Ace strode from the children’s library, the ghost of winter lily still clinging to his senses.
The brief, strange encounter left him unsettled.
He turned the corner into the main west corridor, intending to lose himself in the festival chaos downstairs.
He stopped dead.
At the far end of the hall, near the arched entrance to the family wing, stood his parents.
The Duke and Duchess were a portrait of united tension.
Aster’s broad back was rigid, his head turned, his gaze fixed down the hallway Ace had just left.
Roseline stood slightly in front of him, one hand resting on his arm, her body angled as if to block his view—or to steady him.
They had seen.
They had seen Jade leave the library.
They had seen Ace follow him out.
They had witnessed the tail end of whatever that confrontation looked like from a distance.
Aster’s jaw was a hard line, clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek.
The haunted look from the study was back, but now it was edged with a sharp, protective fury.
He was a wolf who’d scented a threat near his den.
Roseline’s face was pale, her expression a complex map of worry, sorrow, and a mother’s fierce resolve.
For a fleeting second, the figure of Jade was visible as he turned the opposite corner, a slip of white hair and grey wool before he vanished into the shadows of the east wing.
As if a ghost retreating.
The sight of him disappearing seemed to snap something in Ace.
The confusion boiled back into a more familiar, comfortable heat.
“Gods,” Ace muttered, walking toward them, his voice deliberately loud in the quiet hall.
“Can’t we just throw him out already?
Send him back to the Emperor with a note saying ‘defective’?
He’s annoying.”
Roseline’s gaze snapped to him.
The sorrow in her eyes sharpened into maternal reproach.
“Ace,” she said, her voice low but firm.
“Do not be rude.”
“Rude?” Ace scoffed, coming to a stop before them.
He shoved his hands back in his pockets, the picture of insolent ease.
“He’s the one calling me ‘brother’.
I was just correcting his manners.
Seems someone forgot to teach him the basics.”
He saw his father’s eyes darken, the fury shifting from the absent Jade to the son present.
Ace knew he was poking a bear.
He did it anyway.
The restless energy from the library needed an outlet.
Roseline reached out and swatted his arm.
It wasn’t hard, but it was startling.
A physical rebuke she rarely employed.
“Enough,” she said, her voice leaving no room for argument.
Ace looked down at his arm, then back up at her.
That tiny women deciplining her 6.2′ grown alpha son.
His expression shifted in an instant.
The defiance melted into theatrical, wounded innocence.
His bottom lip jutted out just a fraction.
“Ow,” he whined, clutching his bicep.
He swayed slightly for effect.
“Mother.
That is child abuse.
I think you broke it.
I’m the victim here.
I demand compensation.
A new horse.
No, two horses.”
The sheer, ridiculous audacity of it, the swift change from snarling heir to overgrown, pouting child was redeculous.
For the first time since Jade had arrived, Roseline laughed.
It was a short, genuine burst of sound, startled out of her.
It transformed her face, smoothing the worry lines, lighting her eyes.
She shook her head, a real smile touching her lips.
“You impossible boy,” she sighed, the affection clear in her voice.
The sound of her laughter acted like a spell on Duke Aster.
The terrifying rigidity in his shoulders eased, just a fraction.
The fury in his eyes softened into a familiar, exasperated fondness as he looked at his youngest son.
The ghost in the hallway was momentarily banished by the living, breathing nuisance in front of him.
“The only thing broken is your sense of decorum,” Aster rumbled, but the edge was gone from his voice.
He looked at Roseline’s smiling face, and some of the darkness in his own seemed to recede.
Ace saw it.
The dynamic he knew so well—his ability to disarm, to distract, to pull his parents out of their depths with sheer, ridiculous will.
It was a power he wielded without thought.
He gave his mother his best, most charming grin, the one that showed a hint of canine.
“Decorums are overrated.
They chafe,” he declared, looping his arm through Roseline’s now, leaning on her playfully.
“Now, about those horses…”
“You’ll get a double shift of greeting dignitaries at the festival gates,” Aster interjected, the Duke back in full force, but a hint of a smile played on his own lips.
“And you will be civil.
To everyone.
Is that understood?”
Ace groaned, dropping his head onto his mother’s shoulder.
“Tyrant.”
Roseline patted his cheek.
“Go on.
Make yourself useful.
And change your jacket.
That one smells like a tavern.”
Ace straightened, saluting them both with a lazy flick of his fingers.
He sauntered off down the corridor, the picture of cheeky obedience.
As he turned the next corner, the performance fell from his face.
He glanced back once.
His parents were still standing there, but they were closer now.
Aster had drawn Roseline into the circle of his arm, his head bent low as he spoke to her, his forehead almost touching her hair.
Her hand was on his chest, a comforting weight.
They were a fortress of two again, shored up against the world.
Ace looked the other way, down the empty corridor where Jade had disappeared.
The annoyance was still there.
The deep-seated, instinctive rejection of the intruder.
But something else nagged at him.
His mother’s laugh.
The way it had shattered the icy dread in the hallway.
He’d done that.
With a joke.
With a performance.
He thought of Jade in the library, trying to find comfort in a children’s story about a lonely wolf.
For a split second, Ace wondered what it would take to make *him* laugh.
Not a polite chuckle, but a real, startled, unfiltered sound like his mother’s.
The thought was so bizarre, so unwelcome, he shook his head as if to dislodge it.
No.
His goal wasn’t to amuse the bastard.
His goal was to expose him.
To find the crack.
He headed for the stairs, the noise of the festival swelling up to meet him—a cacophony of life and celebration.
But in the quiet of the upper hall, two people clung to each other, drawing strength from a touch, and a third walked alone toward the light and noise, a strange new question taking root in the back of his mind.