Chapter 165 Twisted Want
(Apollo)
He let the cloak fall to the floor.
“You wear his protection,” he said. “You ache while thinking of him. You speak of your flame waking his. And you wonder why I’m angry?”
“He gave it to me because I was cold,” she protested. “He was just—”
“Just obeying,” Apollo cut in, voice a cold, sharp blade. “Just loyal. Just useful. That is all he is supposed to be.”
Her eyes flashed. “He saved my life.”
“So did I,” Apollo snarled. She flinched but held his gaze, defiance glinting in her eyes.
Dangerous girl, he thought. Stubborn. Too willing to see goodness in monsters—his monsters.
“Do you want him?” he asked suddenly.
The question shocked them both.
Her lips parted. No sound emerged.
He heard the answer in her faltering pulse, in the way shame and want tangled within her.
His magic flared, possessive and vicious. The wards along the walls answered with a faint, anxious chime, as if trying to warn the stones themselves.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She did.
Molten gold flooded his irises, swallowing the dark. His horns rose a fraction higher, curving back. His tail lashed once, then stilled, tip twitching. The faint heat-ripple around his body sharpened, the air bending just slightly where his power thickened in front of her.
“I am the one who took you down from that cross. I am the one who broke you open and fed your fire. I am the one whose mark is burned into your skin.” He lifted a hand and brushed the backs of his fingers over the faint, healed bite pattern along her neck. Her breath hitched, his own mark burned in response. “You are mine, Adelaide.”
Her flame flared at the word—mine—answering in spite of herself. He felt the way it reacted to his voice, his claim, the low, dark promise in it. Somewhere deep under the floor, old wards stirred uneasily, like an echo of a prophecy turning over in its sleep. An ancient covenant whispering: king and flame, devil and bride.
He bent closer, his mouth near her ear.
“You smell like you’ve forgotten that,” he whispered.
“I haven’t,” she said, though her voice shook. “I just— I don’t know how to be anything down here but… pulled apart.”
He heard it again—the fracture. He had options. He could have been gentle. He could have asked about it. He could have spoken to her like the woman she was becoming in his realm instead of the possession every instinct screamed she was.
He almost told her that Heaven did the same thing to souls. That falling wasn’t the first fracture. Instead, jealousy chose for him.
“Yet, you lay in his cloak, in my chamber, with my shadow at your door, and you didn’t mean to set yourself alight?”
“I’m not a match you can just strike,” she snapped, quicker than she probably meant to. The flash of spine tightened something low in him in an entirely different way. “I don’t even know how this—” Her hand flew in a frustrated gesture at her chest. “—works.”
He took another step closer.
“You don’t know,” he repeated. “And yet you manage to make my wards hum, my palace purr, my demon’s ember wake… and my cock hard…” He smiled without warmth. “While lying on the floor doing nothing at all.”
Her eyes widened. Flicked down to the strain of his bulge against his pants. Then away.
Heat flared under her skin again, embarrassment and anger and something else tangling.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” she muttered.
Ah.
He tasted the truth of that, hot and sharp, in the sudden spike of shame that cut through her aura.
His nostrils flared. “No?”
She clenched her jaw. Didn’t answer.
He let the silence stretch, the air thickening between them until the only sounds were her breathing and the low crackle of the ever-present fire in the veins of the stone. Even the distant roar of Hell’s rivers seemed to hush, as though the realm itself were leaning closer to listen.
“What did you think about, Little Flame?” he asked softly. “As you lay here and burned?”
She folded her arms across her chest, cloak shifting. “Does it matter?”
His gaze darkened.
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
She flinched at his tone but held his eyes. “You,” she said finally. “Fine. You. Happy now?”
Liar, his magic whispered. Not entirely. Her flame had two focal points, and he could feel the tug of the other like a splinter under his thumb.
His jaw worked.
“Me,” he said again. “And was my shadow outside the door when you thought of me?”
Her eyes flicked to the door, then back. “He was where you ordered him to be.”
“Answer the question,” Apollo said.
She blew out a breath through her nose, frustration sparking. “Yes,” she ground out. “He was outside the door. And no, he didn’t come in. And no, he didn’t touch me. And no, I didn’t touch him. I don’t need your help to—” She cut herself off, cheeks flushing deeper.
To make yourself cry out, he finished in his head. To sin, his darker instinct supplied.
The image bloomed unbidden—her back arched on his sheets, her own hand between her thighs, his name on her tongue or someone else’s—and his temper snarled.
A growl rumbled low in his chest before he could stop it.
Her chin lifted. “If you’re here to punish him for something he didn’t do—”
“I’m not here for him,” Apollo said, voice suddenly very, very calm. “I am here for you.”
Her pulse stuttered.
He closed the remaining distance in two slow steps.
Up close, he could see the faint remnants of Cael’s cloak’s shadow on her skin where it had warmed her. Smell the ghost of the other demon’s magic lingering bloodless and cool in the air, draped over the brighter, wilder scent of her own burning.
It annoyed him more than it should have.
He reached out.
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t move away.
His hand closed around her waist.
He did it deliberately—fingers wrapping fully around, palm pressing into the small of her back, pulling her just enough that her body met his. Not enough to hurt. Enough to make it unmistakable who held her upright now.
The contact sent a shockwave through both their magics—his fire and her golden heat flaring where they met, like two flint stones striking.
Heat flared where they touched.
Her hands flew to his chest for balance. The contact jolted through him, a clean, hot line from sternum to groin. Her flame leapt eagerly to meet his, bright and untamed, licking along the edges of his power with a familiarity that made his teeth ache.
“Apollo…” she breathed.
His other hand rose, catching her chin, thumb pressing into the soft place along her jaw. He tilted her face up, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Clarifying,” he said.
His gaze searched her face—every flicker of emotion, every tremor. Her pupils were blown wide. Her skin was flushed. The shame he’d felt earlier still coiled inside her, but it was drowned now by something else.
Want.
Want for him. Want for the other. For both. Twisted together.
He could feel it. Taste it. The same way he had tasted the flavours of souls in his dungeon, but richer, more immediate. Two prayers spoken at once. It infuriated him that she had that capacity—to be wound between demon and Devil like a rope. Somewhere in the back of his mind, an old fragment of prophecy hissed and coiled: three flames, one heart, a choice that would ruin a king.