CHAPTER 17: CHAPTER NO.17 CONFESSIONS & KISS

[Location: Morningstar Manor, New York]

"I..."

The word cracked in my throat, half a whisper, half a confession. It wasn’t like I’d rehearsed this. No thousand-year plan, no careful script. Just raw air and the silence between us, sharp as a blade.

Grayfia stood there, framed by the faint moonlight leaking through the tall windows of the manor’s drawing room. Her silver hair caught the glow like spun frost. Her eyes — those impossible eyes — were watching me as though the entire universe depended on what syllable would follow.

I had faced the void. I had died. I had awakened in the body of a forsaken prince. And yet, this — this was the hardest battlefield.

Her lips parted slightly. "You...?"

It was an invitation. Or maybe a trap. With Grayfia, the line was so thin I couldn’t tell.

I swallowed, forcing air back into my lungs. My tongue felt like lead, but I pushed the words out anyway. "I... don’t know what I’d be right now if it weren’t for you."

Her stillness didn’t break, but something in her gaze flickered — a flash of vulnerability, gone in an instant.

"You think too little of yourself, my prince," she said softly. Her tone carried that paradoxical mixture only she could manage: reverence laced with command, devotion balanced on the edge of obsession.

I gave a humourless chuckle. "You sealed me for 1,022 years, Grayfia. That wasn’t duty. That wasn’t just loyalty. That was... something else."

She didn’t flinch. "Yes."

One word. A dagger of truth.

I should’ve expected it — Grayfia never danced around answers. Still, my chest tightened. "So you admit it."

Her silver lashes lowered. "Do you think I hid it all these years? That my silence erase what I felt? I could not say it then — the world, the Satans, your stolen destiny... I had no right. But now—"

Her voice cracked, just faintly, and I realised with a jolt that this woman, this legendary Silver-Haired Queen of Annihilation, feared this moment more than battle.

"Now, you’ve returned. And I cannot... I will not hide anymore."

I stepped closer without thinking. My body moved before my brain caught up. Maybe it was the way her hand trembled slightly against her dress, maybe it was the thousand unsaid words pressing between us. Or maybe it was just me — Dominic Nocturne von Morningstar, who had died once already, deciding that silence was worse than risk.

"Grayfia."

Her name felt heavy on my tongue.

She lifted her gaze back to mine, steady once more. "Yes, my prince?"

My throat tightened. I should’ve said something clever. Something safe. Something that gave me room to run later.

Instead, what came out was raw. "I don’t want a maid. I don’t want a servant. I... want you."

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thunder held in check, lightning straining at the edges of the world.

Her eyes widened, just slightly. Then narrowed. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t move. "Do you understand what you say, Dominic?"

I laughed, low and bitter. "For once, maybe I do."

Her hand rose — almost mechanically — and brushed against my chest, over where my heart hammered like it was trying to break free. "I swore to protect you, to serve you. If I give myself... it will not be as maid, nor as queen. It will be as a woman who cannot undo what she has felt since long before your slumber."

The world tilted. Every demon I had ever known, every contract, every battle... none of it had prepared me for this.

But I leaned in anyway.

"I don’t want undoing," I whispered.

And then —

Her lips crashed against mine.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t hesitant. It was Grayfia — cold flame, sharp devotion, centuries of silence breaking all at once.

The taste of her was paradox itself: winter’s bite and forbidden fire, steel and softness. Her hands, once instruments of annihilation, now clutched my shoulders like she feared I’d vanish again.

And me?

I let go. Of the fear. Of the hesitation. Of the thought that maybe this was dangerous.

I kissed her back.

For a moment, time fractured. The world outside Morningstar Manor — demons scheming, Satans watching, the system lurking in the shadows of my soul — none of it mattered.

It was just us.

Her lips were still against mine when I realised I was trembling. Not from fear. Not from weakness. From release.

A thousand years sealed away. A thousand years of silence. A thousand years where I had nothing, where I was nothing.

And now, here — this.

Grayfia’s kiss wasn’t something soft to be treasured carefully like a fragile memory. No, it was an onslaught. Like her magic, it consumed, it froze, it branded. She wasn’t giving me a kiss — she was staking a claim.

Her breath burned against mine, her grip digging into my shoulders hard enough that if I were the weak husk of a prince from the past, my bones would’ve snapped. But I wasn’t that boy anymore. I endured. I matched her.

I returned it with everything I had.

Her lips overlapping mine was not the gentle brush of a fleeting touch — it was collision, friction, fire and frost at once.

Her mouth moved with frightening precision, the same discipline she carried into battle channelled into the act of kissing. It was controlled, yes, but underneath that control burned something raw, dangerous. Something that had been buried for over a millennium.

