Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Raveena moved forward with the slow, deliberate grace of someone who had long since learned that fear was the first scent predators picked up on.
His blade didn’t stop her. She walked right up to it, let it touch the place where her heart was rumored to lie, where her pulse beat just beneath skin.
The steel kissed her flesh, parted it with a whisper, and left the smallest, singing sting.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t even breathe.
She only felt the warmth. And maybe a pinprick of pain. It had been so long since she’d felt anything at all. Not since he'd left her.
“You're alive,” she said, her voice quiet and crystalline in the hush of the chamber. She didn’t say his name again. It tasted too close to prayer.
“I could kill you,” he growled.
Raveena's eyes fluttered shut. Gods, how she’d missed the sound of his deep timbre. No one had a growl like her Graham.
There were nights over these last three years where she’d walked into the woods alone, trailing the scent of her own magic just to lure something wild close.
She’d listened to the wolves howling beneath the frost-heavy trees.
She'd close her eyes, pretending. The wolves would howl in warning, but none dared approach her.
They were too smart to face a predator far higher up the food chain.
None of them sounded like him. None of them made her body shiver with need while feeling soothed at the same time. None of them made her ache.
Raveena opened her eyes and reached for Graham.
He flinched at her touch. The dagger pressed against her throat. The skin broke cleanly this time. A bead of blood slipped down and disappeared into the hollow between her collarbones.
“You have no protection,” he said, voice low and furious. “Anyone could walk in here and take your life.”
Still ignoring the blade, Raveena touched his face.
Her fingers brushed the edge of his cheek, where stubble scratched against her palm—coarser than she remembered.
He’d always kept his beard neater in their youth, trimmed close like a soldier reporting for duty.
Now it sprawled in wild defiance, like the man himself.
She lingered there, letting her touch trace the rough line of his jaw, then the curve of his cheekbone.
There—a faint scar she didn’t recognize.
Another near the temple, pale and puckered, half-hidden by a curl of dark hair.
Her thumb grazed beneath his eye, where shadows pooled like bruises. He hadn’t been sleeping. Not well.
Neither had she, though she hid it. Her magic kept the signs at bay—smoothed the sleepless nights, blurred the grief of loss. But the ache still hummed in her bones.
Her fingers twitched with the urge to heal him. To smooth the scar tissue, to erase the sleepless hollows, to press magic into his skin until it glowed like it used to. But she didn’t. He hated that—being made soft by her touch, reshaped by her will.
“I like the beard.”
“Raveena!” he barked.
Her lips curved into a sulk. “Don’t yell at me.”
Graham pulled the dagger back by a breath, his grip tightening. “I nearly slit your throat, and you’re upset because I raised my voice?”
He looked at her like she was an unsolvable riddle. Like he’d never wanted to touch something more and never been more afraid to do it.
Raveena turned her back on him with imperial calm. She walked toward the vanity like she hadn’t just stood on the edge of a blade. Because the bite of the steel had barely registered as she reveled in the return of her lover.
A single drop of blood slid down her neck, stark against pale skin. She studied it in the mirror, eyes tracing the delicate red curve with almost academic interest. Then, with a flick of her fingers, her magic slid over the wound. The skin knitted back together as if nothing had touched it at all.
Nothing… except him.
Raveena kept her gaze on the reflection in the mirror, letting herself drink Graham in the way her pride wouldn’t allow directly. He was taller than she remembered. Broader. His coat was dusted with snow and stable grit, his shoulders squared like a man who bore too many burdens for too long.
He wasn’t symmetrical. He never had been. One eye a fraction larger than the other. His nose too prominent, slightly crooked from a break that hadn’t healed cleanly. His top lip was thinner than the full, expressive bottom one. And that beard—it was wild, a little too long, a little too coarse.
But gods, he was still him. Still the one man who never tried to conquer her, only to match her. Still the only one she hadn’t been able to forget.
“You look tired,” she said softly, her fingers brushing the rim of a crystal perfume bottle.
He didn’t answer. Just stood there in the center of her chambers, dagger still in hand. He looked at the weapon, accusation in his gaze. He reached for his side and, with a curse, sheathed the blade.
Raveena forgot about Charming. Forgot about Snow. Forgot about the crown and the court and the game she'd been playing with cutthroat queens and fickle princes. Forgot the castle, even—the thing she claimed to love most.
Because he was here. And when Graham was here, there was no room for anything else. He’d always done that to her. Always made the rest of the world fall away.
