Ammonia, acrid and eye-watering, drags Ravenelle kicking and screaming back to the waking world. Light, harsh and unforgiving, sears her retinas. She’s trussed to a chair, a fly in a spider’s parlor, two looming shapes lurking in the gloom.

“Explain yourselves,” Ravenelle demands, frost and fire. Her bonds bite back, expertly woven. These are no amateurs.

A figure steps forward, a ghost made flesh. Victor Fields, steel baron, Amanda’s sire. Fury rolls off him in waves.

“You know full well, viper. My daughter, spirited away, her paramour cooling in the morgue? Scandal nips at our heels, and lo, your fingerprints are all over this sordid affair.”

A nod, a gesture, and the second shade approaches, brass knuckles gleaming dully. Ravenelle sits ramrod straight, chin jutting defiantly, emerald eyes blazing as she braces for the onslaught. But her mind whirs, click-click-click, gears turning, pieces falling into place. Amanda tugs at strings best left alone…threads that tangle them all in a Gordian knot.

Ravenelle meets Victor’s glare, unwavering as a mountain, even as blood beads on her broken lip.

“You grasp at shadows, Fields,” she grits out. “Rumor and innuendo. Whatever web Amanda’s ensnared in, I merely cut her free.”

Victor’s nostrils flare, a bull enraged. “Free? She was a promising legal mind, bred from the finest stock, before you enabled her dalliance with that corpulent Croesus!”

Another curt nod, another gut-wrenching blow. Ravenelle wheezes, ribs creaking, but her voice never wavers.

“To what end, Fields?”

“You’ll drag Amanda back, kicking and screaming if you must!” he thunders. “This flight from justice damns us all. I’ll chain her to the courthouse myself if it’ll staunch this hemorrhage, and you’ll bear her shackles!”

Ravenelle nearly chokes on a laugh. If only this poor fool knew his precious progeny was likely tangled in Derek’s embrace on some sun-kissed shore half a world away. These puffed-up pawns can’t comprehend the chess master moving them round the board…

Ravenelle shakes her head, a rueful benediction. “Still you fumble in the dark. This goes beyond your family’s honor or Amanda’s assignations. Tell me, when did you last audit your steel empire’s coffers?”

Victor stutters, wrongfooted. “What in blazes does that have to do with-“

Ravenelle’s grin is gore-streaked and feral. “Rumors reached my ear of funds funneled from your accounts by dear departed Sinclair. Perchance Amanda uncovered proof of his perfidy, hence their clandestine conclaves…and his subsequent silencing.”

Victor reels as if run through, his pet gorilla shifting nervously. Ravenelle pounces on their momentary weakness.

“You’re asking the wrong questions. Cui bono from Amanda framed for murder, you besieged by scandal? Who gains control if you fall from grace?”

Victor blanches as the pieces click into place. Then the world explodes-

“Police! Hands up!”

-a tornado of Kevlar and Glocks, Victor and his goon hitting the deck.

Through her rapidly swelling eye, Ravenelle spies a smirking Detective Morris snapping cuffs on a spitting Victor. “Impeccable timing as ever,” she quips. “Be a lamb and ring my physician? Then we’ve much to discuss…”

Morris quirks a brow, a wordless touché. He barks orders to his men as he frees Ravenelle from her bonds.

“Making friends and influencing people as usual, I see,” he deadpans.

Ravenelle rolls her shoulders, working out the kinks. “All in a day’s work, darling. Now, let’s chat about Victor’s chief financial officer, hmm? I’ve a hunch he’s woven quite the tangled web…”

Morris’s eyes gleam, a bloodhound catching the scent. “Lead on, MacDuff. Time to unravel this skein of secrets once and for all.”

Ravenelle’s answering smile is a knife in the dark, sharp and deadly. The game’s afoot, and the Raven’s on the hunt.

Heaven help those who cross her path.

The Grandeur awaits its queen’s return, a dark castle for a darker sovereign. And the city trembles, quaking before the coming storm.

For when the Raven seeks her reckoning, no corner of her kingdom is safe from her piercing gaze and pitiless talons.

Cry havoc, and let slip the birds of war.

Not. The. End.