Chapter 147: Her Will Is Law

Ravial stepped into the house, his eyes sweeping across the foyer before turning to the young woman who had greeted him and was about to walk past.

“Where is she ?” he asked.

Maya looked up from the floor she’d been staring at, relaxing slightly at the expected question. Still, Ravial always put her on edge—but then, he had that effect on everyone.

“She’s upstairs, sir,” she replied.

He didn’t spare her another glance before heading out of the foyer and into the living room. As he walked, he rolled his sleeves up his thick forearms. Then he stopped.

For a moment, he brought his nose to the fabric covering his skin and sniffed.

It smelled good and clean. There was no trace of blood or whatever he had been doing during the two days he had been away.

“What the hell am I doing?” he growled under his breath, pulling his nose away from his clothes.

He was on edge to see her, the only person he had ever felt the desire to see, to be with. He missed her scent, and he couldn’t wait to roll around in it.

He closed his eyes.

Roll around in it?

His mouth twisted. He wasn’t some damn animal.

“Ravial! Ravial!”

The voice snapped him from his thoughts. He turned to find Avery standing a few feet away, brow furrowed, uncertainty playing across her face.

“Yes,” he said evenly, his tone sliding into the cold, emotionless register he reserved for everyone who wasn’t Leitana.

“Are you all right? I’ve been calling you for a while—you didn’t hear me?” she asked, stepping closer until she was just within arm’s reach, tilting her head to meet the blank strip of his blindfolded gaze.

“I can hear you now.”

She blinked, then nodded. “Of course. Anyway, I need to discuss something with you. Can we talk in your study?”

He looked past her toward the stairs. “It can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” Avery said quickly, moving to block his path. “It’s about my sister. Your wife.”

Even from a few feet away, she saw the stiffness roll through his shoulders, but he didn’t turn around.

“What about her?” His voice was colder now, if such a thing were possible.

“Let’s talk in your study.”

The moment the door closed behind them, Avery wasted no time.

“I know about the pregnancy,” she blurted, whirling to face him.

Ravial leaned against the edge of his desk, silent. The lower half of his face, the only part visible beneath the dark blindfold—didn’t so much as twitch. No sharp exhale, no clenched jaw, nothing.

Avery waited but nothing came.

She let out a dry, humorless laugh and glanced around the study before fixing her gaze back on him. “Of course. It’s just like you to keep everything to yourself. But this isn’t just about you—it’s about Leitana. The woman who loves you more than anything. She’s carrying your child, Ravial. I need more than that blank expression.”

Silence.

“You’re an….” she began, then stopped herself. “Never mind. What matters is that we both know she doesn’t have much time left. And now, with this pregnancy…” She trailed off, looking away. “It’s like she’s splitting what little life she has left into two.”

Her voice fell to a whisper. “I know you love her, even if you’ll never admit it to me. And if you do, then you must see the truth, that the best thing for her… would be for the baby to be…” The last words caught in her throat, poison she couldn’t quite swallow.

Then she turned back to him.

“You know what I mean.”

He tilted his head. “No, I don’t. Go on.”

She gritted her teeth. Of course he knew what she meant. She didn’t understand why he was making her say it out loud but she refused to hold it back.

She didn’t want it to happen, but she wanted more time with her sister. And this… this would only burden Leitana further.

“End it,” she managed finally. “She could, she will die if she keeps it.”

“I know it’s wrong, and that….”

“Wrong,” he said, cutting her off. “Not the act you suggest, but your reasoning.”

Her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

He pushed off from the desk with a movement so smooth it was almost predatory. He advanced slowly, forcing her to hold her ground even as her pulse slammed in her throat.

“What’s wrong,” he said quietly, “is the idea that you believe the choice of what lives or dies in my wife’s body belongs to you. Or to me. It doesn’t.”

Avery stared at him, wide-eyed. His words struck like a slap, unexpected, cold, and final.

