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A warm hand closes around the back of my neck. It settles over the knuckles of my spine and stays there, and my whole body forgets what it was doing. “Seren.” Asher doesn’t raise his voice or move his hand. “Tell them we’re starting.”

I turn back to face Asher, and catch Ryven smirking at me as he crouches next to my brother and wraps an arm around his shoulders. Onyx leans into it. “You don’t get to move people, do you understand what I’m⁠—”

“Did you eat on the ship?”

“What?”

“You were on there for three days. Seren told me you barely slept. Did you at least eat anything?”

My shoulders sag as I turn partly away from him. “I’m not doing this.”

“Then you’ll eat afterward.” Without looking down, he takes my hand out of the air where I’ve been gesturing.

“You took my brother out of his bed in the middle of the night.”

“I did.”

“And you had two men walk him down a staircase he can’t manage⁠—”

“He managed it. He talked the whole way.” He turns my hand over. “Sleeves.”

“What?”

“Let me just...”

I glare down as he takes my wrist, folds the cuff back twice, smooths it flat with his thumb, and starts on the other one. I stand there and let him; I can’t even seem to stop him.

“Asher.”

“I do like it when you say my name.” He looks at me then, properly, for about a second. Then away, at the door, at the man in gray. “How long?”

“Two minutes, sir.”

“Make it one.”

I put my hand on his arm without deciding to, gripping the black cloth over hard muscle. He stops, and the whole room stops with him. “Look at me.”

He looks at me, turning back fully.

“You bought a person. Say it out loud. Say what you’re doing. You reached into my life, took the only person in it, and moved him across the galaxy to make me stand in this room, and now you want me to wear a ring and be quiet about it. So say it. Say the true thing, once, to my face, and I’ll do it. I’ll do the whole thing. Just say it.”

Asher always has an answer. Usually something cruel or filthy, delivered so smoothly that I don’t realize how deep it went until afterward, and he enjoys watching it land.

This time he doesn’t answer. Something goes across his face and is gone before I can read it, and whatever it was, it wasn’t amusement. “Not in front of your brother.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.”

“Then answer this one.” I keep hold of his sleeve. “Where’s the other man?”

That gets me his eyes.

“You’re engaged, Asher. So where is this man? Does he know you’re standing here marrying me?”

“There isn’t another man.”

“Then what am I?” I throw the words at him. “A week ago, you wanted me across the hall from you. You said you could wait for the rest. Now there’s a registrar and a window you’re inside, and something has changed, and it isn’t me. You had me, Asher. You had all of it.”