LOGINRavena's POV
Suddenly, the accountant came off the chair and down on his knees on the rug so quickly the guard's hand slid off his shoulder, and he pressed his forehead near to the floor.
Ravena's POV When the business of the shop was settled, I went back through the house to the reception hall, and the moment I stepped through the doors they were still there. All of them. Master Thornwell in the good chair by the window with a cup of tea cooling at his elbow. Mira with her boots up on a stool as if she owned the place. Rhea sprawled sideways across a bench with her red hair coming loose. Galen and Imeria and Wynn, deep in some argument about a poem none of them could quote right.
Ravena's POV Suddenly, the accountant came off the chair and down on his knees on the rug so quickly the guard's hand slid off his shoulder, and he pressed his forehead near to the floor."Mercy, my lady. Mercy, I beg you. I am only a hired man, I keep the books I'm told to keep, I swear it on my life. It was never my scheme, none of it, I never took a single coin of it for myself." He was shaking all over. "It was Lady Cressida. It was her order, my lady, hers from the start. She comes to the shop herself, quietly, by the back, and she tells me what to wr
Ravena's POV The shop didn't even wait for us to send for the books.The very next morning, before I had finished my first cup, a man came up to the house from the trade row carrying the account ledgers under his arm. He was the shop's accountant, a thin man with ink-stained fingers and a soft voice, and he asked to see Lady Vivienne about the month's reckoning.I made sure to be in the room when he was sho
Ravena's POV The carriage turned off the home road and Vivienne immediately sat up straight."The cloth shop. Why are we going to the cloth shop? Ravena. Ravena, look at me. You are not going there to make another scene, are you? We have only just got the jade back, we have only just smoothed things over, you can't march into that shop now and start trouble in front of the whole trade row." Her voice climbed higher with every word. "It is half Marianne's, you understand, you can't. I forbid it. Do you hear me?"
Ravena's POV "There is one more thing, Your Grace," I said pleasantly.Marianne's smile held, but I saw it cost her something now. "Oh?""The wager." I tilted my head, all innocence. "Lady Vivienne tells me the two of you made a proper bet on it. Ten thousand gold, was it not, on whether the new bride would give up her dowry. Well, I gave it up without a grumble, so by the terms Lady Vivienne set, she has w
Ravena's POV For a moment Vivienne could only stare at her.Her mouth opened and closed. And the colour came and went in her face."This," she said at last, and her voice cracked. "This was your idea. You arranged it with me. We sat in this very room and you proposed the wager, you said the words, you set the terms. How can you sit there now and twist it around like this? How can you lie to my face?"
King Alaric's POV
Ravena’s POV
Ravena's POV We fo
Ravena’s POV







