Why? Was this just another one of her games? Another attempt to provoke him, to unsettle him for her own amusement?
Heaven knew she had done worse in the past.
She knew precisely how much her presence affected him. Whenever she sensed that he was reasonably alone, she would appear, cornering him for no other reason than to remind him of what she had done to him. To dredge up memories he had buried deep, to torment him with the echoes of a past he could never truly escape.
Ragnar was not her only victim.
But he was her favorite. The one she took the greatest pleasure in harassing.
Time and again, she had gotten away with it, shielded by her position as the queen's chief lady-in-waiting, a title that, for the longest time, had made her untouchable in the eyes of others.
Rage surged through him, rising too fast, too violently. It bubbled and seethed beneath his skin in ways he could no longer control. His vision blurred at the edges, his pulse roaring in his ears.
