I think about this a lot, actually, and in my world of endless daydreaming and headcanons, these are the reasons I've thought of as to why Cardan stole the ring.
1. He wanted to show off his new skills.
There's actually quite a few times Cardan does something to impress Jude. The most notable instances, off the top of my head:
"He did once raise an isle from the bottom of the sea. he wonders if he ought to remind her of that, wonders if she had been impressed"
Then he twists his fingers, and the divided throne grows anew..
"Do you like it?" he asks me...
"impressive," I choke out.
Seemingly satisfied...
When Jude notices her ring is gone, she even admits to "refusing to compliment him on his sleight of hand". It was impressive, and he knew she would notice it on his finger. But she refuses to acknowledge that he bested her.
2. He wanted to have a piece of her with him.
This might entirely be me being romantic and self indulgent, but it's kind of a parallel to Jude stealing Cardan's copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or taking his clothes when she was sneaking around Hollow Hall, or even the unspoken comfortability of the times she slept in his bed. You know what I'm saying? It's a token of someone he has pretty strong feelings for, and who he is pining for. Isn't Jude even trying to avoid being alone with him as much as she can help it at this point? "Nothing is sweeter, but that which is scarce," is what he says while kissing her hand and swiping it. She is what is scarce, so he takes a piece of her to have with him.
3. He wanted to see how she would respond to it.
Given that Cardan is prone to riddles, it almost feels like something he could have done to drop a hint - "hey, I like you, I think you like me?? Sometimes? Do you think we can makeout again, how do you feel about that???" Think about how he steals the ring and the lead up to it. Jude presents to him that Grimsen might make Cardan "a cup that never runs out of wine". This is how Cardan responds:
(He) gives me a look up through his lashes that I find hard to interpret...he takes my hand. "Nothing is sweeter," he says, kissing the back of it, "but that which is scarce".
So, breaking it down, Jude muses that Grimsen might gift Cardan with a cup that always has wine in it, and Cardan's internal monologue is most likely, "I don't want bottomless wine, I want you".
It's similar to him sleeping in the rooms delegated to the lovers of the High King, after he had made it pretty clear that he viewed Jude as the High King, and himself as a spy that worked for her. That was a huge hint on his part, that even the Roach tried to point out to Jude, but it went over her head.
I do think, though, that him having the ring was one of the things that inspired him to marry Jude. When TWK starts, marriage had already been presented to him as an expectation of being High King (the scene with the hag was a bit of foreshadowing), but when she was gone in the Undersea, it started to become more of a pressing issue because of the politics surrounding the relationship between land and sea. He had her ring with him when she was taken, and he had a lot of time to think about things. So I like to imagine that during one of his think-sessions, he stared at the ring and thought, "Well...what if I can get her to marry me?"
I don't think it was his original intention when he first swiped it off her, but I think it was a little seed that started to grow in his mind as the story progressed.
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