Chapter 81 Forms of Torture
(Apollo & Adelaide)
Adelaide flinched at his movement, shoulders wrenching forward against the bonds, muscles bunching helplessly. The smoke-ropes tightened in answer, glowing with embers where they bit into her skin. Not enough to burn. Not yet. The faint scent of singed skin tangled with her sweat, turning the air thick and metallic.
Her legs trembled, spread in that brutal X, feet barely brushing the floor. Every line of her naked body screamed vulnerability—exposed throat, open ribs, soft stomach. All the places he could ruin with a thought. Her toes flexed uselessly, trying to find purchase on smooth stone that radiated his heat back into her soles.
I don’t know, she’d said. Over and over.
He believed her. That was the worst part. He knew when creatures lied. It was his oldest language. But belief didn’t matter. Someone else had touched this room. Someone else had put hope in her chest. And Apollo was not a merciful creature. If he could not punish the intruder, he would punish the feeling. If the source stayed hidden, he would burn the symptom out of her instead, until there was no room left inside her for anyone’s mercy but his.
He circled her slowly.
Stone grated under his claws. His wings brushed the walls, sending showers of dust and sparks down around them. Every time his shadow slid over her, she jolted like she’d been struck. Her breath hitched in tiny, broken increments, each pass of darkness across her skin drawing a new, shivery intake of air he could taste on his tongue.
The bond—godsforsaken, traitorous thing—thrummed with every reaction.
Fear. Lust. Fear. Terror. Excitement. Fear.
He could drown in it. It surged and ebbed like a tide of liquid light, dragging at his control, trying to pull him under with her.
He stopped behind her.
Up close, he could see the fine tremors in her muscles, the sheen of cold sweat tracing the curve of her spine, the way her breath hitched on every exhale. A dark bruise was still blossoming on her neck where his last bite had claimed her. His mark. It pulsed faintly in time with his own. Each throb of it pushed a dull ache down his arm where the twin brand lay hidden beneath scaled skin, as if the two wounds were remembering each other.
Mine, he thought, with a violence that bordered on prayer. The word grounded him more than any incantation, anchoring him to this body, this room, this girl.
“Please,” she whispered hoarsely, voice fraying. “Apollo, I told you—I don’t know anything. I swear—I found it—I didn’t see—”
He reached around the cross and placed one claw over her heart.
She choked off, entire body freezing.
The contact was deceptively gentle—just the curved point of his talon resting against her sternum. Beneath it, her heart galloped like a terrified animal trapped in a cage. The rapid drumbeat thudded into his bone, a wild, frantic rhythm that made his own chest tighten in unwilling sympathy.
“I know,” he said quietly.
Her breath stuttered. “Then—then why—”
His claw pressed down, just enough to make her wince.
“Because something gave you hope,” he murmured, voice like molten iron poured into a mould. “And I will not share.” Each word came out heavier than the last, sinking into the charged air until even the wall-runes flickered uneasily.
Her throat bobbed. “You can’t control what I feel,” she rasped.
He smiled without humour. “Can’t I?” The bond pulsed once, sharply, as if eager to prove him right.
The bond pulsed between them like a second heartbeat.
Her lips parted, as if to argue—then closed again. She didn’t know what he could or couldn’t do. That was the problem.
It was also the solution. Ignorance was clay; he could shape it into belief, into terror, into worship, if he chose the pressure carefully enough.
He slid his claw from her heart up to her throat, tracing the column of soft flesh slowly, deliberately, leaving a faint trail of heat in his wake. Her head tipped back against the wooden beam, breath catching as he brushed over his bite.
The mark flared.
He felt it—like something in his own arm had been struck with a hot hammer, the brand along his skin answering hers in a jolt of shared power. For an instant, fire ran both ways along the tether, a closed circuit that made his vision flicker gold at the edges.
Adelaide gasped, eyes squeezing shut. “What are you—”
His clawed hand tightened around her throat—not enough to crush, enough to command.
“Look at me.”
She obeyed. Slow. Reluctant. Terrified.
Her eyes met his, wide and shining.
He knew what she saw—horns curled back from his skull, eyes burning brighter than the torchlight, lips parted over fangs still a fraction too long, shoulders heavier, broader than any mortal man’s. The scaled cracks of his half-shifted form pulsed with molten light like magma beneath skin. Smoke coiled lazily from his nostrils, curling around his face like a moving crown.
A Devil. A beast. A monster.
And the only thing in this realm that would decide whether she broke. The realisation flickered across her face, a tiny, sick understanding that tightened the bond like a noose.
He let his hand slide from her throat down over her collarbone, fingers splaying as they followed the line of her sternum, between the valley of her breasts. Her breath shuddered again, hitching on a small, involuntary sound that wasn’t entirely fear. Her nipples pebbled under the ghost of his touch, a traitorous response that sent a spike of furious satisfaction straight through his gut.
“There are many ways to make a soul talk,” he murmured, almost conversational. “Pain. Fire. Fear. I have used them all. The walls of this chamber have heard every kind of screaming.”
She swallowed, eyes shining with fresh tears. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, coated in the copper taste of dread and the phantom memory of him.
“But you.” His hand drifted lower, tracing the edge of her ribs, feeling the way her lungs expanded under his palm. “You are… different.”
Her voice came out strangled. “Then let me go.”
Amusement flickered across his features—sharp, quick, gone. “No.”
His fingers skimmed lower, palm flattening over her stomach.
Heat radiated off her in nervous waves. Her muscles tensed under his touch, as if she wanted to twist away and couldn’t. Her belly fluttered beneath his hand, a betraying tremor that had nothing to do with terror and everything to do with anticipation.
“The old methods would work,” he said softly. “They always do. Everyone screams loud enough if you peel away the right layers.”
Her eyes squeezed shut.
He leaned closer, his horns bracketing her face, his voice dropping to a dark, intimate rasp.
“But I don’t just want your screams, Adelaide.”
Her name came out like a sin, like a promise. The sound of it etched itself along her spine, each syllable hot and heavy as a brand.
“I want the sound you make,” he continued, “when you forget how much you hate me.”