Chapter 219: Chapter 219: The Silver

GRAYSON’S WEIGHT was a crushing, solid reality against Mailah’s chest, his heat seeping through her damp clothes.

He looked down at where their bodies met, his brow furrowed in a flicker of genuine confusion. For a moment, the Prince of the Third Circle looked almost… perplexed.

“A human body is a loud, needy thing,” Grayson rasped, his voice dropping into a register that vibrated against her collarbone. He shifted slightly, and the pressure of his arousal against her thigh became even more pronounced.

He let out a sharp, disdainful huff. “It seems my human body is more vulnerable to you than I guessed. This surge is a flaw….a weakness.”

He looked back up at her, his silver-gray eyes narrowing as he caught the way Mailah’s own breath hitched.

“And you,” he murmured, his touch slow and merciless against her jaw. “It’s written all over you. Your pulse is racing, your skin burning hot. You’re frightened, yet your body is reaching for mine with a desire your mind can’t stop. You’re just as enslaved to this.”

Mailah felt the heat rush to her cheeks, a fierce, burning blush that made her eyes sting. She wanted to deny it, to tell him he was wrong, but the way her pulse hammered against her skin was a confession she couldn’t take back.

“Demons do not ’wait’, Mailah,” Grayson said, his voice turning cold, the confusion replaced by a dark, terrifying clarity. “We do not court. We do not pine. We take. We consume. That is the order of things.”

Without warning, his grip shifted. His hands, which had been loosely holding her wrists, suddenly tightened with the force of iron. It felt as though he had snapped shackles onto her, pinning her arms against the mat with a strength that made the bones in her forearms ache.

The silver in his eyes didn’t just flash; it was swallowed whole. The gray bled into a void of pure, abyssal black. It was the look of a predator that had stopped playing and started hunting.

“Grayson, wait—”

He didn’t wait. He descended.

The kiss wasn’t a question; it was an invasion. It was bruising and desperate. He claimed her mouth with a territorial ferocity that made Mailah’s head spin. In his haste, his teeth caught the soft skin of her bottom lip.

The sharp sting of pain was immediate. The metallic tang of blood filled her mouth, and she let out a muffled cry of surprise and hurt.

She began to thrash beneath him, the “swoon” of a moment ago evaporating into a cold, sharp dread. This wasn’t the man who had held her gently. This was the monster from the book—the one who stood bored amidst burning villages.

“Stop!” she managed to gasp, tearing her face away from his. “Grayson, stop! You’re hurting me!”

He froze. His chest was heaving, his dark eyes still fixed on her bleeding lip with a hunger that looked dangerously close to starvation. For a heartbeat, she thought he might ignore her cry and finish what he started. She saw the “Beast” battling the “human” in the way his jaw worked.

Then, the blackness in his eyes receded, leaving behind a cold, distant dark gray. He released her wrists as if her skin had suddenly turned to ice.

He stood up in one fluid, terrifyingly graceful motion, turning his back to her.

“Go,” he commanded, his voice devoid of any emotion. “Before I decide that ’hurting’ is a secondary concern to my appetite.”

Mailah scrambled to her feet, her legs feeling like jelly. She wiped her lip with the back of her hand, seeing a smear of crimson on her skin. She looked at his broad back, waiting for him to turn around, to apologize, to chase after her.

He didn’t move. He stood like a statue, staring at the far wall.

Mailah didn’t wait for a second invitation. she turned and ran out of the chamber, her footsteps echoing through the cold, stone corridors of the estate’s basement. She didn’t stop until she reached the main hall, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

Mailah didn’t see Grayson for the rest of the night. She locked her bedroom door and pushed a heavy armchair in front of it—a move she knew was useless against a demon, but it made her feel marginally better.

During the following days, she and Grayson seemed determined to stay out of each other’s way.

She barely stepped out of her room, and Mrs. Baker left meals for her three times a day even though she never asked.

However, on the morning of the gala, the thin wall of privacy she’d built collapsed with a sound that resembled a small explosion.

“Rise and shine, Duchess! We have a buffet to attend, and you look like you’ve been through a blender!”

Carson burst into the room, followed closely by a very unimpressed-looking Lucson. Carson was draped in several yards of shimmering, midnight-blue silk, while Lucson carried a garment bag with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious relics.

“Out,” Mailah groaned, pulling the duvet over her head. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going.”

