Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Graham pressed his back to the cold stone wall, breath held tightly in his chest as two palace guards rounded the corner. Their boots clicked too sharply against the flagstones, voices echoing like they’d forgotten this place was once a fortress, not a parade ground.
He barely needed to hide. That irritated him more than it should’ve. Thornhall Castle's defenses were still garbage.
All the good men—the real soldiers—had volunteered for the Troll Wars.
The ones who stayed behind were the peacocks, the polished and perfumed, the kind who worried more about the fit of their uniform than the weight of their blade.
They had ceremonial swords and ceremonial spines to match.
They guarded paintings and paraded through gardens.
Ask them to defend the crown from a real threat and they'd fumble the draw.
The guards paused just a breath away from his hiding spot, idling beneath the shadow of a frost-rimed arch.
“You been out to the stables?” one asked, sniffing the air.
“Nah. Why?”
The first wrinkled his nose. “Something smells like horse.”
A curl of straw clung to the front of Graham's coat. He plucked it loose with rough fingers and flicked it away. Damn. He should've cleaned up before going to her. But he wasn’t planning for this to be a social visit.
The guards moved on, still talking, oblivious to the wolf in their midst.
Graham exhaled. Slow. Controlled. Then he moved.
He stuck to the walls, weaving through the inner corridors with muscle memory older than war.
The servants’ passages hadn’t changed. Neither had the little cracks in the castle’s security.
The noble lords might have layered new gold over the banisters, but they hadn’t patched the foundation.
The castle might gleam on the outside, but it still creaked beneath its own weight.
Graham had been in enough strongholds to know that most castles were built the same. Same spine of stone beneath the keep. Same drafty great halls echoing with power plays. Same winding passages meant for servants and spies alike.
The turrets always offered too many blind spots. The ramparts too few guards. The cellars always held more than wine. Secrets clung to the mortar like moss, hidden in plain sight for those who knew where to look.
Once you knew how to slip into one, you could slip into them all.
At least Fenvalen had been manned by wolves—men with sharp teeth and sharper instincts.
Thornhall, by contrast, was guarded by deer.
Pretty creatures with polished antlers and glossy coats, more concerned with ceremony than defense.
They pranced instead of prowled, preened instead of protected.
He passed a column carved with old frost runes and ducked behind a tapestry, emerging into the side wing near the royal chambers. The air here smelled of snow lilies, the scent she always wore, no matter the season. It hit him in the chest.
If he hadn't known the way by memory, he would've known it by following her scent. He didn’t have to think. His body remembered every step, every turn, every breathless moment along the narrow hall to her door.
He’d only walked this path once before. Just once. That night had etched itself into the bones of him. Burned itself into the backs of his eyes. It still visited him in dreams. It was his only recurring nightmare.
The last night. The worst night. The night before her wedding.
She’d called him to her chambers in the dark, cloaked and silent.
No words. Just mouths and hands and desperation.
He'd made her beg. He'd made her cry. He'd never been sure if they were real tears or just the result of the intense pleasure he'd delivered her. She’d kissed him like a confession, left him naked and aching in her bed, then married another man at dawn.
Graham had left so he wouldn't commit treason. Whether it would've been to wring the elderly king's neck or hers, he would never know.
The same corridor now stretched before him, silent and gilded, mocking in its memory. He took one step. Then another. And then—there it was. Her door.
He stared at the golden knob for a long moment. Then his eyes shifted to the left. The adjoining door just beside it, the one reserved for the king. The one the old bastard would’ve slipped through at night to perform his royal duties.
How many times had the old man touched her before going toes-up? He'd had three years. Had he taken her every night? Or maybe he'd only come to her just before her monthly courses when she would be most fertile.
When they'd been together, Graham had still come to her on those nights.
But they'd done… other things aside from him entering her body and joining themselves in the way he'd believed they were destined to remain.
It hadn't mattered to him that she wouldn't let him put a baby inside her.
He'd selfishly wanted to be the only one inside of her.
Fool.
Graham had been halfway through the southern front when word reached the battlefield: King White was dead. Poison, illness, a fall—no one seemed certain. What Graham remembered most wasn’t the shock. It was the shame.
His first thought hadn’t been for the kingdom. It had been for her. That she needed him. That he should be the one holding her.
Pathetic. And yet—here he was. Back again. Covered in hay and horse stink and regret, standing in front of her door like no time had passed at all.
He opened the door and entered like he belonged there. There was no one to stop him. Even if those deer old guards tried, they'd fail. Because Graham was on a mission.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Velvet and furs, maybe. Royal pomp. Gold-framed portraits of herself, or the late king, arranged just so in memoriam. But this…
This wasn’t the room of a queen.
It was hers.
All Raveena.
Neat, to be sure. Everything in its place. But not lifeless. The fire had been lit recently; the scent of snow lilies and heated stone lingered in the air. Curtains half-drawn let in strips of pale light that stretched long and cold across the floor.
Strategic stations dotted the room like a general’s war chamber. Puzzles. Riddles. Layered games of strategy. Tables crowded with playing pieces mid-turn, some frozen in triumph, others stalled in the thick of battle.
He drifted toward the chessboard like a man approaching something sacred. She’d set up a masterful game. White side—her side—led with a solitary queen. No bishop, no rook to hide behind. Just a few pawns and the queen, moving sharp and clean across the board, poised to strike.
Black side had more pieces. Power gathered. The king was advancing.
At first glance, white would win. She always did. He remembered that. She’d talk while she played—distract him, seduce him, keep her hand on his thigh while she lured his pieces into ruin.
But then he saw it. One move. Just one. If black’s knight moved to E5—sliced right through the board—it would be over.
Graham's mouth twitched. It was almost the exact board from a game they’d played back in Fenvalen. She’d been so certain she had him then. He’d made that knight move with a lazy grin and taken the win from her with a single flick of his wrist.
Could it be the same game?
Could she still be obsessing over that loss?
There was a whisper of a door opening behind him—the one that connected her chambers to the king’s room. He didn’t reach for a weapon. Didn’t need to. He knew it was her.
The air shifted. That scent—frost, lilies, a trace of something wild—drifted in.
She stepped through the door—and froze.
Even paler than usual, if that were possible. Her eyes locked on to his like she was afraid to blink and miss him. She didn’t scream. She didn’t call for guards. She just stood there, drinking him in.
And gods, he let her.
Her gaze touched every part of him: hair damp from snow, boots muddied from stables, shirt tight across his chest. Her eyes lingered longer than they should’ve. Always had.
Her cold glare burned hotter than a fire. The corner of his mouth curved, slow and sardonic. Then, finally, she spoke.
“Graham.”
Raveena took a single step forward. That was when Graham pulled the dagger and aimed for her heart.