The Ring Know Part 1
1619 Words
The Midnight Prince
“Did the princess know the boy beside her was not the cinder boy?” my son asked.
“Not at first,” I said.
My daughter frowned. “But didn’t her heart know?”
“Yes.” I touched the old ring on my finger. “But hearts can be confused when magic is poured over memory like fog.”
“That’s cheating,” my son said.
“It was.”
“Then how did she find out?”
I looked into the fire.
“The ring told the truth.”
Princess Moon
Dorian Calder held the ring beneath the firelight.
Silver-white.
Ancient.
Cold enough to mist the air around his fingers.
The moment I saw it, something inside me tore forward.
Not my body.
My body was still bound to the chair with silver-thread rope, wrists aching, shoulder bruised, head heavy from whatever spell had turned my memories into broken glass.
But Storm lunged beneath my skin.
The ring.
Ashen’s ring.
The real one.
The boy chained across from me lifted his head.
Ash-blond hair fell over winter-blue eyes. Blood stained his mouth. His face was beautiful and wrong, and every time I looked at him, my mind tried to accept what my wolf rejected.
He looked like him.
He smelled almost like him.
But he was not the boy from the courtyard.
Not the boy who had laughed when I teased him.
Not the boy who had stepped back when I asked him not to go, as if my kindness frightened him more than cruelty.
Not the boy whose hidden wolf had looked at me from behind chains.
Dorian smiled.
“What do we have here?” he asked again, turning the ring slowly.
The boy with Ashen’s face went pale.
Too pale.
Dorian noticed.
So did I.
“What is it?” Dorian asked him.
The fake Ashen swallowed. “A ring.”
Dorian laughed softly. “Careful. That answer may insult us both.”
I pulled against my bonds. The silver burned my wrists, but I kept my face still.
“Give it to me,” I said.
Dorian looked at me with amusement. “That sounded almost like an order.”
“It was.”
“You are tied to a chair in my lodge, Princess.”
“And you are holding something that does not belong to you.”
His eyes brightened.
Fire wolves always did enjoy being challenged.
He stepped closer, stopping just out of reach.
“You know what this is?”
I said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Dorian turned to the boy across from me. “Do you?”
The boy’s lips parted.
No sound came.
Dorian’s smile faded into something sharper.
“Interesting.”
A rogue near the door shifted. “Lord Calder?”
Dorian raised a hand, silencing him.
The lodge room was small, windowless, and built beneath some abandoned hunting estate deep in rogue territory. I could smell damp stone, smoke, blood, and the wild stink of wolves who belonged to no pack but violence.
The boy with Ashen’s face knelt against the far wall, wrists chained over his head. Dorian had been hurting him for answers.
But the answers had been wrong.
Even half-drugged, I knew that.
His fear was wrong.
His silence was wrong.
His scent was too perfect, like a painting of winter instead of winter itself.
Dorian knew something too.
His hand closed around the ring.
“You are going to put it on,” he said.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“No.”
The word came too fast.
Dorian smiled again.
Not amused now.
Satisfied.
“Why not?”
“It is not mine.”
“Yet you are Ashen Drakewood, are you not?” Dorian stepped closer. “The omega the kingdom says vanished with the princess. The masked wolf from the ball. The boy with the old ring.”
The boy’s throat worked.
“I lost it.”
“Then wear it.”
“No.”
The room went quiet.
Dorian’s gaze sharpened with a cruelty that felt different from Callan’s. Callan’s cruelty wanted humiliation. Dorian’s wanted ownership.
“I know old bloodline rings, little wolf,” Dorian said softly. “I know what they do when the wrong hand claims them.”
My breath caught.
He knew.
Dorian knew the secret.
His eyes flicked to me.
“Oh, yes, Princess. The Fire Court did not survive exile by forgetting ancient laws. A ring like this does not lie. It protects blood. It protects identity.” He looked back at the boy. “So let us see what you are.”
The boy jerked against his chains. “Wait—”
Dorian grabbed his hand.
“No!” I shouted.
The ring slid over his finger.
For one heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the world screamed.
The boy with Ashen’s face arched off the floor, mouth open in a sound so raw that every wolf in the room flinched.
The ring tightened.