“Ooh, did he bite you?” Carson asked, bouncing onto the end of her bed. “Classic Grayson. He always was a messy eater when he was frustrated.”

Carson reached out and playfully tugged at the duvet. Of all the brothers, Carson had become the one Mailah was most comfortable with. He was funny, he didn’t talk in riddles and wasn’t as intense like Lucson, and he didn’t try to haunt her dreams like Mason. But as she looked at his bright, sparking eyes, a cold memory surfaced.

She remembered when Carson had deliberately caused chaos for fun. She had seen him standing in the middle of a crowd, his head tilted back, inhaling the chaos with a look of pure, terrifying hunger. He wasn’t a friend; he was a predator who happened to tell good jokes. She couldn’t let his comedic antics blind her to the fact that he was just as dangerous as his brothers.

“Carson, be silent,” Lucson snapped, his silver eyes scanning the room with clinical precision. He looked at Mailah, noticing the slight swelling on her lip. His expression didn’t soften, but he did let out a short, rhythmic sigh. “Grayson is in a… foul mood. If you do not appear at the Gala, he will likely burn down a small province just to vent the frustration. For the sake of the mortals in the tri-state area, please get out of bed.”

“I don’t belong there, Lucson,” Mailah said, sitting up. “I saw the book. I know what he is. Why are you now all so insistent on me being there?”

Lucson stepped forward, laying the garment bag on the chair she had moved. “Because without you, he is a storm without a center. If he fully embraces his pre-exile demon side without any link to his human side, he becomes a threat to everyone—including us. You are the only anchor that keeps him from becoming a creature we can no longer control.”

“That sounds like a terrible reason to go to a party,” Mailah muttered.

“It’s an Ashford party,” Carson chirped, snagging a grape from a fruit bowl Mrs. Baker must have left. “The ’terrible’ is the best part! Now, let’s get you dressed. Lucson spent three hours arguing with a French seamstress over the hemline of this dress.”

The next few hours were a whirlwind of supernatural “beauty” treatments that felt more like preparation for war.

Mason appeared halfway through, not to help, but to “curate her headspace.” He sat in the corner of her dressing room, his eyes half-closed, humming a low, vibrating tone that seemed to settle the frantic buzzing of her nerves.

“I’m shielding your mind,” Mason explained when she caught him staring. “The High Lords at the Gala feed on the psychic residue of humans. If you walk in there with your heart on your sleeve, they’ll pluck your memories out of your head like ripe cherries. I’m making you… boring. To them, at least.”

“Thanks, I think,” Mailah said, looking disturbed.

Lucson’s choice of gown was breathtaking. The gown was made of soft silk the color of a midnight sky. It moved like water when she walked, shimmering under the lights. The top was elegant and pretty, showing off her shoulders in a very graceful way.

To finish the look, he put a thin silver chain with a dark, glowing stone around her neck. She looked like a star in the dark—beautiful, bright, and impossible to ignore.

“It’s a ward,” Lucson explained, referring to the necklace. “It will vibrate if anyone tries to manipulate you.”

“I feel like a prize horse,” Mailah sighed.

“You look like a Queen of the Third Circle,” Ravenson’s voice came from the doorway. He was leaning against the frame, dressed in a suit that looked like it was woven from shadows.

He looked her up and down, his gaze stopping on her lip. “He marked you. Bold move for someone who claims he doesn’t remember the scent of your skin.”

“It was an accident,” Mailah said defensively.

“In our world, there are no accidents,” Ravenson replied, his voice a low, heavy rain. “There are only intentions we haven’t admitted to yet.”

The five brothers gathered in the grand foyer as the sun began to set. It was a sight that would have made any mortal’s heart stop. Five Ashford men, each a different flavor of lethal, dressed in the finest silks and wools, radiating enough power to dim the chandeliers.

Grayson stood at the center. He looked magnificent. His suit was a deep, gray, like his eyes, his white shirt crisp against his skin. His eyes were back to their dark gray, fixed on the door.

When Mailah descended the stairs, the conversation died.

The brothers watched her with varying expressions: Carson with a grin, Mason with a tilt of his head, Lucson with a nod of approval, and Ravenson with a dark, knowing smirk.

Grayson didn’t move. He watched her approach, his gaze lingering on the dark velvet of the dress, the silver at her throat, and finally, the small, fading mark on her lip.

He stepped toward her, his presence instantly drowning out everyone else in the room.

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