Chapter 487: Reach For Me

(Adelaide)

Tomathican claimed Adelaide’s presence, guiding her through a labyrinth of broad corridors until they reached the carved timber doors she knew too well.

"My Queen." He bowed, one hand resting over his heart, before stepping back. "I shall return before the evening meal."

Adelaide gifted him a grateful smile, uncertain if she now wielded the power to dismiss or merely permitted others to slip away. Tomathican, ever attuned to her hesitation, inclined his head and vanished into the hush, leaving her claimed by the hush and the golden glow of palace lanterns.

For a few moments, she simply stood there. The corridor was almost unnaturally peaceful after everything she had seen that afternoon. The laughter drifting through the gardens. The endless whispers filling the library. Arkael's stories. The soft rustle of turning pages. Even now she could almost hear them lingering somewhere behind her, as though the palace itself had not quite stopped speaking.

Her fingers curled around the bronze handle, claiming the door and coaxing it open. The Queen’s chambers greeted her with a familiarity that felt suddenly false. She paused, breath caught. Nothing had changed enough for a stranger to notice, but she was no stranger. She saw every difference.

The bed was remade with such ruthless perfection that every memory of her body’s imprint had been erased. The silver-backed brush and its twin comb stood in rigid alignment, polished to a mirror’s gleam, catching the afternoon light like a promise. Fresh flowers claimed the vase, their perfume lighter, almost innocent, flooding the air with the scent of new life instead of the familiar comfort of dust and ash.

The book that had been left resting open upon the chaise had disappeared, returned neatly to one of the towering shelves lining the walls. The embroidered shawl that had once hung carelessly over the back of a chair had been folded with meticulous precision. Even the fireplace had been swept clean, fresh timber already stacked neatly beside the hearth in preparation for the evening.

Someone had prepared the room for its Queen. She understood the ritual, the necessity. Yet she ached for the untidiness, the sacred disorder that made the chamber feel claimed, lived-in. Those imperfections had whispered of presence, as if the Queen had only slipped away for a moment, ready to reclaim her book or drape her shawl once more across the chair.

Now the room waited, patient and hungry, expecting to be possessed by someone else. It felt ready, but not for her.

Adelaide closed the door with a soft finality, sealing herself inside. She wandered, untethered, her fingertips gliding over the polished dressing table, claiming each surface as she drifted toward the enormous bed that dominated the chamber’s heart.

Only when she reached the bed did exhaustion claim her fully, sinking into her bones with a possessive weight.

Her body was not tired, but everything else inside her had been stripped bare, left hollow and wanting.

The mountain. The gardens. The library’s secrets. The stories and the people. The impossible weight of claiming yet another fragment of a kingdom she had never known was hers. All of it had drained her, leaving her ready to surrender to sleep for a year.

She drew a long, slow breath and climbed onto the bed, boots and all, surrendering to the soft embrace of the mattress. The canopy soared above her, pale fabric stirring like a ghost in the breeze that slipped through the open windows.

For the first time since the crystal cavern, she was alone. Truly alone. Silence claimed her, not the hollow kind, but the gentle hush that coaxed forbidden thoughts to the surface, thoughts she had caged all day.

She closed her eyes, surrendering to the darkness. Instinctively, her awareness slipped inward, searching for the bond that still burned somewhere in her blood.

She had reached for it so many times that the motion was muscle memory, like seeking a lover’s hand she expected to find waiting, warm and certain, beside her.

Only this time... It wasn't there. Or perhaps it was. She couldn't immediately tell. The bond still existed. She could feel it buried somewhere deep beneath everything else, stretched impossibly far across Hell until it became little more than a thread disappearing beyond the horizon of her awareness.

She reached for it, careful and slow, not with panic or desperation, but with the fragile hope that it might answer her longing.

Apollo...

Nothing answered. Not because there was nothing there. Because whatever lay at the other end felt impossibly distant. It reminded her of diving beneath the surface of a lake as a child, opening her eyes beneath the water and looking up towards people standing upon the bank. She could see movement. She could even sense voices travelling through the water above her. But the words themselves never survived the journey. Everything became distorted. Blurred. Muted until meaning dissolved into little more than vibrations.

That was the bond now: a submerged echo, trembling just out of reach.

She followed the thread with reverence, slowing her breath until each heartbeat echoed through the stillness, a drumbeat in the dark.

For a heartbeat, something stirred, a ripple beneath the surface. A pulse of impossible heat. His, not hers. It flared and vanished before she could claim it.