Frost exploded over his hand, racing up his wrist in jagged white veins. His skin cracked beneath the cold. The silver band burned blue-white, brighter and brighter until the air filled with the scent of scorched magic.
His glamour shattered.
Not slowly.
Violently.
Ash-blond hair darkened.
The shape of his face twisted.
Winter-blue eyes burned into familiar SilvaFrost blue.
The false scent broke apart like rotting flowers beneath snow.
And there, chained to the wall, screaming through his teeth, was Callan Drakewood.
Not Ashen.
Callan.
The cruel twin.
The boy who had called Nara a low-life omega.
The boy who had picked up the ring in the forest.
The boy who had watched me like a prize he had been cheated out of.
My stomach dropped.
Not because I had believed he was Ashen.
Some part of me had not.
But because someone had worn Ashen’s face.
Someone had taken the shape of the boy my wolf kept searching for and used it as a cage around my mind.
Betrayal burned through the fog.
Confusion followed.
Then rage.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
Callan could not answer.
The ring was still on his finger, sinking its punishment deeper. Frost crawled toward his elbow. His eyes rolled back, and his wolf’s aura flared uselessly, rejected by the magic biting into him.
Dorian crouched before him.
“Well,” he said. “That was informative.”
“Take it off!” Callan choked.
Dorian tilted his head. “Why should I?”
“I’ll tell you!”
“That is better.”
Dorian pulled the ring free.
Callan collapsed forward, gasping, his hand shaking violently. The skin around his finger was red, white, and blue-black where the ring had branded him with frost.
The ring itself fell into Dorian’s palm, untouched.
Silent.
Innocent.
Truth always looked innocent after it destroyed a lie.
Dorian stood.
“Explain.”
Callan dragged air into his lungs. Sweat shone across his forehead. Without the glamour, he looked smaller. Not in body. In spirit.
A thief caught wearing stolen skin.
“I used magic,” he rasped.
Dorian’s expression did not change.
Callan swallowed. “A witch. She turned me into Ashen.”
My chest tightened around the name.
Ashen.
The real one.
Dorian’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Callan glanced at me, then away.
“Because Ashen was the masked wolf.”
The room tilted.
The fog in my mind flickered.
A courtyard.
A laugh.
A boy rubbing the back of his neck.
Forgive me, Princess. I ramble when I am nervous.
My hands curled against the ropes.
Dorian went very still.
“Say that again.”
Callan’s jaw clenched.
“Ashen was the masked wolf from the ball. My brother.” His voice twisted around the word. “My father’s bastard omega. The one I despised.”
“Brother?” I whispered.
Callan looked at me then.
A flash of satisfaction cut through his pain.
“Yes, Princess. Brother. Servant. Omega. All that mystery you chased? It was him.”
Storm snarled.
My memory cracked again.
The server at SilvaFrost.
The hood.
The ash-blond hair.
The white wolf in chains.
Nara calling into the kitchen.
Ashen?
The truth did not arrive gently.
It slammed through me.
Ashen.
The masked boy.
The server.
Nara’s brother.
The son they kept hiding.
Dorian grabbed Callan by the throat and shoved him against the wall.
“And you thought pretending to be him was wise?”
Callan choked. “I had to keep him away from her.”
“From the princess?”
“From everything!” Callan snapped, fear turning sharp. “He was nothing. He was supposed to stay nothing. But she kept looking for him.”
His eyes flicked to me again.
“She wouldn’t stop.”
Dorian’s grip tightened. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Dorian’s lip curled. “Wrong answer.”
“I don’t!” Callan coughed. “He escaped. The pack said rogues took him with her, but they took me. I was glamoured. Your wolves took the wrong Ashen.”
Dorian released him slowly.
The silence that followed was colder than the ring.
Then Dorian laughed.
Once.
Softly.
“You let me kidnap the wrong wolf.”
Callan said nothing.
Smart, for once.
Dorian turned toward me.
His eyes were full of fire.
“You knew.”
“I knew he was wrong.”
“But not why.”
I lifted my chin. “Now I do.”
His smile faded.
That was when the guard nearest my chair made the mistake of stepping too close.
He thought I was still weak.
Still confused.
Still bound.
He was wrong.
- Writer
