Chapter 232 Where The Lie Falls
(Apollo & Adelaide)
“I hunted them,” Apollo said simply.
The temperature in the room dipped. Not cold. Emptied. As if something essential had been stripped from the air.
“Every Emberborn I could find,” he continued. “Every lineage. Every hideout. Every whisper of flame that did not belong to her.”
Her breath caught. Her own fire stirred uneasily, responding to the violence embedded in his words.
“And when there were none left?” she asked.
Apollo did not answer at once. His hand loosened in her hair, sliding down to her back. He leaned his forehead against hers, eyes closing for a breath. The contact was not tender. It was necessary. A pause so he did not fracture.
“There were always more,” he said.
Adelaide stiffened. The movement was involuntary, a sharp inhale catching against his mouth, her fire flaring once beneath her skin before she forced it down. “But you found the one who lied?” she said slowly.
Apollo’s eyes darkened. “Yes,” he said. “I found him.”
The words were flat. Finished. Not triumphant. Not satisfied. Like a door sealed after the damage was done.
Her fingers curled tighter in his hair as he continued, voice dropping into something colder, older. The cadence shifted. No longer memory. Verdict.
“I tore the truth out of him piece by piece,” Apollo said. “In front of the entire realm. I made him confess every whisper, every seed of doubt he planted. I let Hell watch him beg.” His jaw clenched. “Then I killed him.”
The air seemed to constrict. Adelaide swallowed. Her throat burned—not with fear, but with the brutal clarity of consequence.
“And it didn’t change anything?” she said softly.
“No,” Apollo replied. “It only proved how easily a kingdom can be broken by a single lie.”
Her hand loosened, sliding from his hair to his shoulder. The shift was careful, reverent, as if touching something still sharp.
“And now,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “you’ve found another Emberborn.”
She searched his face, trying to understand the shape of his restraint. The war in him was visible now. Not rage. Calculation chained to fear.
“And you don’t kill her.”
The silence that followed was immense. It pressed outward, filling the throne room until even the stone seemed to wait.
Apollo studied her face as if seeing it anew. The curve of her mouth. The stubborn lift of her chin. The steady courage in her eyes—even now. He looked at her as if measuring something that refused to fit the past. As if the future had arrived wearing a familiar shape and dared him to refuse it.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t.”
“Why?” Adelaide asked.
Apollo leaned forward, resting his forehead briefly against hers, the contact intimate and unguarded. Their breaths mingled, heat and heat, neither yielding.
“Because you did not come to me with lies,” he said. “And because when you stand against me, you don’t reach for a knife.”
Her heart stuttered. She felt it against his chest, the traitorous, human rhythm betraying her composure.
“And because,” he added quietly, “you look at me like you expect me to choose better.”
The admission hollowed the space between them. Not hope. Responsibility.
Adelaide’s voice softened. “Do you regret it?”
Apollo went very still. “No,” he said after a long moment. “I do not regret the past.”
Her chest tightened. The answer cut deeper than a lie would have.
“I regret that it cannot be changed.” Apollo leaned his head back and let his eyes close on a heavy breath. The sound carried the weight of centuries pressing down at once.
She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. That answer terrified her. Somehow, it broke her heart, too.
Silence settled between them. Heavy. Intimate. Dangerous. The kind that rewrites things simply by existing.
Adelaide lifted one hand from his chest, brought it to his face, fingers brushing his cheekbone with tentative reverence. “You still love her,” she said.
Apollo leaned into her hand, eyes opening. The look he gave her was naked. No crown. No cruelty. Just truth laid bare.
“I loved her,” he corrected. “And I killed the world for it.”
Adelaide did not recoil. She shifted closer, body lifting to straddle his thighs. Her knees pressed into the stone on either side of his hips, thighs bracketing his. Her arms slid up over his and around his neck. The movement was deliberate, claiming space without asking permission. She held him—not to comfort, not to absolve, but because she understood the shape of his pain.
“That’s not the same as regret,” she said quietly.
Adelaide sat back, shifting her weight to the end of his knees, moving slowly, carefully, until her knees braced on either side of his thighs. Her hands moved over the planes of his chest, shoulder, neck—light but steady—as she searched his face. Her touch mapped him back into the present.
“If you see me as more than just your prisoner,” she said quietly, the possibility still strange on her tongue, “what happens to me if someone lies again?”
Apollo did not answer immediately. His hands slid up her back, firm and deliberate, fingers splaying between her shoulder blades as if anchoring her there. The grip was protective. Final. When he looked at her, his eyes were no longer molten with fury, but sharp with intent.
“Then,” he said, voice low and absolute, “I burn the liar first.”
The words did not echo. They settled. Wrote themselves into the bones of the room.
Something beneath them shifted. Not a tremor. Not a threat. A recognition.
The floor hummed. Coming from deeper in the mountain. Stone warmed, sigils breathed as if roused from a long, patient sleep. Adelaide felt it—a subtle tightening of something vast and ancient, the way the mountain itself seemed to welcome her. As if Hell had reached a conclusion it had been circling for centuries.
Somewhere beyond the throne, hidden in the layered shadows of the hall, Caelum’s world cracked cleanly in two.
He did not move. Could not.
This was not the story he had been raised on. This was not the Devil he had learned to hate. This was not the Queen he had been taught to mourn.
The Emberborn had not been martyrs. They had been liars.
And Adelaide—gods help him—sat at the heart of a truth powerful enough to split Hell open all over again.
Apollo drew her closer, easing her fully into him, his forehead resting against hers. For a moment, the Devil did not look like a king at all. Just something old and tired and burning quietly from the inside out.
“You are not her,” he said softly.
“I know,” Adelaide replied, breath unsteady but certain.
His thumb brushed along her jaw, a touch almost reverent. “But you could be what she once meant to me,” he said. “Without the poison. Without the lies.”
Her heart thundered, loud enough that she was sure he felt it.
“And what would that be?” she asked.
Apollo’s mouth curved, slow and dangerous. A smile that carried both promise and ruin.
“My queen,” he said again.
Not as prophecy. As a choice.
And in the shadows, Caelum finally understood the truth he had been running from: Whatever war was coming next—it would not be fought over a throne.
It would be fought over her.