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.
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.