“That is what is wrong.”

His voice remained calm.

“I will not waste my time pretending the life growing in her is more important. It is not. I do not care for it.”

Avery’s eyes widened slightly.

“But I care for the one carrying it.”

His voice dropped lower.

“And if it is her decision to keep it, then so be it.”

His words only confirmed what she had always believed, that Ravial cared for no one but himself and Leitana.

But still… it wasn’t enough.

She exhaled sharply. “And when she dies because of it? When you have to bury both her and that baby, will you still say it was her choice?”

Her voice shook slightly.

“She only has about three months left. By that time she might already be five months pregnant. Do you really think she can survive carrying to term?”

Her eyes burned.

“You think you can watch her waste away even faster because of this?”

He simply tilted his head the other way, the motion slow—almost serpentine. The blindfold hid his eyes, but Avery could still feel the weight of his gaze, like frost settling over her skin.

“You speak as though her death is a foregone conclusion,” he said quietly. “As though the timeline is carved in stone and cannot be rewritten.”

Avery’s laugh was brittle. “It is carved in stone. The doctors have said it for years. The disease doesn’t negotiate. And now you’re letting her add fuel to the fire. You’re not saving her, Ravial—you’re letting her burn brighter… and faster.”

For the first time since she’d entered the room, something shifted in his posture. Not quite angry. It was subtler: the tiniest tightening of the muscles along his shoulders, the way his fingers flexed once against the edge of the desk.

“I have never,” he said, each word measured, “let Leitana do anything. She decides and I enforce it. That is the arrangement.”

Avery took one step forward despite herself. “Then enforce sense, damn it. Talk to her. Make her see….”

“Make her?” The word came out softer than a whisper, yet it sliced the air between them. “You think I have that power? That I could make Leitana do anything she did not already wish to do?”

“She chose to stay with me, not even truly knowing me, though I would never have let her leave. She carries my child, knowing what it may cost. And if she chooses, if she truly chooses to let that child live even if it means she does not… then that is her will.” He paused. “And I will guard it with everything I possess.”

Avery stared at him. Her chest rose and fell too quickly. “You’d rather bury her and the baby than lose a single second of her time with you?”

Ravial’s mouth curved. It wasn’t a smile; it was the ghost of one, sharp, private, almost tender in its cruelty.

“I would rather bury the entire world than lose a single second of her time with me,” he said simply. “But I will not bury her choices. Not even to keep her breathing.”

Silence stretched, thick and suffocating.

Avery’s hands clenched at her sides. “You’re insane.”

“Perhaps.” He turned toward the door, already dismissing her. “But I am hers. And she is mine. The child… is incidental. A consequence. If it survives, fine. If it does not, fine. The only variable that matters is Leitana.”

He reached the door, paused with his hand on the knob.

“If you truly love your sister,” he said without turning, “then stop trying to steal her agency from her. She has so little time left. Let her spend it exactly as she wants even if that means dying the way she chooses.”

The door opened.

“And Avery?” His voice dropped lower, almost intimate. “Do not come to me again with suggestions about what should happen to what grows inside my wife. Next time I will not be so… conversational.”

He left without waiting for her reply.

Avery stood frozen in the middle of the study, heart hammering, the echo of his footsteps fading up the stairs toward Leitana.

Down the hall, Ravial’s stride never faltered. He could already smell her, warm, sweet, alive, carrying the faintest new note beneath it all.

He didn’t knock when he reached their bedroom door. He simply pushed it open, blindfold still in place, sleeves still rolled to his elbows, every line of his body radiating the kind of focused hunger that made the air feel thinner.

“Leitana,” he said, voice softer now, stripped of ice. “My lamb,”

And somewhere in the room, she stirred, his entire reason for breathing.

She turned to him and smiled and Ravial knew that he had lied.

He couldn’t let the baby hurt her.

Not even if she wanted to keep it.

Her choice ended where her survival did.