Chapter 129 To Watch From Afar
(Caelum Ashborne)
Caelum had not meant to stay.
The decision had been made hours ago, in the clean, disciplined part of his mind that still believed in exits and restraint. It felt laughable now, standing here with his back pressed to stone that pulsed like a living ribcage.
He told himself that three times as he stood in the narrow hollow between walls, cloak of shadow drawn tight, body pressed against warm stone laced with the Devil’s wards. The rock hummed faintly against his spine, wards singing in a low, warning key that told him he had no right to be this close. The crack was no more than a sliver—a deliberate flaw in the palace bones that only someone like him would notice, would dare to test.
It smelled different here, he realised. Not just fire and iron, but heat soaked into rock over centuries, like breath trapped in lungs that never exhaled.
He had come to confirm she was still alive. That was all. Now he couldn’t move.
The chamber beyond pulsed like a living heart. Magic throbbed through the stone, through the air, through him. Hellfire. Devilfire. And something else—something thinner and finer, a bright thread of heat that caught every time he reached for it.
Her ember.
It tugged at his like a whispered name in a crowded room.
Caelum’s breath stayed locked in his lungs as he looked through the slit in the stone.
Adelaide bent over the bench, wrists chained to the floor, spine a taut, vulnerable arc. Her hair fell forward in damp, dark waves. Her toes dug into the glowing stone, curling with each impact, slipping and catching again as she struggled to stay upright. Her thighs trembled violently—tiny, uncontrolled spasms that climbed up her legs over the round of her ass, and into the curve of her hips every time the Devil’s body crashed into hers. Her calves quivered. Her knees threatened to buckle. Sweat glistened along the backs of her legs, catching the molten light and making her skin shine like she’d been dipped in gold.
Her whole body was trembling—not from fear this time, but from the relentless, devastating rhythm he set. The kind of shaking that came from nerves overloaded, muscles pushed past sense, pleasure biting at the edge of pain.
The Devil towered behind her, body bracketed around hers, all muscle and power and burning gold eyes. His movements were all Devil Beast—slow drag, brutal thrust, slow drag, brutal thrust—each one punching a soft, bitten-off cry from her lips. The sound of flesh meeting flesh echoed off the chamber walls, a wet, punishing rhythm that made Caelum’s jaw clench.
The echoes layered over one another, multiplying, until the whole room seemed to breathe with them—stone and flame and skin locked into one relentless cadence.
But Caelum saw it. The strain. The tension. The barely leashed violence under Apollo’s skin.
Muscles bulged and contracted along the Devil’s arms and shoulders, each forward drive of his hips carved into his body like effort he shouldn’t need. Veins stood out along his forearms, dark against molten scaled skin. His back flexed with too much force, every line of him coiled tight as though he fought himself as fiercely as he fucked her.
Heat rippled over his skin—scales flickering in and out with each shudder, horns threatening to rise and twirl higher, wings twitching and flexing like they wanted to tear the air around them. His tail lashed once, hard, before he caught it still.
The Devil’s control wasn’t breaking. It was being negotiated, second by second, with the beast inside him. The beast was rolling under Apollo’s flesh, clawing for dominance.
Caelum’s breath caught.
The Devil was losing control. Because of her. Because of the way she shook, the way she moaned, the way her body bowed and broke and offered itself up in trembling, desperate arcs.
A shiver racked her then—full-bodied, helpless. Her thighs buckled, nearly giving out before she caught herself on a ragged inhale. Sweat dripped from her chin onto the glowing stone beneath. Her legs trembled so hard now that her chains rattled softly with each thrust.
She made a sound then—a broken, breathless thing halfway between a gasp and a moan—and Caelum’s hand slammed against the stone to stop himself from swaying. His palm skidded on warm rock, fingers splaying wide, searching for an anchor that wasn’t there.
The stone burned his skin. He welcomed it. Pain was simpler than what crawled through him now.
She wasn’t screaming in terror. Not anymore.
Her voice had changed; he could hear it in the way the sound rose and caught. There was strain, yes. Overwhelm. But underneath, woven through every ragged breath, every shudder of her legs, every clench of her shaking thighs, was something else. Want.
A sharp, aching hunger that struck Caelum like a blade.
Each time the Devil drove his body against hers, a low, guttural noise tore from her throat. Not begging. Not pleading. Reaching. Meeting. Answering.
Her body shook like she was unravelling from the inside out. Her legs trembled so violently Caelum swore he could feel the vibrations through the stone. And the sounds she made—the fractured moans, the breathless catches, the little gasps that slipped out when she tried to hold them back—each one carved another break in his control.
Watching her come undone under someone else’s hands—under the Devil’s hands—should have enraged him.
It didn’t. It made him impossibly, painfully hard. The betrayal of his own body felt worse than any treachery he’d ever committed.
It made something ancient flicker inside him—a dying ember sparking back to life—dragging heat through his veins, through his palms, through his teeth. His Emberflame stirred, unbidden, rising toward her like a starving thing sensing food at last. The familiar, dull burn he’d grown used to became a sharp, insistent throb.
He wanted to feel her shaking like that because of him. He wanted to touch the sweat on her skin. He wanted to be the one forcing those sounds from her throat.
And for the first time, he admitted it: He had been wrong. The Devil wasn’t forcing her. She wasn’t enduring him. She wanted this. She wanted him. The truth slid under his ribs like a blade. Clean. Merciless. And Caelum—gods, Caelum wanted her too.
His jaw clenched. He should have looked away. Should have turned and walked back the way he’d come, disappearing into the palace like smoke. That was his job. His talent. Vanish. Watch. Report.
Instead he watched.
Her shoulders shook with every thrust. Her fingers clawed uselessly at the floor, then flattened, then clawed again. The bench creaked. Magic crawled over the walls like light under water. The sounds she made—those small, desperate, strangled cries—dragged over Caelum’s nerves like a rough hand over exposed skin.
Each one lit something in him. Not anger. Lust.
The realisation hit with a vicious, uncomfortable jolt.
He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, the air hot and tasting of ash. His own body ached, hard and heavy in a way he had not allowed himself to feel in… years, maybe. Decades. It was obscene, wrong, to stand there pressed into shadow, watching the Devil take this mortal girl like this and feel desire coil through him instead of disgust.
But he did.