Chapter 111 To Be Kind
(Apollo & Adelaide)
The pointed end of his tail pushed inside her.
“Apollo!” she screamed in surprise.
The point was dull. Thank the gods. But the tail was shaped like a spade. Pointed tip, expanding out to a rounded end before thinning to the stem.
“Are you trying to be funny with me?” Apollo growled, his long fangs flashing. His tail thrusted.
“While I hold your body in my grasp.” Another thrust.
She bit her lip.
“While you are spread wide and open to me.” Another thrust.
Her head fell back while she pulled at the restraints.
“When I can take what I want from you, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
His tail swelled, stretching her from the inside, and moved again.
“P-Please!” Adelaide cried. She broke under the pressure of his tail, her voice catching, her body tightening around the thick swell of him. The pressure becoming too much to keep silent.
“Yes…” Apollo crooned. “That’s what I thought.”
Another thrust. Another cry. Another helpless clutch of her muscles around his tail.
His tail thrusted again—slow, punishing, meant to drag the last sound out of her throat.
But instead of giving him another cry, she swallowed hard and closed her eyes. His tail throbbed where it pierced her. But there was something buried in her reaction. Something that tightened his jaw rather than his hunger.
She wasn’t afraid. Not completely. That realisation unsettled him more than resistance ever could.
Fear was clean. Fear was honest. Fear was a language he spoke fluently. This was something else.
This was allegiance attempting to form without permission. She was protecting something.
Someone.
Her thoughts fractured: Cael. The hands that steadied her. The water on her lips. The one moment of mercy in a place built entirely on suffering. She couldn’t give that away. Not even under pain. Not even under him.
His pleasure soured. The sourness lingered, sharp and metallic at the back of his throat. It tasted too much like recognition. Like the knowledge that pain could command a body, but kindness—however small—could begin to claim something quieter and far more dangerous. Heat seethed beneath his skin.
Her breath hitched. The bond quivered. His jealousy detonated.
His hand snapped to her throat, claws curving possessively around her neck as his tail stilled inside her.
His voice dropped into a low, lethal growl. “If he means nothing,” he snarled, the question striking like a whip, “then why protect him? Why endure this—”
His fingers tightened. His tail curled. A hard thrust punctuated the next word: “—for someone who is nothing to you?”
Her chin lifted, trembling. “Because—because he was the first to show me real kindness.”
Silence cracked through the air.
She felt the danger the moment the word left her lips. Kindness.
Hell vibrated, heat pulsing through the floor, rippling through the walls, sparking in Apollo’s eyes like molten lightning.
“There it is,” he whispered. “That word.” The word landed heavier than any accusation.
Kindness was not part of Hell’s grammar. It was not accounted for in prophecy, not measured in bargains or blood. It did not obey. It did not require permission.
Apollo felt the realm recoil from it, like a scar remembering the blade that made it.
Her breath hitched. He felt the spike through the bond. Her whole body went still, instinct screaming that she had stepped on something deadly.
She swallowed hard. “It’s just a word.”
“No,” he said, too quietly. “It isn’t.”
He paced before her slowly. His hand ghosted across her ribs, tracing fading bruises. Each touch was deceptively gentle, as though studying the evidence of someone else’s interference renewed a fresh wave of rage.
“You said he showed you kindness,” Apollo murmured. “Tell me what that means to you.”
She shut her eyes. “I don’t—”
“Tell me,” he ordered, voice falling like a blade.
Another breath trembled through her. “It means… he didn’t hurt me.”
Apollo paused. “And that,” he said, “is all it takes? A lack of suffering?”
Her voice broke. “Here? That’s a miracle.”
Something inside him cracked — not soft, not gentle, but sharp. A soundless shatter of ego, dominance, and something darker.
“So you protect him,” he growled. “This intruder. This rat. This coward.”
She snapped back, “He saved me!”
“From me?” Apollo’s laugh bellied out, dark and cruel. “From what I chose to give you? From the bond that keeps you alive? From the fate that makes you matter?”
She flinched at the force of his voice.
He caught her chin again, forcing her to look at him.
“You risk your body for him. Why?”
Her pulse fluttered violently.
“Because… he didn’t treat me like an animal.”
The words were out before she could stop them.
Apollo went still. Completely. Dangerously. She felt the tension coil in him, the heat rising through the floor.
Her heart pounded so hard her vision blurred at the edges. She forced herself to keep speaking.
“He gave me water. Covered me when I was cold. He—he looked at me like I wasn’t—”
His thumb pressed hard against her chin. “Say it.”
“Like I wasn’t just something to use,” she whispered.
The chamber trembled. Not from rage alone. From contradiction. From the collision of what Hell was built to enforce and what it had just been asked to accommodate.
“You think someone caring for your comfort is kindness.”
“It was,” she said fiercely. “It was kindness.”
His laughter cracked like fire splitting stone. “There is no kindness in Hell.”
Her voice steadied. “Everyone is capable of it. Even you.”
He recoiled as if struck. Then he leaned in so close she felt his breath on her lips.
“You want kindness from me?” he asked, voice dropping to a deadly purr. “You want to teach your Devil how to be gentle?”
Her breath shook, but she didn’t look away. “Yes.”
Something feral flashed in his eyes. “Then let me show you,” he murmured, “all the ways I can be kind.”