Chapter 41 Trapped
(Adelaide)
The torches crackled. Something in the corner of the room shifted — maybe just her imagination, maybe the weight of Hell pressing against the walls. The entire chamber felt thick, heavy, humid with leftover heat.
Her legs still vibrated from being pinned against the wall. Her lips still felt swollen. Her heart still hadn’t slowed. She closed her eyes and whispered, “You should have killed me.” But she knew — in some deep, terrible place inside her — that he never would have. And that terrified her more than death. Death was simple. This was not. This was a story with too many unwritten chapters and a monster who suddenly refused to end it.
She stood abruptly, pacing again because sitting still made the memories louder.
Her fingers brushed her mouth again without permission. She hissed and shoved her hand away violently.
“No,” she growled. “You don’t want him. You don’t—” Her voice broke when she remembered the moment he froze. The moment she told him to stop. The way he tore himself away with a sound that didn’t belong to a king or a monster — but a man in pain.
Why had he stopped? Why had she stopped him? Why had she?
Her mind recoiled from the answer. She dragged the fur tighter around herself again, rubbing her arms, terrified to feel warmth lingering there.
She wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
“Adelaide,” he had breathed against her neck, like a prayer.
Her stomach twisted. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare say my name like that.”
Her mind supplied the memory anyway — the shock in his eyes when she gasped it back. “Apollo—stop.” Her entire face burned. The syllables of his name still felt lodged in her throat, raw and scorching, like she’d swallowed a live coal.
She dropped to her knees beside the bed, pressing her forehead to the cold stone floor, trying to force the heat out of her body. “Why did I say his name?” she choked. “Why did it feel like—like—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t face the truth.
She curled over herself, arms wrapped around her body, shaking. She hated him. She hated him more than anything she had ever hated. But worse — infinitely worse — She hated that she didn’t hate him enough.
Tears rolled down her cheeks, hot and unwanted. She let them fall because resisting them took too much strength. The stone beneath her drank them greedily, as if Hell itself delighted in every drop.
After what felt like hours, she forced herself to sit up. To breathe. To think.
He’d lost control. He’d left. He wouldn’t stay gone for long.
She needed a plan. She needed her mind back. She needed to get out. Her eyes darted around the room — looking for a weapon, a crack in the wall, a loose stone, anything.
Nothing.
Only heat. Only shadows. Only the imprint of his hands on her waist.
Sudden fury detonated inside her. She stormed toward the massive wardrobe—taller than she was, carved with snarling beasts—and yanked both doors open with a snarl.
Inside hung rows of clothing — dark shirts, thick leather, linen, furs, all arranged with unnatural precision.
She grabbed the first tunic she saw and ripped it clean down the middle. Then another. And another.
Cloth flew through the air, fluttering like wounded birds before hitting the floor. She didn’t stop. She tore sleeves, ripped collars, and shredded hems until the wardrobe was a graveyard of fabric.
Each tear was a scream she couldn’t voice. Each destroyed garment was a punishment for the memory of his mouth. The sound of ripping cloth filled the chamber like its own kind of liturgy, a prayer of defiance made from ruin.
Then she froze. A scent drifted up from one of the discarded pieces — smoke, pine resin, and something warmer underneath, something distinctly him.
Her breath stuttered. She lifted the torn shirt slowly. Brought it to her face. Inhaled.
A wave of heat rolled through her, low and humiliating and irresistible. Her eyes fluttered shut. Her fingers tightened in the fabric.
The shameful, gut-deep ache in her belly sharpened, humming at the memory of his body pinning hers. Her thighs pressed together on instinct, and she hated herself for the reflex more than she had ever hated anything.
She rubbed the shirt against her cheek — once, slow, helpless — as if the scent alone could pull her back into that moment.
Her eyes snapped open. Revulsion clawed up her throat. She hurled the shirt across the room. Spat on it. Spat again.
“Never,” she hissed. “Never.”
Her whole body shook. Something glinted at the far side of the room — tall, dark, framed by heavy curtains. A door. Or something like one.
She stumbled toward it, hope burning through her exhaustion. She shoved the curtains aside—A balcony.
A view of Hell stretching endlessly below, glowing rivers and jagged mountains and swarms of distant shadows. The sky was a roiling throat of smoke and ember, churning slowly like a living storm that had never once known blue.
Freedom. She grabbed the handle and pulled. It didn’t budge. She pulled harder. Put her whole weight against it. Nothing. She slammed her shoulder into it. Pain shot down her arm, bright and sharp, and the iron didn’t even tremble. The door didn’t even shake.
She screamed, a raw, furious sound that ripped her throat. “Open!”
The balcony door remained cold, silent, unmoved. Her vision blurred with fresh tears. She spun, eyes landing on a heavy chair carved from obsidian and wood. She dragged it across the floor — muscles screaming — lifted it, and slammed it into the balcony door.
A crack should have followed. A dent. Something. Nothing.
She tried again, harder. Still nothing. She dropped the chair and staggered toward the main iron door. Lifted the chair over her head. Slammed it—The chair shattered. The door didn’t.
The echo rolled through the chamber like laughter. It bounced between the walls in cruel little ripples, as if the room itself found her efforts amusing.
Her breath hitched. Her knees buckled. She slumped to the floor in front of the unmovable iron, tears spilling silently down her cheeks.
Her chest rose and fell in ragged, panicked bursts. She was trapped. Truly, utterly trapped. And part of her — the part she hated, the part he had awakened — trembled not with fear, but with anticipation.
She recoiled from the thought, shaking her head violently.
“I’m getting out of here,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I don’t care what it takes.”
But her pulse fluttered hard, betraying her. Because she knew something awful: Getting out wasn’t her only fear.
The other fear — the one she couldn’t admit — was that he would come back. That he would look at her again with those wild, shattered eyes. That he would say her name again. And that some broken, traitorous part of her would want him to.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trembling. “I hate you,” she whispered.
She didn’t know if she was talking to him. Or to the part of herself that wished he hadn’t stopped.