Chapter 176 The Voyeur
(Caelum Ashborne)
The chamber felt like the aftermath of a storm. It was not quiet—never quiet. Instead, the space felt hollow, as if something holy and blasphemous had passed through, leaving the air bruised. Heat clung to the stone, thick and suffocating, heavy with smoke, sweat, and scorched magic. Even the runes looked exhausted; their glow dulled, like saints after witnessing a miracle they were never meant to see.
The moment Apollo finished speaking, Caelum braced for punishment. Fury, dread, and shame coiled inside him.
Not with claws. Not with teeth. With something worse.
The Devil’s attention slid from Adelaide’s shaking, bound body… to him.
Caelum was still on his knees, body shaking so hard his jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering. He couldn’t tear his gaze from Adelaide. He needed to though. He needed a distraction. Anything to take away the anchor of her presence.
Stone bit into his bare skin, rough and volcanic. Heat seeped up from the bones of the mountain itself. Shadows trembled loose from his body like frightened birds fluttering against the walls. The air was thick—heavy with sweat, smoke, and the metallic tang of spent magic.
The palace listened. It always listened. This fortress was carved from ancient wounds, from wars older than any Devil throne, and it remembered fire. It remembered queens. It remembered what it meant when three flames converged in one room.
Adelaide hung in the centre of it. Ruined. Radiant. Rope-struck.
Her wrists were bound behind her back, her right leg lifted and bent at the knee, exposing her to him.
And he looked. He stared. Transfixed on the blooming flower between her thighs. Shame told him to turn away. Loyalty screamed at him to shut his eyes. But his body betrayed him, rooting him in place like a sinner before an altar.
The rope burned into the delicate skin of her legs, stomach, and arms. Her thighs quivered. Her slick dripped down her spread legs. Red marks from Apollo’s grip were spotted across her hips and ribs. And the horn—Apollo’s horn—was still buried within her ass. He could see it. See the skin stretched around it. See it jerk with each quiver of her body.
She shook with aftershocks, each ragged breath splintering her chest. Her flame sparked, defiant, her pain and pride refusing to dim.
Caelum felt every spark like a shock, each one bending his nerves taut. It left him shivering, his skin prickling as if each flicker was a silent call only he could hear.
It crawled under his skin like a prayer spoken in a forbidden language. Ember answering Ember. Shadow bowing to flame. His people had legends about this—stories of Queen Flame touching another soul, devotion blossoming into painful longing, kingdoms collapsing, all because someone felt too fiercely.
Heat kept snagging under his ribs, a hot stutter that refused to settle. His Emberborn instincts pressed hard against his heart like a fist, begging to answer her—begging to rise, to meet that power, to wrap around it the way his people had done for their queens since the first fire crawled out of darkness.
He swallowed, throat dry as ash.
Apollo approached her first.
Not Caelum. The choice cut deeper than any blade.
The Devil moved with a slow, deliberate control that made Caelum’s skin crawl. Too measured for a monster who had just spent the last hour tearing the world apart inside her. Too careful for a king who claimed he did not feel. His broad shoulders rolled with each step, muscles still tight with exertion, veins glowing faintly beneath his skin with residual magic.
Like a priest approaching an altar. Like a god inspecting a sacrifice he both created and feared.
One clawed hand lifted, hovering between Adelaide’s thighs. He didn’t rush as he watched her—watched her flinch, her shiver, the faint flare of heat pulsing from her core. It licked at his fingers, as if recognising him.
Then those blackened claws slid in. Gathering. Collecting the moisture he had forced from her.
Caelum could see it from where he knelt.
Her wetness gleamed on the Devil’s fingers, catching the light like molten gold, like liquid sunlight smeared across something too dark to hold. Her magic clung to it—tiny threads of flame flickering in the slick, alive and reaching.
Caelum’s breath caught. His chest burned as instinct fought reason. Shame told him to look away, while another part of him, urgent and terrified, kept him frozen in place, desperate to both escape and absorb every moment.
And underneath it all, some desperate part whispered: Please. Shame, self-loathing, and longing lanced through him—a silent confession he could never take back. He hated himself for that word. Hated that it felt like a confession to a god who would never forgive him.
A part of him begged—don’t come close, don’t bring that here, don’t make me look. The rest of him ached for it, shameful and ravenous and wrong in ways that dug down past loyalty, past oaths, past everything he thought he was.
Apollo turned. And walked toward him.
Each heavy step sent a tremor through the floor, through Caelum’s knees, through the space in his skull where Adelaide’s flame still throbbed like a second heartbeat. Her power echoed inside him, reaching, searching, brushing against the locked doors of his Emberborn blood. As if something inside him recognised her. As if fate had reached down and tugged a string that should have stayed buried.
He bowed his head, jaw clenched so hard his teeth hurt. Shadows dragged back to his skin, forced into submission.
Apollo stopped inches away.
The Devil’s presence swamped him—heat, smoke, and memory. Every breath tasted of Adelaide, of sin, of defeat. He could taste what they had done, burned into every breath. It felt like breathing sacrilege. Caelum’s chest tightened with humiliation and longing.
The Devil crouched.
Gold eyes—violent, bright, painfully aware—pinned him in place. They were not cold. That would have been easier. There was a dark, molten focus there, something sharp with possession, something almost… protective, where it hovered on the edge of Adelaide’s trembling form behind him.
Caelum hated that he noticed, a flush of self-disgust burning his cheeks at his own awareness. He clenched his fists, fighting to tamp down emotions that threatened to spill over.
“Look at me, Shadow,” Apollo said quietly.
The command slid under Caelum’s skin. Old magic. Old hierarchy.
He obeyed.
The world narrowed to a single hand.
Apollo raised it between them, fingers still slick with Adelaide’s pleasure, still glowing faintly with the fire she couldn’t stop leaking. Heat rolled off his palm, not just physical—something older, a resonance from the Deep Flame that had first birthed the Emberborn and the Devils alike.
Caelum felt it call to him. To the mark his father had sealed on his skin. To the song of a prophecy that he pretended not to remember.
Then Apollo wiped his fingers across Caelum’s cheek.
Slow. Cruel. Deliberate. A stripe of her wetness smeared across his skin, hot and humiliating, searing a trail from the corner of his mouth to the hinge of his jaw. Her magic sparked against him on contact, tiny sparks darting across his nerves like a handful of scorching stars.
Caelum’s heart detonated.