Does Silence cancel a readied spell?

Question

The silence spell description states:

For the duration, no sound can be created within or pass through a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range. Any creature or object entirely inside the sphere is immune to thunder damage, and creatures are deafened while entirely inside it. Casting a spell that includes a verbal component is impossible there.

The rules on readying a spell state:

When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs. To be readied, a spell must have a casting time of 1 action, and holding onto the spell's magic requires concentration. If your concentration is broken, the spell dissipates without taking effect.

Marco the Warlock steps into a teleportation circle with an enemy alhoon hot on his heels. The alhoon decides to ready a disintegrate spell against the first creature it sees when it emerges from the teleportation circle. Meanwhile, Marco uses a magic item to cast silence centered on the other end of the teleportation circle immediately after he emerges. The alhoon steps through the circle and...

Does the alhoon disintegrate Marco because the spell was already cast and just being stored? Or does the alhoon lose the spell because he can no longer produce the verbal component?

Answer 1

Silence does nothing to a readied disintegrate

When you ready a spell, you cast it as normal but hold its energy, which you release with your reaction when the trigger occurs.

The disintegrate has already been fully cast and its power held. All the components have already been performed including any verbal components which silence could have disrupted (had the effect been present during the actual casting). Thus, silence cannot affect the completely readied disintegrate. RIP Marco.

This applies to spells in general as well. The only edge cases (as pointed out by @Slagmoth) are some spells that require a target that can hear you or depend on some sort of audible effect (eg. suggestion). For these spells, silence would prevent their effects. However, for any other spell, silence will do nothing once the spell has already been cast and readied.

Answer 2

While the wording suggests that readying an action means you use the components during your turn and then when you use your reaction you simply release the spell that is held in place, like you guessed, I don't think this scenario would make sense for using the Ready action.

Movement is part of your turn, so unless the Alhoon was specifically going, "I'm going to go into this teleportation circle, let whoever is on the other side have a chance to attack me, and then destroy them," it doesn't quite make sense for this to go that way. To be honest, it would have made more sense for them to just go through and then cast the spell as normal – which would still kill Marco unless he had Counterspell or set up Silence the turn before that. Anything else is just metagaming; either Marco knowing what the Alhoon is planning or the Alhoon knowing about the trap set up for him on the other side.