Chapter 37 A Name With Power
(Adelaide & Apollo)
“Apollo.”
The name felt strange on her tongue—too soft, too human, too real for the creature who had ripped her from the world she knew. She didn’t mean to speak it aloud. The sound simply escaped, barely a whisper. It slid out like an accident, like breath forced from her lungs after a fall—unplanned, uncontrollable, treacherous.
But it hit him like a blow. His pupils dilated. His chest rose sharply. The glow of the tattoo on his arm flared and dimmed again, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Her heartbeat.
Adelaide jerked the fur tighter around herself. The movement sent a jolt of pain through her ribs, grounding her in the ache of her own body instead of the way he was looking at her.
“No,” she said quickly, breath shaking. “No, I’m not calling you that. You don’t—you don’t get to be… human to me.”
Apollo’s jaw tightened. “So you’ll call me Devil instead?” he asked quietly. “Or monster? Or beast?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“Then say it again.”
Her throat dried. “What?”
“You like saying it,” he murmured, stepping close enough that the heat of him pressed against the air she breathed. “I can hear it in your voice. I can feel it through the mark.”
Her skin prickled with a prickling, electric awareness. The bite at her neck seemed to wake, pulsing in faint, answering beats, as though the word Devil itself stirred whatever he’d left under her skin.
“I’m not saying it,” she whispered.
He leaned closer, just enough that the firelight caught the line of his jaw, the hollow of his throat, the flicker of restrained want in his eyes. Shadows moved over his cheekbones like smoke, turning the hard planes of his face into something carved from ember and night.
“You already did,” he said. “And you’ll say it again.”
Her breath caught. Rage, fear, confusion—everything tangled until she could barely breathe. Her chest felt too tight for her lungs, like her bones were a cage closing in.
“Stop it,” she said, backing into the bedpost again. “Stop reading me—stop feeling me—stop whatever you’re doing.”
He flinched as if she’d stabbed him a second time. “I’m not doing anything,” he said. “You’re doing it. You’re the one… burning through me.”
Burning. That word made something inside her twist violently. Images flashed unbidden—torches in the clearing, his eyes in the dark, her own rage licking up like flame when she’d driven the spear into him.
She forced her chin up. “Then look away. Leave. Pretend I don’t exist.”
His gaze flicked down her body—wrapped in fur, bare skin peeking beneath the edges, bruises along her collarbone, her neck, her thighs.
Heat rushed to her face.
His jaw clenched.
“I can’t pretend,” he said. He looked almost angry about it. Almost frustrated. Almost… undone. The wordless tension in his shoulders made him seem less like a king and more like a man on the verge of breaking something—stone, bone, himself.
Adelaide glared at him, trying to steady the shaking in her limbs. “You said you’re trying not to touch me,” she whispered. “So keep trying. Harder.”
Her defiance faltered under the weight of his stare. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff while a storm rolled in—knowing one wrong step meant being swallowed whole.
He took one careful, controlled step toward her—nothing predatory, nothing rushed, but every line of his body radiated tension, like he was holding back a storm. His voice, when it came, was a low, rough command: “Tell me your name.”
Adelaide’s breath caught. “What?”
His eyes narrowed—slow, molten, unblinking. “Your name,” he repeated. “Say it.”
Her fingers tightened around the fur until her knuckles whitened. “Why?”
His jaw clenched. His mark pulsed. Something ancient and instinctive flickered in his gaze. “Because I need it.” The words left him as if dragged from his chest by force. They sounded wrong in his mouth—need—not the language of a tormentor, but of something cornered.
Adelaide’s pulse thundered in her throat. “You don’t get to know my name,” she said, stepping back until her spine hit the bedpost. “You don’t get to demand anything.”
A slow exhale pushed past his lips, controlled only by sheer will. “Names hold power,” he said quietly. “And I am trying very hard not to take any more power from you than I already have.”
Her stomach twisted. “Then why ask?”
His eyes darkened. “Because the mark is pulling too hard,” he said, voice cracking with restrained violence. “Because it’s binding to someone unnamed. Because it burns every time I think of you without a name.”
He took another breath—sharp, ragged. “And because I want to hear it.”
Her heart jumped painfully. “No,” she whispered. “I’m not giving you anything.”
His lips curled—not in amusement, but in something close to suffering. “You already have,” he said. “You just don’t realise it.”
She swallowed hard. The horrible thing was—some part of her believed him. The bite ached like a promise she hadn’t agreed to, like a secret she’d already told without words.
He stepped closer. “Tell me,” he breathed.
“No.”
His nostrils flared, pupils dilating, the mark on his arm glowing faintly in response to her fear and defiance crashing together.
“Your name,” he said again, voice gravel and fire. “Say it.”
Adelaide lifted her chin. “Why would you want the name of a girl you dragged into Hell?”
His eyes softened in a way she didn’t understand. “Because I dragged you here,” he murmured, “and I want to know who I damned.”
Her breath shook. Against her better judgment— against every ounce of self-preservation— she whispered: “…Adelaide.”
The name barely left her lips before he shuddered.
A low, guttural sound vibrated in his chest—dangerous, primal, involuntary. Not a growl. A reaction. His mark flared violently, magic sparking under his skin. The air in the room seemed to tighten, the flames in the sconces drawing inward as if the entire chamber had leaned closer to listen.
And then— now knowing the name that unravelled him— he inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring.
“Adelaide,” he groaned. He said it like it was a plea and a prayer combined. Like he’d been thirsty for centuries and had just been given the first taste of water.