Three moons wax and wane, and Ravenelle lounges languid by the wine-dark sea, the Mediterranean sun gilding her in shades of triumph. Headlines herald the fall of Victor Fields, would-be king toppled from his steel throne, condemned to a decade in durance vile. And buried deep, a footnote: the quiet abdication of Detective Morris, slinking into shadow.

Ravenelle savors the taste of victory, sweet as pomegranate seeds. All the threads snipped clean, the tapestry complete. Her ribs, once shattered, now merely whisper their pain, a memento mori. Derek joins her on the balcony, bearing nectar and ambrosia in crystal and gold.

“You never cease to amaze, my dark marvel,” he murmurs, clinking glass to glass. “The way you played them all, snake charming snake…no one wields the blade like you.”

Ravenelle basks in the dying light, a cat replete with cream. “Sweet talker. Though I confess, ’twas a dance of rare intricacy, even for me.”

She sips, pensive as a sphinx. “Poor Amanda, fancying herself the white knight, only to fall into a pit of vipers…”

“Her guardian angel was watching,” Derek grins. He drapes an arm ’round her shoulders, and together they watch the sun bleed into the sea, the world righted once more.

Then comes the knock in the night. Three sharp raps. A drumbeat of doom.

Ravenlle, sheathed in silk, answers the call to find two grim sentinels, the law’s long arms.

“Signorina Ravenelle? I regret to inform you that there’s been an incident at the docks. Signor Grant…he is dead.”

The world tilts, spins, shatters. “Derek…dead? No, it can’t…there must be some mistake.”

But there he lies amidst the crates and hawsers, scarlet blooming obscenely on white linen, a hole punched through his heart. Still warm, life leaking into cold stone.

“We have the video, signora.”

And there on grainy film, a figure cloaked and veiled, the gun smoking in her hand. But Ravenelle would know those eyes anywhere, alight with unholy zeal. Amanda, the avenging angel, the judge, jury, and executioner.

Ravenelle’s blood turns to ice, then to fire. White-hot rage sears her to the marrow, threatens to consume her whole. When she speaks, her voice is the eye of the hurricane, the calm before the killing blow.

“Find her. Scour every manifest, every scanner, every rat hole from here to Hades. Bring me Amanda Fields alive. I’ll see justice done with my own hands…”

A day and a night spin by, and Ravenelle stands in her suite, a statue carved of alabaster and onyx. She sips brandy, but tastes only ashes. Amanda has vanished, a ghost on the wind, every trail cold as the grave.

The damaged girl has grown claws and fangs, has spun a web of her own, a mockery of Ravenelle’s artistry. And Ravenelle knows in her bones this was meant for her, a knife slipped between the ribs, a message writ in blood. Only one soul could know to strike at her very heart.

The stagecraft, the spectacle, all reek of an understudy aping the master. But the fatal flaw, the hamartia? Leaving Ravenelle alive, free to rain down retribution like the wrath of God.

A knock, sharp as a gunshot. A flunky, sweating fear. “Interpol reports a hit on Amanda’s ghost passport in Tangier. She boarded a ship, destination unknown.”

The storm breaks in Ravenelle’s eyes, dark as Judgment Day. So, the doe wishes to play at wolf? She’ll learn soon enough the cost of biting the hand that fed her.

Ravenelle rises, a sleek huntress scenting blood. “Activate our network in the Maghreb and the isles,” she commands, iron and ice. “She’ll surface for air, and when she does…”

The snare will coil round Amanda’s pretty neck, slowly, inexorably. Ravenelle swears it on Derek’s ghost – death by inches for this betrayal, for daring to touch her north star. The tables have turned, the script rewritten.

For Ravenelle is no man’s prey, and now she’s out for blood.

Heaven help Amanda Fields when the Raven catches her scent.

There will be nowhere to hide from the coming storm.

Not. The. End.