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W ife .

Had he just said wife?

Graves held a gloved hand out to her. “Shall we?” The tilt of his lips said he knew exactly what she thought of the title he’d bestowed upon her. But she was smart enough to take the out he was offering.

“Husband,” she spat back as she dropped her hand into his.

His dangerous smile sent her stomach tumbling.

It was unfortunate that she was still furious with him for his deceptions, because when those stormy eyes trained their full attention on her, passion and longing and anger mingled together in her core.

Heat like a furnace came off of him in waves.

Her brain told her that was just the force of his magic, but it was hard not to feel the embers spark to life between them.

“Miss me?” he teased in his crisp British accent.

She tipped her chin up, refusing to let him think he rattled her. “Ever so much.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and placed a kiss full of possession on her knuckles.

Sparks turned to flames, licking up her wrist, elbow, shoulder, until her chest was flushed and warm.

His eyes dipped briefly to her low neckline and then dragged up her neck to her equally warm cheeks. The fire in his gaze made her swallow.

“Monsieur,” the vampire said with a practiced bow. “I’m required to take her to security for trespassing.”

Graves’s attention snapped to the guard.

His expression turned on a dime to severe and merciless.

He twisted into the monster she’d met all those months earlier when she’d been tasked to break into his library and steal a ring.

A job that should have been impossible, but thanks to her absorption magic, she had succeeded in bypassing his wards where others had failed, putting a target on her back.

Instead of killing her, Graves had offered Kierse a job, propelling her life on a whole new trajectory.

Looking at him now, she couldn’t see anything other than this cruel monster who radiated sinister energy. Except that wasn’t who Graves had been to her. For a time, she’d even thought that she could read him when no one else could. How wrong she had been.

“Did I ask for you to speak?” Graves demanded.

The vampire took a step backward, realizing his error. The girl in the alcove melted into the shadows. Just another day with volatile monsters.

Graves dismissed them both. He drew Kierse against him, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling them nearly flush. Her head felt dizzy, and her heart raced at the contact.

She wanted to pull away.

She wanted to stay there forever.

Then all thought fled as he dipped his head down and nipped at her neck, leaving a mark that said mine, mine, mine .

The hold he had on her felt like a vise.

She breathed in the scent of his magic—leather and fresh parchment.

The first time she’d ever been able to access her magic and scent his, she’d thought he smelled like the books from his holly library, but now she could distinguish the two.

It was distinctly and specifically Graves in every way.

“Play nice,” he teased as his nose brushed her earlobe.

She nearly jerked back at those words. Her anger flaring at his fucking audacity. “Graves,” she snarled.

“I love my name on your lips.”

She retreated from his hold to see his mocking smile. “I bet you do.”

“Monsieur,” the vampire tried one more time, a note of desperation in his voice.

Graves’s magic heated the air. “Don’t bother us again.”

He shifted his weight and directed her down the hall.

She seethed as he extricated her out of the situation.

She was about to open her mouth when Graves wrenched open a door and all but shoved her through it.

The door banged shut behind him. He flicked on a light to reveal a storage closet and then fixed his hard gaze on her.

Air hung heavy between them. His mask of fury still clung to his features as if he had unlearned how to soften for her. For a span of a moment, she wasn’t sure if he was going to knock her out or slam her back into the door and kiss her.

She broke free of his trance. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Graves straightened to his considerable height. He looked ready to spit vitriol, but he was as poised as ever. “I could ask you the same question, Miss McKenna.”

Kierse forced herself steady at that name.

He hadn’t called her by her last name in ages, and she wasn’t prepared to have gone from the nickname Wren —his partner, a name that meant she belonged to him, the source of his own destruction—to this.

Let alone from wife back to acquaintances… business partners.

“Don’t Miss McKenna me.”

“What would you prefer me to call you, then?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.” He brushed a lock of her dark hair out of her face, and she nearly groaned as her body betrayed her.

She wanted Graves. She had wanted him almost as soon as she had met him. Known he was beautiful and dangerous, and fallen into him like a drop of water in the ocean. But wanting him didn’t mean she trusted him, and she didn’t know how to move forward without that.

So she pulled back and said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

He waved a hand around the closet. “No. I certainly had other plans tonight than to be stuck in a broom cupboard.”

“You’re the one who stuffed me in here.”

“You were caught ,” he snarled like it was an offense.

And it was. After all, she prided herself on her stealth.

“I was doing fine before you interfered.”

He leaned back against the doorframe with that damn smirk on his lips. “You could simply say thank you.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Of that I’m certain,” he said with bite.

“What are you even doing here?” she asked again in exasperation.

“I was invited.”

“Invited,” Kierse scoffed. “There’s no way in hell that you would accept an invitation to a party like this without reason.”

She reassessed him. Graves was a master warlock with the ability to read the immediate thoughts of anyone he touched—except Kierse.

He used that magic to make his business a network of secrets and blackmail to shape the world around him.

If he was in Versailles on business, then he was here to get information.

“Who exactly do you want answers from?”

“Currently? You,” he purred, stepping into her orbit and tilting her off axis. “If your assessment of me is that I’m here on business, then should I expect that you are here to steal something?”

Her eyes locked onto his, and she knew. In his five-month absence, she’d tried to imagine that Graves wasn’t trailing her every move. That she was really on her own as she had asked to be. But no, of course not. She knew exactly how he worked. It shouldn’t have surprised her. And yet…

“You knew I’d be here.”

He slid gloved hands into his pockets as if he had not a care in the world. Answer enough. She wanted to swear at him, but arguing was futile. He would always think he was in the right. Wasn’t that part of the problem?

“Whatever you’re planning, it isn’t going to work.”

“Why do you think I’m planning something?” Kierse asked.

“Because you’re always planning something.” His words were sharp, but his eyes were amused. As if she was unaware that he understood her as well as she had believed she understood him.

“Pot meet kettle.” She pushed against him, reaching for the doorknob.

“Your skirt is ripped,” he said. “There’s dirt under your nails. One knee is red. Your hair is askew.”

“So?” she countered.

He reached up and moved a piece of her hair back into order. His finger lingered on the visibly round ear as if he was trying to see through the glamour to the pointed Fae ear.

“You’ve already stolen what you were here for, haven’t you?”

She released a harsh sigh. “It wasn’t there,” she finally admitted.

“And what was it?”

She ground her teeth together. “As if you don’t already know.”

“Does it please you to think I am omniscient?”

“I bet it pleases you.”

His smile was feral. “I never know what you are thinking.”

“Lucky me.” Kierse glanced away. What was the point of hiding it from Graves anyway? Maybe he knew of another place where the bracelet might be kept. His magic was knowledge, after all. If only every bit of it didn’t come with a price.

But she needed that bracelet. She’d been working all spring on a way to get into the market. This was the only opening.

“A goblin-made bracelet,” she finally said. “Silver with an amethyst at the center.”

Graves’s eyes lit on her. After a beat of silence, he began to laugh.

Kierse put her back up. “What’s so fucking funny?”

“Even you could not have succeeded.”

“Why?”

“Because, little thief, Queen Aveline is wearing that bracelet tonight.”