Chapter 228 Speak Varketh
(Apollo)
Apollo continued to listen to his court. To answer. To judge. To dismantle disputes with a sentence or a glance. All the while, his hand moved in slow, idle paths along Adelaide’s spine, down the length of her arm, through the loose spill of her hair. The touches were unhurried. Thoughtless in appearance. Gentle in a way that did not belong in this room. To this creature.
That was what unsettled them.
At first, it was only looks. Lingering glances caught and quickly masked. Eyes that drifted back despite better judgment. A few demons stared too long at the way she slept against him, bare skin warm against stone that should have scorched her to ash.
Apollo noticed every one of them. Yet, he did not react.
Then came the whispers. Low. Careful. Not yet bold enough to be called dissent. Questions shaped like breath against stone. Doubt disguised as curiosity. The sound moved like insects through the hall, skittering from shadow to shadow.
Apollo’s fingers paused briefly in her hair. His jaw tightened.
A demon at the front of the court shifted his weight forward, claws flexing. His eyes lingered openly on Adelaide now, teeth flashing in something not quite a smile. Possession flickered there. Calculation. Hunger.
Another voice murmured something too quiet to be understood—but Apollo understood it anyway.
The temperature dropped. Not dramatically. Not violently. Just enough that breath fogged faintly in the air, and several demons stiffened, instincts screaming before their minds caught up.
Apollo lifted one hand. Not sharply. Not angrily. The gesture alone was enough.
Sound died mid-breath. Whispers collapsed into nothing. Even the torches seemed to still, flames bowing inward to hear the king's verdict.
Apollo did not look at them at first. His gaze lingered on Adelaide, asleep against his chest, her breath slow and even, her body heavy with trust in his arms. His thumb traced an absent line along her bare arm once, grounding her more securely against him.
Then he looked up.
“I can feel it,” he said calmly, voice carrying without effort. “Your unease.”
A ripple moved through the court. Not sound. Awareness.
“You are… unhappy,” Apollo continued, tone almost reflective. “And that concerns me.”
That did it. A visible stir swept the chamber. Demons shifted, exchanged glances, wings flexing uneasily. This was wrong. This was not how the Devil spoke.
He had always delighted in their misery.
“I am your king,” Apollo went on, eyes sweeping them slowly. “I have no desire for my court to be uncomfortable.”
Shock sharpened into something dangerous.
Before the silence could settle, before instinct could remember fear, a demon stepped forward.
He did not rush. He did not hesitate. He moved with the contempt of someone who believed the rules had never applied to him in the first place.
He was tall even among his kind, broad through the shoulders with the bearing of one who had commanded others long before this throne had been carved. His skin was the dark grey of cooled ash, mapped with old scars that had not been healed so much as endured—deep grooves crossing his chest and throat, a long burn mark twisting up one arm like a fossilised flame. One horn curved higher than the other, chipped and left unrepaired, as if the damage itself had become a mark of rank rather than injury.
He wore no armour, but he did not need it. Authority sat in his posture. In the way he advanced without hurry. In the certainty of a creature who had survived long enough to mistake survival for invincibility.
His posture carried rank. His expression carried disgust.
He did not bow. He did not lower his gaze.
That was the first mistake.
Apollo did not look surprised. He looked… resigned.
“Varketh,” Apollo said flatly.
The name landed like a verdict already written. As if, of all the creatures in his court, this one had always been the most predictable. The one who would mistake longevity for permission. Survival for superiority.
The demon didn’t answer. Didn’t kneel. Didn’t even acknowledge Apollo’s presence.
Instead, his sneer twisted toward Adelaide. Toward the woman asleep against the Devil’s chest. Toward the bare curve of her shoulder. The slow, unguarded rise and fall of her breath.
“This human—” he spat. The word human came out like poison, a wet hiss of contempt meant to stain the air.
Apollo flicked his wrist.
That was all.
No incantation. No warning. No pause to allow regret.
Red Devil-fire snapped into existence around the demon’s body, coiling tight like a living thing. Dense and red and absolute. The creature barely had time to inhale before the flames crushed inward.
Flesh blackened. Bone folded. The sneer never had a chance to become a scream.
Ash scattered across the stone. Embers winked out.
Silence crashed back down, heavier than before.
Apollo’s hand never left Adelaide.
He didn’t look at the remains.
“This,” he said, voice unchanged as he gestured faintly toward the woman resting against him, “is not an invitation for opinion.”
His fingers tightened at her waist, not enough to wake her, but enough to remind every creature present exactly where she belonged.
“If any of you wish to challenge my throne,” Apollo continued evenly, “or question my judgment—”
His gaze lifted then, molten and unblinking, sweeping the court in one slow, merciless pass.
“Do it.”
The air thickened, pressure bearing down like a held blade. The braziers behind the throne roared to life, casting a hellish red glow over the court.
“Step forward,” he finished, “if you are prepared to bleed for the privilege.”
The weight of the threat settled in the bones of the room.
No one moved. No one breathed.
One by one, demons lowered their gazes. Knees bent. Wings folded. The court bowed as a single, instinctive organism—fear and reverence indistinguishable in the gesture.
Apollo leaned back, satisfied.
His hand resumed its slow, absent path through Adelaide’s hair. She slept on, unaware that Hell itself had just learned the cost of looking at her the wrong way.
And the mountain listened.