Previously On Quiet Burn…
We pick up right after the bonus fromVeiled Flame(Kat’s still hiding who she is from most of the guys), where everything detonated and then had the audacity to keep smoldering. Kat wakes to a relentlessly cheerful Salem, which would be adorable if she weren’t trembling from exhaustion and pain.
She staggers into a shower with him and Dottie on hand, and of course half-dressed demon boyfriends under one roof means the bathroom is equal parts necessary hygiene and exquisite torture. She’s weak, wired, and absolutely noticing abs. Her coping strategy is the only one that’s ever worked—push forward and keep the snark razor-sharp so nobody notices the shaking.
Because the Games are looming and Discordia never met a power move it didn’t want to choreograph, the guys formalize a campus-wide performance. Kat and the caliphate will ‘fake date.’ If predators think she’s claimed, fewer idiots will try something. The snag is scheduling—Kat’s got classes without them, and Lucian’s not letting anyone rearrange a thing. She insists she can handle a few hours solo. The compromise lands with Salem and Dottie flanking her out the door.
Breakfast in theTricliniumbecomes an intentional spectacle. Jasper directs the show so competitors read confidence instead of stress. Eyes track them like they’re a live broadcast. The fake-dating narrative amplifies the attention until Kat is clinging to her center by fingernails. When they split for class, Slash walks her. He keeps conversation to a minimumand makes one point crystal clear. He’ll protect her, and he’s not pretending it won’t involve violence if that’s what it takes.
Oriel snares pickup duty after class. The vibe is good until an urgent summons hijacks the morning—Games announcement,Triclinium, now. The entire room hums with rumor and rubbernecking when they arrive, Jasper strung tight enough to snap. They brace for impact, gather food like it’s armor, and wait. And then… nothing, because the rumor’s a feint. Everyone stands down with frayed nerves and no answers.
Zavida walks Kat next and tries to pitch the ‘Jasper’s prickly, but he cares’ defense. She’s not in the market for excuses. They discuss what counts as ‘boyfriend behavior,’ reach class anyway, and Oriel is back on pickup to usher her through an elevator full of idiots who decide to perform homophobia within arm’s reach of a crow demon. He nudges a little power and by the time the doors open the bigots are in the lobby clawing at each other over stolen trinkets. Kat tells him it wasn’t necessary; Oriel tells her lessons matter when people choose cruelty. On that point, they align.
Elsewhere, Xerxes grumbles through a Kat-less day until the loudspeaker blares about a caliphates-only Games meeting in five minutes in theTriclinium. When the group converges, some brothers are there and others are sprinting. Slash needles Kat about eating; she snipes back. Jasper finally admits what’s on his mind— Lucian is stacking the deck—gathering the biggest monsters early and coaxing them to clash before the Games even start.
Lucian staggers in like a cartoon villain and dials every sneer to max. Halfway through his oily speech, time misbehaves. The room freezes, and everyone halts, except Kat. She can moveandtalk. She uses the pause—cataloging faces, stances, tells, threats—then reality resumes. When she tests the guys, none of them noticed anything odd. Salem looks more tired than he should, which sets off internal alarms. Jasper moves straight into triage mode and starts assigning tutors and guards. Kat answers his orders with equal parts compliance and fire.
The next day in class, Slash whispers suspicions that something is off with Kat. Anton deflects, Kat arrives, and Salem nearly nods off. Professor Wormwood—wielding petty authority like it’s a scepter—uses magic to jerk him awake. Kat defends Salem, and the professor retaliates by assigning Salem’s punishment to her. The creep factor spikes, and a fast decision is made. They need Jasper to step in so Kat doesn’t end up alone with a creep-tastic teacher in a dungeon.
Onthe path to another class, Kat vents to Anton. It’s too much, too fast. She’s carrying a private wreck, and this performance—this pressure—rubs that old injury raw. Anton sounds, for one terrifying heartbeat, like he’s decoded her entire secret. He hasn’t. He’s deduced a bad dating history, not the truth.
