Chapter 155 To Own The Choice
(Adelaide)
Adelaide’s knees weakened. She wrapped her arms around herself, but it didn’t stop the shiver that crawled down her spine. The Queen hadn’t been a dream. She’d been a warning. A prophecy. A memory. A claim.
The words weren’t fading. They were hardening—settling in her bones like ancient truth. He will devour you. Her pulse stuttered.
Something warm and golden shifted inside her chest—a slow, coiling stir, as if that flame inside her had heard the warning and answered: I know.
Her flame. Her literal, living flame. Not the heat of Hell. Not adrenaline. Not fear. But a presence. A pressure. A response.
Earlier in the hallway… the runes had lit for her. Not Cael. Not Apollo. Her.
And Cael had looked at those glowing symbols the way some men looked at weapons that weren’t supposed to exist anymore.
Her breath shook as she moved toward the carved obsidian bedside table. She let her fingers brush the surface— And the stone warmed instantly. Alive. Obedient. Responding to her.
She yanked her hand back—but the warmth remained. One second. Two. Three.
Her stomach dropped. Her vision sharpened. Every hair on her arms lifted.
“Oh my god…” she breathed. “What is happening to me?”
The room didn’t answer. But the warmth inside her chest curled tighter—slow, deliberate, familiar. Like a hand settling over her heart from the inside.
And suddenly she knew—with the same certainty she knew how to breathe— Whatever was waking in her wasn’t small. Wasn’t gentle. Wasn’t tame.
It was ancient. It was powerful. It was hers. And it was only just beginning to open its eyes.
Adelaide sank onto the edge of the bed, cloak pooling around her thighs. Her body felt restless and heavy at the same time, humming with the leftover sensations of the tour: the runes lighting beneath her feet, the oppressive weight of the soul corridor, Cael stepping close enough she could feel shadows graze her skin.
And the way he’d said her name.
“Adelaide.” Soft, warning, strained. Not angry. Not fearful. Something else entirely.
Her fingers curled into the blanket. She couldn’t stop remembering the moment her hand almost touched his jaw—how his breath had hitched, how he’d stepped back so fast he nearly stumbled. How much pain had crossed his face at the idea of Apollo hurting her.
He hadn’t feared punishment for himself. He’d feared punishment for her. Her stomach tightened, molten and confusing. Why did she feel so calm around him? Why did she trust him? Every instinct she had should’ve screamed danger. He was a demon. A shadow. A creature of Hell itself.
But when she stood beside him… Her shoulders loosened. Her lungs expanded. Her pulse steadied.
He felt like quiet in a place made of screams.
She ran her thumb over her knuckles, staring down at her hands as if they might hold answers.
One thought kept circling, refusing to leave: “You matter.”
She hadn’t meant to say it. It had slipped out—impulsive, honest, bare. And the moment it left her, she’d seen the world stutter behind his eyes. As if the words landed somewhere no one had touched in centuries.
As if she’d reached a place inside him he didn’t know how to guard.
He mattered. Did he know how much? Did she?
Adelaide lifted her gaze to the door, half expecting him to be standing there still, shadow leaking under the edges, watching the way he watched in her sleep—quiet, vigilant, unable to look away.
Her chest fluttered. She pressed a hand over her heart, trying to calm it. But the warmth under her skin only spread wider.
“Your flame… and mine.”
What did he mean?
Her fingers drifted to her sternum again, tracing the spot where the white flame had erupted out of her—violent, blinding, alive. She remembered the sear of it, the crack of something ancient inside her peeling open. But as that memory burned bright, another unfurled beside it.
She thought of walking beside Cael through the narrow corridor. Their shoulders brushing. Her thigh skimming his knee. A jolt—sharp, hot—shooting straight up her spine.
His breath catching. Her skin prickling as if lightning crawled under it.
Her flame had stirred then. She knew it now. That warmth, that pull, that dizzying bloom under her ribs—it had reached for him.
And that terrified her.
“I can’t…” Her voice trembled. “I can’t want this. I shouldn’t feel this.”
Because she did want it. She felt everything. Too much.
Apollo.
Gods, Apollo was impossible to ignore. The memory of his hands on her hips, his mouth on her throat, his tail filling her until she shattered—her body flushed just thinking about it. He had taken her apart with a confidence that made her melt and tremble at once. He had looked at her like she was something he intended to devour and savour, and her body had answered him without hesitation, without doubt, without shame.
She wanted him. She knew that. Her desire for him was a wildfire—reckless, consuming.
But Cael… Cael was something else entirely.
A quiet flame that licked at her bones in the silence. A warmth that soothed rather than scorched. A pull that felt like recognition, like inevitability—like home.
And that was wrong. So wrong. A shaky breath escaped her.
“You’re a whore,” she whispered to herself, disgust curling hot in her throat. “You want them both. What is wrong with you?”
Her face burned. Shame and longing warred under her skin, twisting. How could she crave Apollo’s brutal, possessive heat one moment—and then ache for Cael’s presence the next? How could her heart stutter for a monster who consumed her… and then soften for the demon who shielded her?
How could she need both?
One heart couldn’t hold two men. Couldn’t love two. Couldn’t ache for two equally. Could it?
Her stomach knotted. Her pulse stuttered. She felt split down the middle—half molten wildfire, half fragile ember.
She thought of Apollo’s kiss. She thought of Cael’s voice when he said her name.
Her thighs pressed together involuntarily. Her shame deepened.
“I shouldn’t feel this,” she whispered again, weaker this time.
But the truth poured through her anyway—the truth her mind tried to deny and her body refused to forget:
The calm she felt beside Cael… was just as powerful as the hunger she felt beneath Apollo. And beneath the shame, beneath the confusion, a terrible, wonderful shiver slid down her spine.
She lay back slowly, staring up at the obsidian ceiling. Hell’s heat curled around her, not like a blanket but like a question. Her flame hummed—soft, steady, aware. As though waiting for her to admit something she didn’t have language for yet.
The ceiling reflected the faint shimmer of light from her skin—not Hell’s orange glow, but her own golden pulse.
Her breath hitched. “Oh my god…” she whispered.
Warmth coiled through her chest again—slow, deliberate, intimate. Not Hell’s heat. Hers. Her flame curled tighter around her heart, reacting to her thoughts, her shame, her longing—all of it.
A whisper brushed her mind—not a voice, but a presence. Someone old. Someone watchful. Someone familiar.
The Queen.
Adelaide’s breath shook. “What do you want from me?” she whispered into the warm dark.
The flame inside her didn’t answer in words. It pulsed. Once. Twice. Three times.
And in the distance—through stone, through shadow, through wards— A second pulse answered.
Cael’s.
His Emberflame is stirring. Reaching. Calling her.
Adelaide pressed her palm to her sternum, horrified by the truth blooming under her ribs.
Her flame wasn’t just reaching for Apollo. Her dreams weren’t filled with only Apollo’s face. The walls didn’t just react to Apollo. The runes didn’t only glow for Apollo.
Her flame—Her heart—kept reaching for Cael. Just as it did for Apollo.
A soft, broken sound escaped her. “Oh god… why him? Why both? Why me?”
She didn’t know which man she wanted more. She didn’t know which man would break her.
And worst of all— She didn’t know which man she would choose.
Or if the choice was ever hers to begin with.