Chapter 33 Help Me
(Adelaide)
She woke choking. Not on smoke. Not on dirt. But on silence. A thick, unnatural quiet that felt pressed in around her like a hand over her mouth.
Her body jolted upright before her mind caught up—hands clawing blindly at the air as a raw, panicked shout ripped from her throat. The room responded with a soft echo, swallowing her voice whole. The sound came back to her smaller, thinner, like even her fear had to bow here.
Adelaide froze.
Her breaths came fast, too shallow, ribs scraping painfully with each inhale. Her heart slammed against her chest, the memory of teeth sinking into her neck flashing through her mind with brutal clarity. Heat, pressure, the sick shock of pleasure laced through agony—her body remembered even where her brain refused to look.
The bite. The man. His hands. His mouth. The fire shooting through her when he—
She swallowed hard, pushing trembling fingers to her neck. The skin was tender. Warm. Marked. Her pulse jumped beneath her touch, frantic and uneven, as if trying to escape the crescent scar that now owned it.
Her fingertips brushed the crescent of the wound, and pain flared sharp and electric, spreading down her spine in a single pulse. It was more than pain—an echo of the magic he’d forced into her, sparking along her nerves like someone striking flint against her bones.
She hissed. Everything hurt. Her arms, her thighs, her ribs, her foot—every scrape and bruise from the forest burned like fresh wounds. But her head… gods, her head felt worse. Foggy. Heavy. Like something was still crawling beneath her skin. Thoughts skittered when she tried to catch them, as if some new presence was moving through the dark corners of her mind, rearranging what belonged to her.
She reached down to touch her dress, and her breath choked off.
There was nothing to touch.
She was naked under a thick black fur, her skin pressed against silk sheets so soft it felt wrong. Her pulse pounded violently as she scrambled to pull the fur tighter around her chest, covering herself in frantic movements. The fur rasped against her raw skin, hot and heavy, clinging to the faint sheen of sweat along her spine.
Her gaze snapped around the room. It wasn’t a forest. It wasn’t the village. It wasn’t anywhere she’d been before.
The chamber was enormous—tall black stone walls marked by deep cracks glowing faintly red, as if molten heat pressed just beneath the surface. Shadows clung to every corner. Firelight from sconces cast warm, flickering halos, but the warmth felt oppressive rather than comforting. The air tasted of char and metal, like she’d inhaled the inside of a forge. Each breath scratched across her throat, too hot, too thick.
The bed beneath her was carved from dark wood, twisted into shapes that looked like horns and claws. The sheets glimmered like spilled wine. Everything smelled faintly of smoke and iron. A low, constant thrum of power vibrated through the mattress, as if the stone beneath the room had a heartbeat and she’d been laid directly over it.
She didn’t have to guess where she was.
Hell.
The Devil had taken her.
Her stomach twisted violently. “No,” she whispered, curling into herself, clutching the fur tighter. “No, no, no…” She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be alive. She had survived until almost dawn. She had fought. She had run. She had stabbed him. She had struck him.
And he let her think she’d won.
Only to take her the moment she let her guard fall. The memory rose sharp and disjointed—cold stream water, the creak of roots above her, his shadow filling the world, the flash of his teeth—and then nothing but white-hot pain and darkness swallowing her whole.
Tears stung her eyes, unbidden and infuriating. She swiped them away.
You are not allowed to cry, she scolded herself. Not here. Not now. Not for him. Not where tears might taste like an invitation.
She forced herself to breathe. Her gaze darted around the room again—searching, desperate.
No clothes. No weapons. No door handle on the inside. No windows, no seams in the stone, no cracks in the ceiling—just unbroken, enclosing black, as if the room itself had been carved from a single block of night.
She ran to the giant iron door, black fur cascading behind her. She slammed her shoulder into it, and pain ricocheted down her body. She shoved at it with her body and hit and pulled with her fists. It was sealed. She was trapped. The impact rattled up her spine; the door didn’t even shiver. Runes she hadn’t seen before flickered faintly along its surface, then went dark again, like an eye blinking shut.
Adelaide pulled her knees to her chest beneath the fur, digging her nails into her shins until the sting grounded her. Her breathing slowed by fractions, her mind clawing its way back from the edge of hysteria one ragged inhale at a time.
Where was he? Where was the man who bit her?
Her heart thudded uneasily at the thought of him—his blood-stained chest, the tattoo curling down his arm, his eyes like embers in a dying fire.
The way he had grabbed her. The way his mouth had—
She shook her head violently. “No. He’s a monster.” She repeated the words until her chest ached. “He’s a monster. A monster.” Each repetition tasted less like certainty and more like a spell she was trying to cast on herself.
Still, her body trembled. Still, the place where he had bitten her pulsed. Still, her heart refused to settle. Something low in her stomach twisted whenever she thought of his mouth on her skin—revulsion and something disturbingly close to heat tangling until she couldn’t pull them apart.
She dragged the fur tighter around her naked body and whispered into the hot, smoky air: “Somebody help me.”
No one answered. Her own plea bounced back off the stone, thinner, smaller, swallowed by distant, muffled echoes of screams that might not even be real.