Zavida, waiting for class, tries to square two truths: loyalty to Jasper, and Jasper being a jerk. When the group finally lands in their seats, Kat calls all of them pretentious rich assholes because sometimes love is telling the truth. Class passes without incident. The next one, Jasper’s, is another story. He’s furious when they reach the arena. He barks at his own caliphate for speaking. Nobody knows what set the dragon off, but the through line is clear. Lucian is meddling with Jasper’s curriculum and the prince is bleeding rage down the chain. They survive the gauntlet, but Kat promptly falls asleep in her next class from pure exhaustion, and Slash shakes her awake at the end.
Slash escorts her to the dorm for a dinner-slash-meeting. The walk is calm enough that Kat lets herself enjoy it. Inside, Oriel and Salem test-drive dating banter—awkward and ridiculous, but effective. Meanwhile, in Jasper’s room, the dragon demands Zavida’s rundown from the day and works out his frustration through consensual, scalding BDSM play.
Salem and Kat finish dinner prep. He praises her quick study in the kitchen, which flusters her hard enough to send her running to change and whisper frantically with Dottie about the boys, the day, and how to be a functioning human around praise. When she emerges, the entire caliphate has sprawled across the room. She gives Jasper wide berth and takes the seat that lets her breathe. There’s sparring, there’s needling, and then Salem hands out ‘happy drinks’ to grease the discussion.
It doesn’t help when the prince announces that Lucian has scheduled a Samhain ball with all the demon universities—including the female ones. It reads like a powder keg with a dress code—even the idea of an open bar can’t soften the dread.
A few days later, Anton narrates the emergency fashion scramble. They’re in Jasper’s class when he stalks in angrier than ever and escalates training to real-weapon sparring in pairs—an obvious step up from the week’s plan. Anton kisses Kat lightly to ground her in the moment and reinforce the dating narrative, and Jasper seethes. He splits the caliphate across opponents, and they clock his absence by the end, can’t find him, but settle for relief that Kat escaped with minimal damage. Slash retrieves her. She refuses a visit to Dank for surface-level injuries because shecan’t sidestep predator optics by broadcasting fragility. Slash ignores that and has Dank meet them in the dorm anyway.
On the way, Slash admits Oriel’s built an informant network watching Kat’s routes. Layered protection. Inside, Slash feeds her per Salem’s instructions, which sparks a gentle fight about her appetite. Dank arrives, fixes what he can, and prescribes more food. The next class, Salem notices Kat’s lingering soreness. She bites her lip, a dot of blood appears, and his demon rises on instinct. That forces a conversation about what she faced in Arms. They settle, they study, and then Oriel proposes something strategic: test Kat against Fae flora to predict what the ball and the Games might do to her.
They work through a list—some foods are fine, some plants prickly. A thorny one clears canines and Cubi from suspicion. Then they bring out the Bone Tree, the kind of specimen that reads bloodlines like a nosy aunt. Kat balks; they coax. She touches it and the room detonates in light. For her, it’s like being electrocuted. When she wakes, she’s spiraling into a panic attack until they pull her out with care. No one knows what the reaction means; it’s unheard of. Kat agrees the caliphate can know, but no one else.
Slash carries her home again. The others return. X is worried; Jasper pivots to ball attire like he’s trying to outrun what happened. They lay down the law: she can’t wear a uniform to Samhain. Kat panics at the thought of Xerxes measuring her, then concedes—no scandalous cuts, nothing that screams for attention. Magical measuring gets done, and then the boys holler them into the common area for a special delivery. Everyone learns crowns are mandatory. Kat swears, then grumbles her way into wearing one Oriel had tucked in a stash—of course he did.
