Chapter 46 I'm In Hell
(Adelaide)
Adelaide didn’t know how long she sat on the cold stone floor after he left—seconds, minutes, hours. Time didn’t behave normally here. It stretched, twisted, pulsed in uneven breaths that reminded her she was no longer in the world she understood. The fur he had left wrapped around her body felt heavy, suffocating, too warm against her already overheated skin. She pulled it tighter anyway, gripping it like a shield she couldn’t let go of. The weight of it dragged at her shoulders, as if the pelt itself remembered other girls who had worn it before her and sunk heavier with the memory.
It didn’t help. Nothing in this place felt like protection.
The chamber pressed in all around her—every flicker of firelight stretching the shadows into clawed silhouettes that crept along the walls. The stone seemed to hum beneath her palms, as though alive with some deep, ancient heartbeat. Even the air tasted wrong—warm and metallic and faintly sweet, like burnt honey and blood. Each breath coated her tongue, clinging thickly at the back of her throat, until swallowing felt like gulping molten dusk.
Her breathing refused to steady.
She still felt him. His mouth. His breath. The way his body caged hers, not out of need, but hunger. The imprint of his hands lingered like bruises beneath the skin—no visible marks, just the memory of how easily he’d held her in place, as if she weighed nothing at all.
Her cheeks burned at the memory. Not because she wanted it—gods, she did NOT want it—but because her body had betrayed her. Because for one horrifying, stomach-twisting moment she had pushed into the kiss instead of pulling away.
She squeezed her eyes shut, shame twisting through her. “You’re such an idiot,” she whispered hoarsely. “You let him touch you. You let him—” She cut herself off with a strangled sound. Her throat felt raw. The bite throbbed beneath her fingertips when she touched it—an angry pulse that didn’t belong to her alone. Heat pulsed there in steady beats, as though someone had pressed a coal into her flesh and then taught it to mimic a heartbeat that was not her own.
She wrapped both arms around herself, curling forward.
“What is happening to me?”
The room didn’t answer. Only the torches crackled in the corners, spitting sparks like laughter, like they knew exactly what she’d become and were far too entertained to explain it.
She should get up—she knew that. She needed to think, to plan, to do something other than sit here drowning in fear and the ghost of his hands. She forced her feet beneath her, but the moment she tried to straighten, a sharp pain lanced up her right leg and she collapsed again.
Her knees struck the floor hard. A gasp tore from her lips. She stayed down. For a moment, she hated herself for that too. The stone leeched the warmth from her skin, chilling her shins while the rest of her burned, trapping her between fever and frost.
She didn’t look at the door. She couldn’t. Just the memory of him standing there—eyes dark, chest heaving, power curling like smoke off his skin—made her heart seize painfully inside her ribs.
She dragged in a breath that trembled all the way through her.
Focus.
She needed to figure out where she was. What was real. What wasn’t. How to survive the next hour, the next minute. How to stop her mind from spiralling back to the surprisingly warm press of his mouth or the way he’d whispered her name like it wasn’t just a sound but something he wanted to devour.
She pressed her fingertips into her temples. “No more thinking about him,” she ordered herself. “Just… breathe.”
But breathing wasn’t enough. Because the room wasn’t quiet. Not anymore.
A faint vibration shivered through the stone beneath her palms. Like a tremor. Like something shifting far below. She stilled, holding her breath as the sensation rippled outward. It felt like the world beneath this room was turning over in its sleep, some vast beast rolling deeper into its nest of fire and bone.
Her eyes darted across the room. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. Then she heard it. A sound. Barely audible. A soft, distant wail.
A chill crawled up her spine.
It came again—clearer this time. A long, ragged scream that rose from somewhere deep beneath the chamber. It echoed through the stone like a thread pulled taut.
Her breathing stopped entirely.
No, no, no.
Her heartbeat slammed so hard she heard it pounding in her ears. She strained to listen again, even though every instinct screamed not to. Another voice joined the first. A wet, gurgling cry. Then a shriek so sharp her bones vibrated with it.
The air thickened around her. Adelaide’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh gods…”
She wasn’t imagining it. This wasn’t a nightmare. This wasn’t some darkness in her mind, or a hallucination conjured by fear. Those were real voices. Real screams. Real agony. The sound slid through the stone like oil, seeping up around her knees, into her lungs, until the chamber tasted of old suffering and burnt marrow.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe, but the sound burrowed under her skin like a living thing. It wrapped around her ribs, sank into her stomach, dragged cold dread through her veins.
“I’m in Hell,” she whispered.