Chapter 126 Do I Hurt
(Apollo & Adelaide)
The water climbed up Apollo's calves, past his knees, swirling around his thighs as he moved. It accepted him instantly, the Hellfire veins under the stone pulsing brighter at his approach. He moved with unhurried certainty, the surface breaking around him in smooth ripples. The lanterns drifted subtly away, giving him space as if they knew exactly how much he took simply by existing.
By the time he reached her, the water was at his waist.
Adelaide watched him through the steam, fighting the urge to inch away. There was nowhere to go; the pool curved around them, small enough to feel intimate, large enough that he could have kept his distance if he’d chosen to.
He didn’t.
He stopped behind her, close enough that she could feel the disturbance of his presence against her back, the water shifting with each quiet breath he took.
“For once,” he said, “don’t move.”
“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” she murmured, but she obeyed. Her body still flinched at his nearness, a reflex deep as marrow, but the water muted it, smoothing the edge of panic into something duller. Manageable.
He reached to the side, fingers brushing along the carved stone ledge. A moment later, he withdrew a small, dark bowl and a folded cloth from a niche in the rock—a recess Adelaide hadn’t noticed, cleverly hidden among etched patterns.
Steam curled around his hands as he poured water into the bowl. The scent of crushed herbs rose with it—sharp, green, unfamiliar, cutting through the thicker smell of heated stone. It was the first scent in Hell that didn’t feel like foreboding. It hit her like a memory of forests after rain, so out of place it made her throat tighten.
Adelaide tilted her head, confused. “What is that?”
“Oil,” he said. “And ash. And a few things mortals would call impossible.” He glanced at her over the rim of the bowl. “If you want a list, you’re in the wrong realm.”
“Comforting,” she muttered weakly.
He ignored that.
“Turn.”
The word was soft. It was still a command.
She twisted slowly in the water until her back was to him, wincing when her muscles protested. The pool carried some of her weight, but not all; she had to work to keep herself upright. Her hands skimmed along the water’s surface as she turned, leaving small, rippling trails behind her. A tremor shook through her arms on the effort, and she swallowed a sound she refused to give him, jaw tightening until it ached.
Apollo stepped closer, water lapping at his stomach now. He set the bowl on the ledge within reach and dipped the cloth into it, working the mixture through the fabric with his fingers.
Then he touched her.
The cloth slid over the crown of her head, warm and heavy, squeezing water through her tangled hair. He moved carefully, drawing it along her scalp, massaging the mixture down through the dark strands. The pressure was firm in a way that didn’t hurt, and that difference made her tense harder than pain ever did.
Adelaide stiffened on instinct. Years of bracing for blows, not gentle touches, coiled through her spine. Her hands twitched at her sides, fingers curling against the water.
“Relax,” he said quietly, close to her ear.
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is when I command it.”
“Not everything listens to you,” she said, but her voice was softer now, frayed around the edges.
He hummed in his chest, a low sound that vibrated through the inch of water separating their bodies.
“Your muscles disagree.”
She wanted to argue, but it was getting harder to remember what the fight had been about. The heat, the water, the steady rhythm of his hands, all of it made her thoughts slide around like stones in a current.
His fingers eased through her hair in slow, methodical strokes. The oil-laced water slicked the strands, and he combed out the tangles with care that bordered on reverent, starting near her scalp and working his way down.
No yanking. No impatience. Just steady, unyielding patience.
Adelaide’s eyes fluttered shut.
It felt… wrong, to enjoy it. Wrong that her shoulders, so used to bracing against pain, had begun to unclench. Wrong that her mind, always scrabbling for footholds and exits and angles, was quieting under the simple, repetitive ritual of being cared for. Wrong that her body trusted the pattern even when her mind screamed not to.
She waited for the lash of a cruel comment. For the hand to tighten into a fist. For the cloth to turn from soothing to punishing.
It didn’t.
The cloth slid down, along the curve of her skull and the nape of her neck. Water trickled in slow, warm rivulets down her spine, following the line of her vertebrae.
His hand followed.
He set the cloth aside for a moment and spread his palm flat between her shoulder blades, fingers splayed over the knots there.
Adelaide sucked in a sharp breath.
“Breathe,” he reminded her.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she muttered again, but the words lacked heat.
He pressed his thumb into one of the knots, firm but not cruel. The muscle spasmed, then loosened beneath the pressure.
To her horror, a tiny sound escaped her—a soft, involuntary sigh. It startled her more than any threat. Her eyes snapped open, and she glared at the steam like it had betrayed her.
“See?” he said. “Not impossible.”
“Shut up,” she breathed, but she didn’t move away.
He worked slowly, dragging the cloth across her back in long strokes, washing away the sweat and dried traces of their earlier violence. The faint bruises his hands had left earlier marred the pale canvas of her skin; his thumbs traced their edges with an odd, focused attention. Not regret. Not an apology. Attention like inventory, like assessment, like a king memorising the cost of what he’d demanded.
He didn’t apologise. The Devil did not apologise.
But his touch lingered there.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
She huffed. “Which part?”
“The parts I touched,” he said.
“That’s not very specific,” she said dryly, but there was a tremor underneath. After a heartbeat, she added, quieter, “Some of it.”
His fingers gentled by a fraction. “Good.”
She snorted. “Of course you’d say that.”
“If you can feel it,” he said, “you’re not broken.”
The words slipped out without his usual coat of barbed humour. They hung between them in the steam, heavier than he’d intended. Adelaide swallowed again, throat bobbing. The bond picked up the hitch in her breath like a startled animal.
Adelaide swallowed. Something hot pricked at the backs of her eyes again.
“Is that your idea of reassurance?” she asked, voice thin.
“It’s the only kind you’ll get from me,” he said.