The next day, she opts for tactical silence. She and Dottie dissect bullying while she studies. Slash knocks with a tray and is too stubborn to go away. She waits him out, then caves, eats the meal, and finds little trinkets tucked on the plate from most of the guys. She smiles in spite of herself, deciding that she’ll stop hiding, apologize for overreacting, and show up. When she steps into the common room, they’re already there, studying. She tosses her trash, walks to her usual seat, thanks the ones who helped yesterday, and apologizes to the group. Even Jasper accepts, and they settle—the unit reknits.
Slash disobeys schedules to shadow Kat through a class where he isn’t even enrolled. They’re not letting Lillabet—or any other opportunist—corner her. With him there, nothing happens. They move to the next class. He drops her with a reminder that Oriel will collect her after.
Days tick by without incident. Xerxes sews in the dorm—ball outfit on a deadline and custom to Kat down to the last glitter. They talk through the realities of a mixed-gender event. X is optimistic; Kat is not. Girls from rival schools will read her as someone hogging the most eligible bachelors on the dance card, and she knows exactly how that looks to jealous monsters. They catalog the guys’ proclivities while X pins. By the time Oriel arrives, Kat is wiggling out of the half-finished look. No one sees it but X.
Ball day lands. Jasper glowers about how fast the whole thing came together and how suspicious the scheduling is. He paces the lobby like a general waiting on troops. One by one the caliphate arrives half-shifted and lethal—except Xerxes and Kat. They descend together in complementary skirts that turn the lobby into a collective gulp. The boys don’t fully understand why Kat looks that good; they understand it’s exactly what X engineered for her.
At the ball they avoid drinks and food that aren’t vetted. Mean girls snipe. Demon parents prowl. Lucian preens through an ass-kissing speech. Then Kat meets a constellation of parents, including the King. He’s intolerable. Jasper retaliates by kissing Kat in front of everyone, the kind of deliberate provocation that radiates up the social ladder. They whisk Kat to a private room to breathe through the panic, then retreat to the dorm after she’s steady enough to move.
Back in her space, Kat realizes she might be in over her head anatomically and makes a mental note to consult Dank. They tease Jasper about the kiss; the teasing makes Kat mortified and Jasper insufferably smug. Monday arrives with bad social media takes about the ball swirling in Kat’s head like gnats. The guys find her at lunch, prod gently, and she admits she hates feeling like a burden. They shut that down. Jasper reminds her he’s the heir to Hell and only does what he chooses.
Oriel walks her to class; she quietly slots a visit to Dank on the schedule. Salem tags along. She boots them both from the exam room so she can ask Dank questions she doesn’t want echoed in the hall. He gives her a potion to keep her secret protected and a pamphlet that—later—will have her mind spinning.
Back in the dorm, Oriel and Salem ask to show her their animals—low-stakes exposure therapy. She agrees. The crow and the panda appear, and both love her. The rest of the caliphate comes home mid-cuddle and bristles because they wanted to go first. She promises they’ll all get a turn. Jasper orders the shifts undone, which leaves two naked demons standing in front of Kat while she tries not to choke on air.
She’s rattled enough to obsess over whether Salem deciphered the potion’s purpose and to spiral about Dank’s very educational pamphlet. A professor tries to embarrass her by asking about human-world sex education. She survives that too. After lunch she circles back to Oriel and Salem, ready to see their demons.
It’s hard for them—they know their demons are attracted to her and that they’re walking a thin line. The scene thrums with tension right up until someone pounds on the door. Slash and Anton stand there, insistent escorts to class.
Days later atTriclinium, the conversation swerves to uniforms. Xerxes shares the fight they had to wage for their own presentation. Kat is furious on their behalf, which turns into a wider compare-and-contrast about human school clothes. Slash shadows Oriel and Kat after lunch, suspicious they’re avoiding the group. He tracks them to a quiet library floor where they sprawl and talk. He figures out Kat isn’t moping over rejection—she’s unnerved by hot-and-cold distance while the guys try to keep their animals and demons from stampeding.
