Chapter 512: Out of Reach

(Apollo)

Pain had become the only measure of time Apollo trusted. It arrived without rhythm and left without mercy, rising through him in savage waves that tore apart whatever fragile awareness remained before withdrawing just far enough to let him understand that another was coming. Hours no longer meant anything. Neither did sleep. He drifted in and out of consciousness beneath the low vaulted ceiling of his private healing chamber, surrounded by the metallic stink of his own blood, the bitter smoke of purification herbs and the soft, incessant drip of crimson falling from the silver tubes fastened into the veins of his arms. Every basin beside the narrow stone bed had been filled, emptied and returned so many times that he had lost count. Fresh cuts had been opened whenever the old ones began closing. New sigils had been carved over his skin when the poison found another place to hide. His body had been drained until even the healers had begun exchanging frightened glances, yet they had continued because the alternative was allowing the venom to remain inside their king.

Now, at last, it was gone.

Apollo knew before anyone told him. He felt the final thread of it surrender sometime in the darkest hours before the Citadel's artificial dawn, a foul pressure uncurling from somewhere near his heart before sliding through his bloodstream and vanishing into the collection basin below. The change was so subtle another creature might have missed it. Apollo did not. For days the poison had felt like something with claws buried inside his bones, feeding slowly upon his strength while the bloodletting dragged it inch by inch towards the surface. When the last of it left, the hollow it abandoned felt almost peaceful.

For perhaps three breaths, he believed the torment had ended.

Then the pain came again.

It began beneath his ribs, a sudden crushing pressure that had nothing to do with the ruined muscles across his back or the wounds still knitting beneath layers of black linen. Apollo's eyes flew open. His body arched against the stone bed as something unseen cinched tight around his chest, tightening with such vicious force that breath tore from him in a broken growl. The silver tubes ripped free from his arms when he surged upright, blood scattering across the pale sheets and the floor in bright, violent arcs. One of the healers cried out and lunged towards him, but Apollo struck her hand away before she could touch him.

Another tightening followed. Not around his chest this time. His wrists.

He felt it as clearly as if iron links had closed over his own skin, biting inward, crushing bone, dragging his arms behind him until the joints screamed. Apollo stared down at his hands. There was nothing there. Only blood running from the torn places where the needles had been, his fingers trembling from weakness and rage.

The pain did not belong to him.

The knowledge arrived with such absolute certainty that everything inside him went still.

Adelaide.

Her name moved through the bond like a pulse trapped beneath deep water. Faint. Distorted. Almost unreachable. Yet there. She was there. Alive. Somewhere beyond the Citadel, somewhere hidden beneath the endless violence of Hell, she was suffering so severely that even the crippled remnants of their connection could no longer contain it.

Apollo tore himself from the bed. His legs failed beneath him before his feet found the floor. He hit one knee hard enough to crack the stone, one blood-slicked hand catching against the edge of the bed while the healers shouted behind him. Their voices blurred into meaningless noise. The only thing he could hear was the echo of her pain moving through him again, tightening around his waist now, then his throat, then every part of her at once until his vision whitened at the edges.

"She's alive." The words scraped out of him.

No one answered. Perhaps they hadn't understood him. Perhaps he had spoken too quietly. Apollo forced himself upright, swaying as the chamber tilted around him, his bare feet slipping in the blood pooling beneath the bed.

"She's alive." This time the declaration emerged as a roar.

The nearest healer stumbled backwards. Another pressed herself flat against the wall, clutching a bundle of bloodied linen to her chest as though it might protect her from him.

Apollo barely saw them. He reached for the bond with everything he possessed.

Fire answered first, weak from blood loss but still furious enough to race through the cracks in the floor. Dark crimson flame surged outward from his body, climbing the walls in great, hungry sheets before recoiling when the wards carved into the chamber forced it back. He pushed again, driving his consciousness into the broken tether, searching through distance, through interference, through whatever power had been wrapped around Adelaide and hidden her from him.

Nothing. Only pressure. Pain. A broken rush of fear so sharp it nearly stopped his heart.

A fragment returned. Not words. A scream without sound.

Apollo's control vanished. The stone bed exploded beneath his hand. One moment it stood beside him, dark and solid, carved from a single slab of Citadel obsidian. The next it shattered into hundreds of jagged pieces that tore through sheets, smashed into the surrounding walls and sent every healer diving for cover. Apollo did not feel the stone slice across his palm. He did not feel the half-healed wounds along his back tear open when he turned. He felt only another violent contraction across the bond and the helpless fury of knowing she was somewhere beyond his reach.