Chapter 290 Come Back
(Apollo, Adelaide & Caelum)
Apollo turned back toward Adelaide.
She stood rigid, trying not to cry, trying not to scream at both of them, trying not to run down the corridor and chain herself to him if that was what it took to keep him from vanishing into war. Her hands clenched at her sides, nails biting into her palms, every muscle straining against the urge to move, to do anything but stand still and watch him slip away.
He approached her slowly.
Her wings lowered slightly as he came near, the fire along their edges softening from battle-bright to something more intimate.
He reached down. The leash at her ankle flared again as his fingers brushed the air just above it. He did not remove it. He adjusted it.
The molten thread shifted tone, the red deepening, loosening its reactionary flare to shadow proximity. It would no longer ignite if Cael touched her in necessity.
Adelaide felt the shift as if a door had opened inside her. The air changed, the bond loosening just enough to let her breathe, though the relief was edged with something sharp and uncertain.
Apollo rose, his hand coming to cup her jaw.
“Stay inside the palace,” he said quietly. “If the outer gates fall, you retreat to the Veil of Cinders. The mages will shield you.”
“I should be with you,” she whispered.
His thumb brushed her cheek. “You are,” he said.
Behind her, Cael stepped closer. Not to claim. To anchor.
The way her breath hitched, as if she had already begun to lose him, anchored Cael in place more surely than any command could have. He felt it in his bones, the ache of it settling deep, a reminder that some things could not be ordered away.
For a fraction of a second, neither of them spoke.
The corridor seemed to fall away, the distant tremors of Hell’s shifting state dimming beneath the sudden, fragile quiet that formed between them.
Then Adelaide moved. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t think. She stepped into him, rising onto her toes as her hands came up—one sliding into his hair, the other bracing against his shoulder—and pulled him down to her.
The kiss was not careful. It was not restrained. It was pure need.
Apollo caught her instinctively, one arm wrapping around her waist as the force of her movement carried her into him, lifting her cleanly from the ground. Her body pressed against his, her legs bracing against his hips for balance as she kissed him harder, deeper, as though trying to imprint herself into him before he could disappear into war.
For a heartbeat, he froze. Not in rejection. But in the impact of the moment.
Then something in him gave.
His hand slid up her back, fingers spreading between her shoulder blades as he pulled her closer, his mouth answering hers with a depth that had nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with the fact that he needed this—needed her—before stepping into whatever waited beyond those walls.
Her hair slipped loose around his hand, strands catching against his knuckles as he tilted his head, deepening the kiss in a way that made her breath break against his mouth.
A tear slipped free from the corner of her eye. She didn’t even realise it had fallen until it brushed warm against his skin.
Apollo felt it.
That single drop cut through him more cleanly than any blade ever had.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his forehead pressing briefly to hers, their breaths tangled and uneven between them.
“Come back to me,” she said, her voice breaking despite her effort to steady it. Her fingers tightened in his hair, anchoring him there, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Don’t you dare walk into that and not come back to me.”
The demand wasn’t soft. It wasn’t pleading.
It was fierce. Terrified. Certain.
Apollo’s hand came up to her face, his thumb brushing just beneath her eye where the tear had fallen, the gesture far gentler than anything he had shown her in the chaos before.
“There is nothing,” he said, his voice low and absolute, “that could keep me from you.”
He did not release her immediately. For several breaths, he held her suspended between them, her body still pressed tightly against his, her fingers tangled in his hair as though she feared that if she loosened her grip, he would dissolve into smoke and distance. His forehead rested against hers, their breaths mingling, uneven and warm, and for a fragile pocket of time, the gathering war receded to the edges of sensation.
Then the tremor beneath the palace returned.
It rolled faintly through the volcanic stone, a reminder that the eastern boundary was no longer patient.
Apollo forced himself to move.
Slowly, deliberately, he lowered her to the ground. His hands slid from her waist to her upper arms, steadying her as her feet touched stone, as though placing her somewhere solid could anchor what was unravelling around them. His grip lingered there, thumbs pressing lightly into the warmth of her skin, memorising the feel of her before the battlefield tried to take it from him.
He let go.
The loss of his touch hit harder than the kiss itself. Absence rang through her body like a bruise, sharp and lingering, the echo of him refusing to fade.
Apollo turned.
He took a single step away from her.
That was enough.