LOGINRavena's POV
Duchess Marianne's house was different at night.
By day
Ravena's POVDuchess Marianne's house was different at night.By day it had been all light and polish, grand rooms made to make a visitor feel small. But at this dark hour it was hushed and shadowed, and the servant who let us in did so with the stiff, uneasy manner of a household that had not expected callers and didn't know what to make of two women arriving with a stack of books and four silent guards at their backs.
Ravena's POV I had the manager brought to me in a small stone room at the back of the manor.It was the deep middle of the night by then. I had spent hours over the true books and the contract, and I knew now almost everything the numbers could tell me. What I didn't yet have was the thing numbers can't hold. The intent behind them. And for that, I needed the man who had kept them.They sat him on a stool in the middle of the room, the shop's accountant and manager both, the soft ink-stained man who had come sighing about losses only that morning and now looked as though he had aged ten years in a day. A guard stood at his shoulders. And in the corner a small charcoal stove had been lit at my order, and its coals glowed low and red, and laid across the top of them was a long iron rod, and the tip of it was beginning to take on the colour of the coals.I sat down in the chair across from him and folded my hands, and I let him look at the rod for a while before I said anything."I am
Ravena's POV "You do nothing yet," I said. "You let me tell you exactly how bad, and then you let me tell you how we get you out of it. Both. Because there is a way out, my lady, and I have already started walking us down it."I pulled a chair around and sat close to her, knee to knee, so she could not look away. “A thing like this can’t stay hidden. Cloth wears. It fades, it frays, a lady's fine new silk falls apart after one season and she takes it to another merchant and learns she was sold a cheap fake at a queen's price. And when one of them finds out, they all find out. It will spread through the capital like fire." I met her eyes. "And when it does, when the whole city learns that the shop has been selling counterfeit goods, every customer who was cheated will come pounding on the door demanding their money back, and worse. They will want someone punished. And who do you think they will come for first?"The colour drained from her face. "Me.""You. The largest shareholder. Th
Ravena's POV I heard my mother-in-law before I reached the door.I had only just come back to the manor, my head still full of incense smoke and the quiet of the memorial room, when a maid came running to find me with her face pale. “Lady Vivienne was in the accounting office,” she said, “and she was in a terrible rage, throwing things, and no one dared go near her.”Evander reached the door before I did, but I immediately caught his sleeve."Let me. Go and sit with your friends a while longer. I will see to your mother. This is my kind of trouble, not yours." I gave him a small smile. "You break armies. I break ledgers. Let each of us do what we are good at."He looked at me for a moment, then he brushed his knuckles once against my cheek and let me go. "Call for me if you need me.""I won't need you. But I'll call if I do."With that, I went in.The accounting office was a wreck. The real books had come back from the shop, brought by the trembling accountant under guard exactly as
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
Lucien's POVIn that moment, I quickly dropped lower, my palms flat on the ground, my voice shaking though I forced it out. “No… of course not, Your Majesty!”“Then tell me, Lucien… is it really just a rumour?”I hurriedly nodded, my head bowing again and again. “Yes, Your Majesty. I swear it. I ga
Ravena's POV“Ethan, this is not something small. You cannot just throw the word betrayal without proof. If what you are saying is true, then it could change everything. Evidence must be clear.”“Do you think I speak lightly? I watched, I listened, I survived when I should have died. Tell me, Raven
Ravena's POVLucien’s head snapped toward me, his shoulders stiff. “Good news? You think this is good news?!”I held his glare, letting him see the truth I had carried for far too long. My heart thumped wildly, but I calmed myself with deep breaths. Then, word by word, I gave him the one thing he n
Lucien's POVAfter seeing Ravena leave with her servants, a deep pain began to spread through my chest. It was sharp at first, then slow and burning, crawling through my veins as if my own body had betrayed me. Each step I tried to take grew heavier until my knees almost buckled.Gritting my teeth,







