Chapter 110 Interrogation Under Heat
(Apollo & Adelaide)
The chamber no longer felt like a room. It felt like a threshold.
The runes carved into the floor pulsed in uneven rhythm, no longer obeying a single master but reacting—listening. Old magic stirred beneath newer spells, something half-awake and irritated at being rushed into relevance.
Hell itself seemed undecided whether this moment was punishment or coronation.
The braziers burned lower, their flames bending inward, as though reluctant to witness what was unfolding—or compelled to remember it.
Adelaide’s breath was still jagged. Her belly still fluttery, her body still shaking with the aftershock from the abrupt, violent climax he’d ripped her awake with.
She felt him move — heat, breath, presence — but she couldn’t lift her head yet. She tried to gather her thoughts, but they were scattered like embers kicked through ash, each one burning too quickly to hold onto.
“Why—” she rasped, voice breaking. “Why did you do that?”
He tilted his head at the sound of her voice, loving the way she said it. Shaken. Uncertain. Accusing. Wanting answers she didn’t realise she was begging for.
He stepped closer, letting the shadows behind him crawl forward like obedient beasts. The shadows did not merely follow him. They rearranged themselves. Angles sharpened. Corners deepened. The space subtly reoriented around his presence, as if the chamber had decided which of them was real power and which was merely surviving it.
Apollo felt the old satisfaction in that—Hell recognising him without instruction—but beneath it ran something sourer. A tension that did not belong to dominance alone.
“To make you pliable,” he said quietly. “To loosen your tongue.”
Her eyes widened, disbelief sharpening them.
“You— you woke me like that just to… talk?”
He smiled. A slow, vicious curl of his mouth. “You answer faster when your body remembers who you belong to.” The words echoed longer than they should have.
Not in the air—in the stone. In the runes. In the bond itself, which pulsed once, uncertain, as though it had not agreed to that phrasing but had no language yet to refuse it.
Apollo felt the resistance and mistook it for defiance rather than a warning.
Her eyes flashed. Fury and humiliation tangled. Beautiful. Anger flared under her exhaustion.
“You can’t interrogate me like this,” she snapped, breath shaking.
“You misunderstand,” Apollo murmured, fingers gliding up over her shoulder.
“This isn’t an interrogation.” His hand wrapped around her jaw, thumb pressing lightly against her lower lip. “This is an incentive.”
She tried to turn her head, but he held her still. A shiver crawled down her spine at the quiet authority in his grip — terrifying, familiar, unavoidable.
“Tell me who touched you.”
For a moment, Hell held still.
Even the low hum of the wards softened, like an audience leaning forward. This was not a question the realm heard often—not from him, and not about something that mattered.
Jealousy, Apollo realised dimly, was not just possession challenged. It was a hierarchy threatened.
“I told you— I don’t know—”
“Try again.”
Her heart thundered. “I don’t know,” she repeated, firmer this time.
His tail moved—slow enough to be deliberate, fast enough to be a warning.
The scaled length uncoiled from behind him like a serpent freed from restraint. It slid across the floor, the sharp tip whispering over stone, then lifted—gliding up along her calf, the underside warm and textured like heated leather.
It traced the inside of her knee.
“You’re lying.”
He stepped closer until the heat of his body warmed her trembling knees. His presence pressed against her like a physical force, an oppressive heat she could feel in her lungs.
“Look at me.”
She did. Barely. But she did. Her vision swam, but she fought for clarity, knowing that looking away would only anger him more.
“Someone was here,” he said. “Someone had their hands on you. Someone touched my bindings, my cross, my mark. And you want me to believe you don’t remember?”
Her chin lifted a fraction. “I was barely conscious. I was delirious. I—”
He cut her off with a soft, dangerous hum. The sound slid over her skin like smoke, a warning wrapped in velvet.
She expected him to use the bond. Expected the mental hook, the tug, the invasive pressure like last time.
But instead, his hand touched her hip. Real. Hot. Terrifying.
“Apollo—”
“Speak,” he said, fingers spreading, claws grazing the top of her thigh. “Tell me who came into my chamber.”
“I told you—” she breathed, “I don’t know.”
His tail slid high up her leg, coiling around her upper thigh like a warning.
Her breath stuttered. Her body betrayed her, tightening instinctively, heat and fear tangling low in her belly.
“Try again.”
“I don’t know,” she insisted.
His tail tightened.
Her pulse hammered. “Please—”
She lied beautifully. Fought beautifully. And yet—something else lurked under the words. Fear.
Confusion. A fragile thread of loyalty that did not belong to him.
He hated it.
“Who is he?” Apollo demanded, voice sharpening. “What does this demon mean to you?”
She flinched. “Nothing—”
A growl of frustration rumbled in his chest. It vibrated through the stone, through the cross, through her bones. Heat rolled off him in a slow wave, the air tightening like a held breath.
His tail moved. Uncoiling. Then it slipped higher.
A soft, involuntary gasp broke from her lips as the smooth underside brushed the tender skin between her thighs. Her legs jerked, instinctively trying to close, but the restraints held them apart in a trembling, helpless angle.
Her breath quickened. Her mind scrambled, torn between fear, shame, fury, and the treacherous hum of desire he always pulled from her.
His did not. He watched her with predatory calm. They weren’t going anywhere. Not until he commanded it.
“I will ask again, but you must remember, Little Flame,” Apollo snarled dangerously, his voice dropping into a sound that was half-command, half-promise.
“I don’t like repeating myself.”
His tail pressed just enough to make her shiver.
The runes at her feet flared.
The bond snapped tight in warning.
A snort came from Adelaide—brief, sharp, stubborn—as she lifted her head to eye him through her matted curtain of hair. Her neck trembled with the effort. Sweat clung to her skin. Her lips glistened from her own ragged breaths.
But her gaze still burned. “Could have fooled me.”
His anger came fast.
It hit him like a physical thing—heat surging up his spine, wings twitching behind him with the force of it. For an instant, the braziers in the room flared, flames bending violently in his direction as if dragged by his wrath.
His jaw tightened, fangs flashing. The seams of molten gold in his skin brightened, cracking the illusion of calm he had maintained.
Her defiance fed it. Her voice fed it. The way she dared to look at him—tired, shaking, ruined, yet still refusing to bow—sent something ruthless and possessive clawing up his throat.
The length of his tail tightened subtly between her thighs, a silent declaration.
He stepped closer, shadows peeling off him like smoke— And the air itself felt the shift, trembling between them.
She smirked. She made him angry. Good. She was feeling triumphant, ready to tease him some more. But before she could open her mouth, the pointed end of his tail pushed inside her.