Chapter 144 Mercy In Hell
(Caelum Ashborne)
Caelum walked out of the throne room with the taste of the Devil’s power still in his mouth. It coated his tongue like ash and metal, bitter and electric, as if the command had been poured down his throat and left there to curdle. Each breath scraped his lungs with the afterburn of Apollo’s presence, a reminder that he’d stood too close to something that did not forgive.
The sensation lingered like sacrament gone wrong—an unholy communion he hadn’t asked for, power swallowed without consent, consecrated by threat instead of blessing.
The doors shut behind him with a grinding sweep. Hell’s heat poured down the corridor, heavy, curling around his shoulders with a grip that hesitated. The wards in the walls thrummed with the echo of Apollo’s mood, their faint, red pulse echoing that gaze. Each thud of light felt like a phantom heartbeat against his ribs—the realm repeating the instant his king chose to let him live.
Somewhere far below his feet, bells of bone rang—a funeral chime for demons who would never die, only be repurposed. Hell celebrated nothing, but it always remembered its debts.
Caelum had stood in front of the throne expecting fire. Not the metaphorical kind. Not a scolding. Not disappointment. He had expected pain. Bones cracking. Ember ripped from his chest. Shadows peeled away and scattered like burned leaves. He’d pictured it with the clarity of long familiarity: the way the court would watch, politely interested, as the Devil reached in and unmade him by inches. No surprise. No outrage. Just another lesson about where loyalty ended, and usefulness ran out.
He had prepared himself like a penitent kneeling at a blood-slick altar—waiting for absolution that came in the form of execution. Instead, he walked away with… a command. Confusion stabbed at his ribs: Guard her. Stay with her. Don’t touch her. The contradictions jostled with every step, replaying in his head like the echo of chains. He couldn’t decide if he’d just been spared or sentenced, uncertainty knotting his insides.
His boots moved in silence over warm stone, shadow trailing him like a second cloak. The palace breathed around him—pits sighing below, chains rattling in far-off corridors, the low, constant rumble of distant screams. It should have been comforting in its familiarity. It wasn’t. The realm felt like the wrong size now, the halls too narrow for the thoughts ramming around inside his skull. He had spent centuries slipping through these arteries of Hell, knowing each turn, each draft, each subtle change in heat as intimately as his own bones. Tonight, everything felt slightly shifted, as if the corridors had tilted a degree and gravity hadn’t caught up yet.
He turned down a side passage, the one that cut beneath the inner galleries, away from the main arteries of the court. The air cooled the deeper he went, the heat of the throne room receding to a memory that still made his spine want to bow. His shoulders twitched now and then, a half-remembered urge to kneel that he crushed on instinct. Apollo was not here. The pressure on the back of his neck was memory only—and yet his muscles didn’t trust that. Trauma did not need a witness. It prayed on repetition.
He’d been honest.
It was laughable, really. In a realm built on lies, manipulation, and half-truths dressed in blood, Caelum Ashborne had gone to his king and answered with naked honesty.
Yes, I went to her. Yes, I eased what you chose. Yes, I disobeyed.
He had not grovelled. Had not begged. Had not flinched. The Devil wanted his shadows precise. There was no point pretending they did not go where they weren’t meant to. Precision required truth. A blade lied about its edge only once. After that, someone lost a hand. Cael refused to be a dull weapon—even if sharpness cuts both ways. A weapon still answered for the wounds it made.
He had braced for the price. Instead, Apollo had stepped off his throne, come down the steps like judgment made flesh, and placed a new weight around his neck.
Guard her. Show her the palace. Do not leave her. Do not touch her.
Caelum’s jaw clenched as he walked, the memory of that low, deliberate voice threading through his ears.
This is not a kindness, Cael. It is a leash.
He knew that. The leash tightened with every word, anger and disquiet mingling beneath his skin. What unsettled him more—what he couldn't resolve—was why his head was still attached. Kings did not keep questionable blades at their throats. They broke them, melted them down, reforged them into something simpler. This reversal itched at his instincts, shifting bewilderment into suspicion.
Mercy in Hell was never free. It came with interest. He had crossed a line no demon crossed. Not when he slipped into the dungeon. Not even when he’d stepped up to the cross and untied her wrists with hands that should have stayed at his sides.
Those had been risks, yes. Calculated ones. But what he’d done later—that had not been calculation. That had been… something else. Impulse. Hunger. The fracture point of discipline worn too thin. The kind of mistake prophets wrote about after empires fell.
The memory shoved up again, unbidden.
Hot stone pressed against his back. A sliver in the wall. The chamber beyond pulsing like a heart about to burst. Her body shaking, not with terror but with too much pleasure. The Devil behind her, losing control in increments she had no idea were dangerous.
And his own ember—dead, he’d thought; harmless; contained—wrenched itself awake. It reached.
He hadn’t meant to. He had stood there, fingers dug into stone, telling himself to turn away. To vanish. To be the quiet, efficient blade Apollo had honed him into. Instead, his power had moved.
A thin thread of Emberflame slid through the crack in the wall like smoke, brushing her magic the way a hand might pass through steam.
And she had answered. Not with recognition. Not with intention. But with pleasure.
Her magic had flared, frantic and bright. It clung to Apollo’s inferno and still curled toward that thin ember-line. It was as if it had been waiting for contact. Caelum had felt the shock of it run up that thread and sink its teeth into his spine.
Not images. Not stolen sensation. Impressions.
The shape of her building release. The frantic climb and crash of her magic. The ruthless way Apollo’s fire wrapped around hers. The moment she broke—and dragged him with her.
He could still feel it now, if he let himself.
Her power seized around his ember, the echo of her orgasm locking his muscles and wringing a climax from his own body he hadn’t consented to. His release hit hard enough that his knees had almost buckled—hot, humiliating, and real. Then the Devil’s fire slammed into them both—vast, possessive—snarling a single, scalding command down that line.
Mine. Stay out.
He had reeled his ember back so fast it burned. Still, if he focused, he could almost feel the phantom sting along those inner pathways, like skin newly healed over an old wound, too tender to touch.
And yet, when Apollo looked at him in the throne room, there had been no mention of that slip. No scalding commentary about stolen sensation. No accusation of dared intimacy.
Just the cross. The water. The loosened ropes. The calculated disobedience. Not the unforgivable, visceral kind. It was as if the Devil had either not felt that trespass at all—or felt it and chosen, for reasons Cael could not begin to map, to pretend it hadn’t happened. Both possibilities were equally unsettling.
He turned another corner, shoulders brushing carved stone. His shadow slipped ahead of him, a few heartbeats out of sync, like it was no longer sure it wanted to be attached to his feet.
Why am I alive?