Chapter 164 Targeted
(Apollo)
The room greeted him with a familiar mix of smoke, bath salts, and a trace of his fire in the walls—blended with the lingering heat of Adelaide’s arousal. It hung in the air like incense, dense and sweet, clinging to the stone. As he entered, the wards flexed around them, the stone acknowledging its king and the mortal it had come to favour. Ancient sigils pulsed in the walls, echoing old prayers at a god’s approach—part reverence, part fear.
She wasn’t in the bed.
For a fraction of a second, irrational panic clawed at him—Where is she, who took her, who dared—and then relief slammed into him when he saw her.
She lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, sprawled on her back on warm stone, as if her legs had simply buckled and she couldn't rise. Cale’s cloak still hung around her shoulders, pooling beneath her like spilt shadow. Ancient sigils pulsed in the walls, reacting as if stirred by her presence—like old prayers when a god entered a chapel, drawn between reverence and fear. Her hair fanned in a dark halo, some strands pasted with sweat to her temples. One arm lay crooked over her stomach, fingers curled; the other was flung wide to the side, palm open, reaching toward something unseen. The sight jabbed at him—his mortal, caught in another demon’s magic, lying on his floor like an offering abandoned between two altars.
She stared at the ceiling. Her eyes were open but distant, as if she were tracing constellations in the obsidian instead of cracks in her own thoughts. The ever-present glow from Hell’s false moonlight painted her skin in muted silver and ember-gold, highlighting the fine sheen of sweat at her throat and the faint tremor in her breathing. Her pulse fluttered visibly beneath her skin, a fragile, human drumbeat in a realm built for monsters.
The door’s growl pulled her eyes sideways. There was no flinch at the sound—just a slow, dragging blink, as if she’d already been somewhere far worse in her own head.
When she saw him, her breath strangled in her chest.
“Apollo,” she said. His name came out raw and soft, like she’d been rehearsing it in her mind. The single word slid along his nerves like a thumb over a blade—soothing and sharpening at once.
The sound soothed something ugly and inflamed something else.
He stepped inside.
The door thudded shut behind him with more force than necessary. The wards around the frame snapped tight, sealing the chamber between them. Outside, he knew, Cael’s shadow would press closer, listening. He could almost feel it through the stone—like a penitent ear pressed to a confessional wall. Good. Let him. Every sigil in the metal glowed faintly in answer to his mood, red threads brightening, the room tightening like a fist around its contents.
Adelaide pushed herself up on her elbows, moving carefully as the cloak slipped and exposed the curve of her throat, along with the delicate lines of her collarbone and shoulder. The movement made the silk of her makeshift dress whisper against her skin, a sound his body recognised far too well.
“You’re—” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Back.”
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
He tried for mockery. Instead, his voice cracked with dark hunger—too raw, too honest to hide behind.
Her gaze flickered to the side, to some point on the wall, then back. “I didn’t think you’d come,” she admitted. “You seemed… busy.”
Hooks. Chains. Screams like broken church bells. They flittered to the back of his mind. The smell of scorched flesh still clung to his wings. The dungeon: molten rivers, demons cheering. Empty. All of it, emptied by this small room, this mortal girl on his floor in another male’s cloak, another’s scent still on her skin. Memories of screams, embers cracking under his hands, slid by like old parchment. Her fire tugged fresh and bright in his chest, burning over all of it.
“I was,” he said. “Now I’m not.”
Her eyes dropped, skimming over his chest, his arms, and the tense way his hands were curled half into fists. He saw as she picked up his mood—the way her shoulders drew back, how she straightened carefully from the floor, trying to put herself at less of a disadvantage. Her flame dimmed, then flared again, like it couldn’t decide whether to hide or stand its ground. A candle flickering in a cathedral draft.
“What did I do?” she asked.
He hated that that was her first question. As if pain were always the answer to his presence. As if every footstep of his meant punishment first, pleasure as an afterthought.
He walked further in, heat following him like a tide, and stopped a few paces from where she stood.
Her heart hammered. He saw it in the rise and fall of her chest and felt it through the power tethered between them. Her magic pulsed, unsettled—a forge deciding whether to temper or explode. He’d seen cities fall from less volatile sparks.
“You burned,” he said.
Colour climbed her throat. “I—” She swallowed. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Explain,” he said softly.
She swallowed. “Explain… what?”
“Why,” he murmured, “you smell like that.”
Colour rushed to her face. “I wasn’t— I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me, Little Flame.” His voice dropped, the pet name curving like smoke around something dangerous. “You are aroused. You are ashamed. You are wrapped in another male’s scent. And my Shadow is outside this door with his magic crawling against mine.” His gaze sharpened. “Tell me how you expect me to interpret that.”
Her heart kicked. He felt it. The shift in her flame. The stinging shame. The room itself seemed to lean in, waiting to see which way this would burn.
“I was thinking,” she blurted. “It was just—my thoughts. Not—”
“Not him?” His mouth twisted. “You expect me to believe you sat in my bed in my palace wearing his cloak and grew wet only for yourself?”
She flinched, breath stuttering. “It’s not like that.”
He reached out and offered his hand to her, inviting her to stand. Her body tipped toward him under its own weight. She placed her hand in his, and he gently pulled her up. Her palm was smaller than his, warmer than the room, and her skin sparked with magic where theirs connected. It felt like gripping a live wire wrapped in velvet.
“Then what is it like?” he asked.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she admitted, words tumbling out. “Everything here—everything—reacts to me. The walls. The air. Cael said my flame touched his. You said my flame touched yours. I can’t tell where... where any of it ends. I feel—” Her hand flew to her sternum, pressing hard. “I feel pulled in pieces.”
His chest tightened. He knew that fracture—the way fallen angels knew exile. For a moment, his irritation wavered at the raw truth in her words. For a brief moment, he wanted to ease her suffering. The urge to steady her fire almost reached his fingers.
Then his gaze dropped to the cloak again.
His anger chose a target.
Slowly, he extended his hand and pinched the edge of the fabric between two fingers, then gave a deliberate tug.
He let the cloak fall. The scent of the Shadow on her skin made something dark and ugly rise in Apollo. Jealousy flared in him like a fresh brand, hissing where it touched the places his own magic had already claimed. It felt like blasphemy in his own chapel.
He let the cloak fall to the floor.