When the Council assembles at the Danforth estate to hunt Grace MacCaullay, nobody expects the doors to open. Sable Lilith Fenwick-Grey walks in like she owns the room — because in every way that matters, she does. She isn’t Council. She isn’t staff. She is the representative of the oldest name in Le Bail’s world, from a British aristocratic family who didn’t worship the devil so much as negotiate with him, author the rules he operates within, and constrain him inside a framework of their own design. The Lawyer knows who she is. Everyone else is about to find out. She stops the hunt on a legal technicality. Grace married into the pact. She isn’t an outsider. The grounds don’t hold. The Council are furious. Titus Danforth is something else entirely. He can’t read her. That’s new. She thinks ten steps ahead of everyone in the room, runs cold underneath the warmth, and is quietly, precisely dangerous in ways that don’t announce themselves. She finds him fascinating rather than monstrous and knows exactly how much trouble that is. Buried in the original pact — written by her family, centuries ago — is a clause neither of them was expecting to need. A Fenwick-Grey heir. The High Seat holder. One binding. She looked for another way out. There isn’t one. They wrote it with no exit because they meant it to last. So did he, apparently.