Grayfia wasn’t just kissing me. She was devouring the space between us. Claiming it. Claiming me.

My hands, unbidden, rose — one to her hip, the other to her back. I half-expected her to recoil at my audacity, but instead, her body pressed closer, erasing even the pretence of distance. Her heartbeat — or maybe mine — thundered against my ribs.

For a long, breathless span of seconds, there was nothing but heat, breath, and the crushing inevitability of what had just crossed the line from unsaid to undeniable.

When she finally broke away, it wasn’t retreat. It was a reprieve. A measured pause, like a warrior stepping back to gauge the battlefield after a decisive strike.

Her crimson eyes opened, molten with something I had never seen so nakedly displayed. Hunger. Not carnal lust — though that lingered at the edges — but the hunger of centuries denied.

"...Dominic," she whispered, voice roughened. The sound of my name like that... it didn’t feel like an address. It felt like a vow.

I swallowed, my chest still heaving. "So. That just happened."

Her lips split into a grin, I swear it was the first time I’d seen her smile without restraint. Not the polite half-curve she gave when the role of "maid" demanded composure, not the frosty smirk she wielded in battle. This was real. It was devastating.

"Finally," she murmured, her forehead resting lightly against mine. "You have no idea how many centuries I rehearsed this moment. And yet—" her voice dipped into something almost dangerous, "—it is far better to steal it than to wait any longer."

I let out a laugh that shook more than I wanted it to. "You mean I wasn’t the only one trembling like an idiot?"

Her silver lashes lowered, a faint amusement glimmering in her eyes. "Idiot, yes. Trembling... no. I am not afraid of you, Dominic. Never afraid. But I..." She hesitated, and the silence stretched thin, like a blade about to snap. Then the words fell, heavy and simple: "...I wanted you."

My pulse jumped, so violently I thought it might choke me. "Grayfia—"

"Do not mistake this." She pressed a finger to my lips, cutting me off with surgical precision. "What I feel is not loyalty. It is not duty. I am yours because I choose to be. Not because you are Morningstar blood. Not because you were Lilith’s son. But because in all the centuries I have endured, you are the only man who has ever made me feel... alive."

Her words slammed through me harder than any blow. I had fought fiancées, rivals, enemies, Satans themselves — but this? This undid me.

"...Then I guess I’ll have to make sure you don’t regret it."

She tilted her head, her grin sharpening back into that blade’s edge. "If you ever try to make me regret it, Dominic, you will find even your Armament will not protect you."

"Yeah," I whispered, my own grin tugging at the corner of my mouth. "That sounds about right."

We didn’t move for a long time. Just stood there, her forehead against mine, the manor’s silence wrapping us in a fragile cocoon. For once, there was no training, no System prompt, no ghosts of betrayal pressing down. Just breathe. Just her.

"You... want to take a step further?"

Grayfia’s voice was not her usual blade-sharp tone. It was hesitant, feather-soft, so low it almost felt like a prayer she wasn’t sure should reach heaven or hell.

I blinked at her. The Silver-Haired Queen of Annihilation. The demon who made armies retreat with nothing more than her presence. The maid who had ruled this manor with a serenity that bordered on divine judgment. And now—

She was asking me.

Her eyes didn’t waver. But her fingers, still resting lightly against my chest, betrayed the faintest tremor.

I exhaled, slow and shaky, realising the air in my lungs had turned molten. "Further," I repeated, as if the word itself might anchor me.

"Yes." Her lips pressed into a thin line, then parted again. "I have waited... far too long. Duty has chained me for centuries. But tonight, in this moment, I am not a maid. I am not a silver queen. I am simply a woman standing before the man she—" She cut herself off, lashes lowering like shutters. "...the man she cannot deny any longer."

The words slammed into me harder than any fist. Harder than the dummies in the courtyard, harder than the Satans’ weight pressing on my bloodline.

My heart thundered. I should’ve laughed, deflected, made some sarcastic remark about how ridiculous this all was. That was my shield, wasn’t it? Snark and self-deprecation, the armour of a forsaken prince who had already been betrayed once too often.

But the thing about armour?

Sometimes you have to take it off.

"Grayfia..." My voice broke. I didn’t bother to fix it. "...If we step further, there’s no going back."

"Then we do not go back."

Her answer was immediate. Final. Her hand tightened against me as if daring me to contradict her.

The silence stretched. My thoughts clashed like swords inside my skull. A thousand reasons to stop — she was dangerous, she was obsessed, she was everything I should’ve been cautious of.

And one reason to go on.

I wanted her.

Not as maid. Not as weapon. Not even as queen.

Just her.

"Alright then," I whispered. "Bedroom it is."

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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