Chapter 177 Leash and Law
(Caelum Ashborne)
His shadows spasmed, flaring out in a wild, defensive burst, then collapsed so hard against his chest it stole his breath. His throat burned. His stomach lurched. In his veins, shame and hunger tangled into a twisted, poisonous braid.
This was not how he had imagined touching her. This was not how any holy story went.
He wanted to lunge. He wanted to tear the Devil’s hand away. He wanted to sink his tongue against his own skin and steal that taste back, just to know. He wanted her.
“Do you feel that?” Apollo murmured.
Caelum’s voice broke on the way to his mouth. Nothing came out. His lips parted around a sound that never formed.
Apollo’s gaze flicked to the smear on his cheek, then back to his eyes. He looked satisfied. Not just with the cruelty. With the reaction. With the proof that Caelum could be moved.
“That,” Apollo said, voice soft as an unsheathed blade, “is all of her you will ever have.”
The words hit like poured metal. They landed like a curse carved into stone.
Rage snapped first—hot, bright, blinding. A lifetime of Emberborn pride reared up in him, howling at the insult of a Devil claiming what should have been sacred, shared only between Queen and kin. He imagined flames swallowing this chamber, burning Apollo down to bone.
Then shame wrapped him—heavy, unrelenting, crawling just beneath his skin. The Devil was right. Caelum still wanted this, even now. Desire surged—violent, humiliating, tangled with need. His body betrayed him: burning at her scent, trembling at the echo of her power. The tumult nearly sent him crashing back to the floor.
Apollo watched every fracture in his control. Drank it in like it fed him, like Caelum’s turmoil was a feast he’d earned.
“Stand,” Apollo ordered.
The leash spell circling Caelum’s wrist gave a warning pulse, tightening just enough to make his bones grind.
He forced himself upright. Muscles trembled. His knees wobbled like they might give way. His heart hammered so hard he thought the Devil might hear each beat trying to escape.
Apollo leaned in, gripping his jaw. His voice dropped low, roughened by lust and something that sounded dangerously close to emotion.
“And remember this,” he said, his thumb swiping over Caelum’s jaw, smearing her slick deeper into his skin until the heat sank into bone. “This is more than you deserve.”
Caelum’s breath stopped. He had survived wars, exile, battlefields, and hunger. But this—this was annihilation by humiliation. None of it had made him feel as small as this one act.
“Leave,” Apollo commanded. “The hallway. Guard the door. You do not take a single step inside this room unless I call for you. If you cross the threshold without my permission—” His gaze cut across Caelum’s face, lingering on the stripe of slick he’d left there. “—you will die.”
The leash burned hotter, the threat seared into the spell.
Caelum bowed his head once. The closest thing to a salute he could manage without his hands shaking.
Then he turned. Every step toward the door cost him. Each pace cut another thread between him and the girl hanging in the centre of the room. His back crawled with awareness—of Apollo behind him, of Adelaide’s flame still reaching, of the prophecy coiled like a sleeping serpent around his spine.
For when they burn in unison—three lights, one blaze—kingdoms will kneel, and crowns will melt.
He had been a child when he first heard the words. He heard them again now, chasing him to the door.
He stepped over the threshold.
The leash spell constricted in a sudden, vicious cinch, like a living thing coiling tighter around his wrist and forearm, scales of molten magic pressing into his skin. He bit back a flinch, fingers curling into a fist.
The heavy door swung shut behind him with a final, echoing thud. A tomb sealing shut. A line drawn between damnation and obedience.
He leaned over and took a deep breath. How had he escaped death… again? The Devil should have flayed him where he stood for seeing what he claimed. And still. Again. He let him live. It made no sense.
After a beat, her sounds hit him. The thick stone did nothing to dull them. Her broken moans. Her ragged breathing. The small, helpless noises that slipped out when she couldn’t hold them in. The slap of Apollo’s body driving into hers. The low, guttural sounds the Devil made when he forgot anyone else existed.
Each sound punched through Caelum’s chest like a heated blade.
He pressed his back to the stone beside the door, the rock still warm from the chamber’s magic. He slid along the stone until his shoulders found the line where the frame met the wall, as close as he could get without disobeying. Shadows clung to him in frantic patches, trying to hide him from what he was forced to hear.
He closed his eyes. And he felt her. Not the way Apollo did. Not through a bond of claws and claiming. Through her flame. Through the raw, untrained, Queen-born power spilling out of her in wild bursts every time she climbed higher. It slipped through the cracks in the door, seeped into the stone, followed the old lava veins threaded through the stronghold and slid into him through every place his skin touched the mountain.
Heat crept beneath his flesh like a second blood.
Every time she gasped, his muscles jerked. Every time she moaned, his lungs forgot how to work. Every time she broke out in a louder cry, his vision went white around the edges. And underneath it all, deeper than flesh, something else stirred. The thread of the Prophecy, a resonance he was never meant to feel, thrummed between his bones and hers. Shadow answering Queen. Ember answering Spark.
The Devil should have been the third point. He should have been the flame that rose to meet her. Not Apollo’s.
But the line between Caelum and Adelaide tightened anyway, humming like a string drawn close to snapping.
The leash spell snapped at him for daring to feel it.
Pain flared around his wrist, shooting up his arm. He hissed through his teeth, head tipping back against the stone. The taste of her still sat on his tongue from that single, humiliating smear on his cheek. He lifted his hand. Hesitantly. And touched where she had marked him. His fingers trembled as he smeared them through her wetness. When he pulled back his hand, he could see it, glimmering on his fingertips like firelight.
He groaned. Low and desperate. Then brought his fingers to his nose and inhaled sharply.
The scent almost sent him to his knees. Gods. She smells like sin and heaven. Like no place a demon should ever be allowed to trespass.
He moved his hand to his mouth and rolled his tongue over his finger. Another groan broke free of him. She tasted even better. He was instantly hard. Picturing his mouth on her, taking in her juices firsthand.
Her moans echoed through the stone, tightening around his chest.
His hand drifted downward, and he swiftly freed his erection. It sprang free and hit his stomach. With his second hand, the one branded by her slick arousal, he ran it over his shaft. Rubbing her essence all over him.
For just a second, he could almost picture her hot cunt wrapped around him.
He braced his free hand against the wall, fingers digging into cracks worn by centuries of claws. Shadows quivered under his palms. His breathing went rough, syncing against his will with the rhythm he heard through the door.
He tried—gods, he tried—to stop imagining.
But his mind betrayed him.