Chapter 106 Jealousy
(Apollo)
The palace had stopped trembling hours ago. Apollo had not.
The quiet pressed against him like a hand at his throat, familiar and unwelcome. The stillness sat wrong in the bones of the place, like a held breath stretched too long. Rage simmered under his skin like magma trapped beneath brittle stone. Every step he took down the obsidian corridor scorched faint, glowing trails in his wake—lines of molten gold that faded only when the palace, cowed and nervous, hurried to heal them. The stone learned quickly when not to resist him. It learned what obedience looked like.
His wards pulsed against the walls like racing heartbeats. His temper wrapped around them like claws.
Someone had entered his chamber. Someone had touched his bond. Someone had put their hands on what belonged to him. And worst— they had seen her.
The knowledge did not land all at once. It layered. Sank. Settled.
His Emberborn girl. His chained fire. His screaming little mortal queen. Names were dangerous things. Naming implied permanence.
The words echoed through him like titles carved too early into stone. His jaw cracked with the force of how tightly he clenched it.
The palace was too quiet. Even Hell knew better than to interrupt him when his attention sharpened this way.
A silence like that was never a gift— it was pressure, coiling, waiting, watching. The kind of hush that followed prophecy when it had just taken a step forward and hadn’t yet decided who it would crush.
Apollo felt it before he saw anything.
The bond tugged—not pleading, not panicked, but aware. As if something in her slept lightly, listening for him.
The air shifted around him like prey sensing a predator’s approach, each corridor bracing under the heat that rolled from his skin. Wards whispered as he passed. Stone tightened. Torches bent their flames away from him. Even the shadows drew thinner, wary of being mistaken for shelter.
Jealousy had a scent. A shape. A temperature.
Tonight, it poured off him in waves. Hotter than lust. Colder than rage. Sharper than either. It was not the jealousy of lovers. It was the jealousy of ownership being tested.
He walked slowly, deliberately, barely holding the edges of his form together.
His body flickered around the edges, heat distorting the silhouette of a man as pieces of the beast kept bleeding through— Horns curled in tight spirals, too long for this half-shape; the seams of molten gold along his forearms pulsed like veins struggling to hold lightning. Each pulse whispered a single truth: possession denied becomes violence. And violence, when restrained, learned patience.
And beneath all that— the bond.
A thin, trembling thread. A whisper of her breath. A faint spark of her exhaustion. A heat under her skin that had no right to be there unless he put it there. A rhythm that answered him even when he did not call. That was the part that burned most. She answered him even when she slept.
Someone else had touched what belonged to him. Touched without permission. Without consequence. Without understanding the cost.
His jaw flexed hard enough to crack. The bone creaked but held. So did he. Barely.
He kept walking. The corridors of the upper palace wound around him like a labyrinth of black glass and red firelight. Every step echoed too loudly. The palace was trying to get out of his way, but Hell was not built to run. Hell endured. Hell learned. Hell remembered.
He was hunting. He wasn’t trying to hide it.
He reached a corner and stopped. He pressed a palm to the nearest wall; it hummed faintly. Wards knitted tight, defensive, loyal, tense and eager to serve. “Show me,” he murmured.
Magic crawled up the stone like insects fleeing a blaze. His flame seeped into every crevice, spreading like veins of molten gold through the architecture, touching every ward-line, every hinge of the palace’s ribs. Hell answered him the way a body answered pain: reflexive, obedient, afraid.
The magic spidered across the stone, racing outward in branching paths—mapping the cracks, the pressure points, the hidden seams where someone small enough, quiet enough, or bold enough could slip through.
There. A tremor. A flicker of imperfection. A seam where none should be. A wound disguised as craftsmanship. Not large. Not obvious. Not meant for anyone but those who knew exactly what they were doing. The kind of flaw that only revealed itself after prophecy had leaned too close.
Apollo leaned closer, pressing his forehead to the cool obsidian, inhaling. Stone, old smoke, the faint metallic tang of Ember magic. Not hers. Sharper. Older. Cautious. A flame taught to kneel, not roar.
Apollo dragged in a slow breath, letting the scents sift through his senses. There wasn’t much—only what remained after the palace had tried to cover its tracks.
His flames snapped to attention, almost thrilled. His lip curled.
So one of the rats wanted a martyr’s death. Good. He’d enjoy delivering one.
His tail lashed once, striking the wall hard enough to send shards of rock skittering across the polished floor. The fragments cooled mid-flight, dropping like fallen stars at his feet.
A draft stirred the torches in answer. Apollo straightened, rolling his shoulders back until the molten seams along his spine glowed brighter.
He wasn’t angry. Angry was too small.
He was violated. He was possessive. He was hungry. And hunger, in Hell, was a creative force.
Cracks raced up the columns as if the palace itself tried to recoil from the thing wearing its king’s skin.
Someone had laid eyes on Adelaide’s naked skin. On her trembling mouth. On the place where he’d bitten her. On the bruises he’d put there. On the way her body sagged in surrender and defiance.
Someone had seen all that and decided to touch.
His body reacted before thought could intervene—flame tightening, pulse dropping, pupils narrowing to pinpricks. His instincts lunged toward a single violent truth: another male had been close enough to inhale her scent. Close enough to imagine himself necessary. Close enough to forget who ruled this realm.
He’d left her on the edge of breaking for a reason. Suspended between pain and fevered, delirious want. She’d been meant to hang there until she told him the truth.
Not to be comforted. Not to be tended like some wounded doe. Not to be wrapped in fabric that wasn’t his. Not to be touched, handled, or cared for. He snarled, heat flaring off his skin.
The thought of her softening under another’s hands—even in unconsciousness, even in suffering, even in mercy—It twisted something feral and black inside him.
She calls to me even when she dreams, he thought. And someone else answered.
His claws dragged across the wall, carving deep gouges in the stone. The palace hissed like a wounded animal but did not fight back.
He could picture it too vividly: a hand sliding that cloth around her shoulders, fingers brushing the marks he’d put on her, some trembling fool daring to steady her head as they coaxed water down her throat.
My hands go there, he thought.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
His flame flared violently, torchlight bending toward him like it feared turning its back.
He moved on, the heat from his aura lapping at the walls. Beneath the anger, lower and darker, something else simmered: Arousal.
Not desire— not exactly. Not simple lust.
But the raw, territorial instinct of a creature whose claim had been tested. Whose authority had been answered instead of obeyed. Whose possession had been touched by another.
Sex was easy. Control was easier. But possession—true possession—required fear, memory, and choice.