With Graham, she could close her eyes and not watch her back. She could breathe without planning her next move. She could put down her burdens—the crown, the expectations, the ice that curled tightly around her chest—and rest in the warmth of him.
Graham knew what she needed without asking. Knew how to touch her like he was reading a map only he had memorized. She didn’t have to command, didn’t have to beg. Though he would make her.
And gods, she wanted him to make her beg. He was the only person she was happy to go to her knees for.
She turned from the mirror. The weight of his gaze wrapped around her like a chain. Slowly, deliberately, she gathered the hem of her velvet gown. With her fingertips, she lifted it up, inch by inch, revealing the pale skin of her thighs. Just as she was about to bend the knee, Graham shifted.
His eyes darkened. Suspicion flashed like a storm cloud. Raveena saw the flicker in his jaw, the tension rolling down his arms. And then—rage.
He moved.
Not like a man possessed by lust. He moved like a lover, consumed by fury. He prowled toward her in three sharp strides, yanked the fabric up with rough hands—hands she’d once worshipped—and stared down at the flesh between her thighs.
His breath hitched. His face turned murderous. “Who did that to you?”
It wasn’t until she followed his gaze that she remembered. The bruise. A shadow blooming violet on the soft inner part of her thigh. A careless grip, a pleasure-less moment she hadn't thought twice about.
“It’s nothing,” she said, but the words were brittle.
Graham’s hand hovered over the mark, trembling. Not from desire. From restraint.
“You call that nothing?” he hissed.
“You’ve given me worse bruises.”
"Only after I made you forget your name and then pass out from pleasure."
Raveena waggled her head at the truth of those words.
"It was one of the princelings. Charming, I'm guessing."
Raveena shrugged noncommittally instead of confirming it.
"Either he's an inexperienced child or an inconsiderate twat. Or both, I'm assuming."
She twisted her lips. Charming was both. An expert lover like Graham would know.
"I'm guessing he didn't make you come."
Again, she didn't answer. She didn't need to. Graham would know.
"Bastard. I'll tie his dick in a knot."
Raveena smiled then. She rarely saw the jealous side of Graham. The man knew that no one could turn her inside out like he did. He'd warned her about that, and he'd had the right of it.
She hadn't had a proper orgasm in three years. Certainly not in her husband's bed where he preferred she lie back and think of Thornhall. Actually, that was exactly what she thought of when the old man had done his royal duty atop her.
When Charming had been atop her, he had only been concerned for his own pleasure.
Raveena doubted the prince knew that a woman's body could grip a man's cock in a way to heighten their own release.
He hadn't given her enough time to show him with his singular performance.
She really didn't want to go back for a repeat show.
But she would have to if she wanted to keep this castle.
And she would keep this castle.
Now that Graham was back, this time, she would keep him as well.
"Goddess, I missed you. The look of you. The feel of you. The smell of you." Raveena wrinkled her nose. He smelled of horse. "You didn't wash before coming to me?"
Graham flinched, just slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching with memory.
Raveena wasn’t trying to wound him with an insult.
She was trying to pull him back into her bed.
Maybe they'd share a bath first. They could fuck in the bath. In the perfumed depths of the waters, she would remind him that she belonged to no one but him. That she’d only ever surrendered herself to him.
They stood there, inches apart. The hem of her gown tangled in his fists. Her skin was bare and burning. His jaw clenched like he was holding back a scream—or a kiss.
"I didn't come to fuck you, Raveena."
"Then what? To kill me?" She looked down at the dagger.
"I should. Turnabout is fair play."
"I did not send you to war." It was an old argument. One she did not want to revisit, not when they could be tangling in the sheets. It had been three long years.
"You might as well have. What other choice did I have?"
"You could've stayed."
"And been your lover."
"Yes."
"I told you, I don't share. I won't share you. Ever."
"My husband is dead."
"Yet you're jockeying for a newer model."
"Because I failed with the first to produce an heiress."
Graham's nostrils flared. He bared his teeth like a wolf ready to go in for the kill. That had been the worst of their arguments, the thought that another man would get her with child. With a harsh growl, he turned away from her.
Raveena reached for his chin and got a handful of beard. It was softer than she'd suspected. She turned his head back to face her. "Put your babe in my belly. I'll marry Charming. Then I'll kill him. And we can live happily ever after."
"You'd do that? You'd take a man's life?"
"How many lives have you taken these last three years?"
"I was at war."
"So am I."