and the need to set things right.

"Asher."

Asher’s head lifted. For a second his expression was completely unguarded, he was scared and confused at the same time. But after seeing Marcel, his familiar coping mechanism slid right back.

"Hey," he said, voice too light. "Fancy meeting you here. I was just... admiring the architecture."

Marcel did not smile. He closed the remaining distance in two quiet steps and stopped directly in front of him.

"You are shaking."

"It’s cold down here. Have you noticed? Your interior design choices could use more rugs. Or heating. Or fewer—" Asher cut himself off, jaw tightening. "I’m fine."

"You are not." Marcel argued because he could see that Asher wasn’t fine.

The words were calm, absolute, and left no room for the usual deflection. Marcel’s black eyes moved over Asher’s face with the same focused intensity he used when assessing a threat. Whatever he saw there made his expression darken further.

"What did Adrian show you?"

Asher’s forced smile faltered. He looked away, then back, then away again. Silence stretched, but Marcel simply waited. He had always been good at waiting out Asher’s defenses.

Finally Asher exhaled hard, the sound almost a laugh and almost a broken thing.

"The coffins," he said. "He showed me the coffins. And then I... touched one."

Marcel went very still. He had seen Adrian coming out from his underground chambers, and from the wicked smile he had seen on his brother’s face, Marcel had figured Adrian must have said or shown something to Asher. He had hoped it wasn’t this, but Adrian had been more determined than he had credited him.

Asher pushed off the wall, putting a small amount of space between them. His voice came faster now, the words tumbling out as if keeping them inside had become impossible.

"I saw her. The woman in the first coffin. I saw how happy you used to be, how you used to have a personality—" His throat worked. "Then she was burned. They called her a witch, said she plotted with vampires. And you killed every single one of them, you slaughtered hundreds because of her."

Marcel’s face had gone carefully blank, he didn’t know what to say or feel at that moment.

Asher kept going. He could not seem to stop.

"Adrian said they’re all humans. Every one of them in those coffins. He said you have a pattern. You fall for us, you keep us, and when we die you put us in boxes downstairs and start over. So I need to know." His voice cracked slightly on the last word, but he forced it steady quickly. "Is that what I am to you? Temporary? Something you’ll eventually preserve and visit when you’re feeling nostalgic?"

Marcel’s eyes flashed. "You should not have gone into that room."

"That was not the answer to my question."

"Asher—"

"Why didn’t you turn them?" The question came out sharper than Asher intended. "If you loved them so much, why leave them human? Why not make them like you so they could stay? Why put them in boxes in your basement instead of keeping them alive?"

Something dangerous moved behind Marcel’s expression, and the air seemed to get colder.

"Enough."

The word was not loud, but it landed like a door slamming shut. Marcel’s voice, when he continued, was controlled only by force of will. "Return to the suite and rest. We will speak of this later."

Asher stared at him. The dismissal had ignited something hot and reckless under the fear and the residual smoke of the vision.

"No."

Marcel’s gaze narrowed.

Asher took a step forward instead of back. "You don’t get to yell ’enough’ and send me to my room like I’m a child who asked an inconvenient question. Not about this. Not after what I just saw." His hands had curled into fists at his sides. "I’ve spent days being claimed, threatened, dragged between a prince who thinks he owns me and a Vampire Lord who keeps the bodies of his exes in the basement. I’m tired of highborns and Vampire Lords deciding what happens to me."

He drew a breath that hurt.

"I want to go back to the human districts. I can take care of myself. I always have. I don’t need to stay here and wait for the day you decide I belong in a box next to the others."

The silence that followed was absolute. Marcel did not move. For a long moment he simply looked at Asher — at the pale face, the still-trembling hands, and the stubborn set of his mouth.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, but no less final.

"You are not leaving."

Asher let out a short, humorless sound. "Watch me."

He turned and started walking toward the stairs that led up to the main levels of the manor. He hardly made it three steps when Marcel’s hand closed around his wrist — not painfully, but with the same absolute certainty he had used the night he first took Asher from the palace.

"Asher."

Asher did not turn around. "Let go."

"I will not."

"Then you’re no better than Aaron. You’re just another powerful man deciding I don’t get a choice."

Marcel’s fingers tightened fractionally, then loosened enough that Asher could have pulled free if he truly tried. He did not.

Marcel’s voice, when it came again, was low and rough in a way Asher had almost never heard.

"You are not temporary."

Asher finally looked back at him. The words should have been reassuring, but it felt nothing like that, especially with what he’d just seen.

Marcel held his gaze without flinching.

"You are not temporary," he repeated, quieter. "And you are not leaving. Not like this. Not while you are still shaking from something my brother had no right to show you."

Asher’s laugh was thin and tired. "That’s not the reassurance you think it is."

Marcel did not release his wrist. He did not offer soft words or easy explanations. He simply stood there in the corridor, holding on and wondering how he was going to teach Adrian a lesson