Chapter 69 A Deal Struck
(Apollo)
What if, one day, a daughter’s blood sparked like old fire? He might never know unless he had reason to keep coming back. Reason to line them up, to look into their faces, to listen for that particular crackle of power beneath human skin.
So he’d smiled—sharp and dangerous—and given them a deal.
“Once every ten years,” he had said, “I will return. But you do not bring me your scraps.”
The Elders had flinched as his shadow lengthened across the clearing, swallowing their torches one by one. Night itself seemed to lean into his outline, stars snuffing out above the treetops as if unwilling to watch.
“You do not choose,” the Devil continued, voice rolling like distant thunder. “I choose.”
His gaze swept the terrified faces before him—mothers gripping their shawls, fathers hiding their trembling behind clenched jaws, young girls standing rigid in a trembling line.
“Sixteen.”
The Elder’s breath caught. “Sixteen… what?”
Apollo’s smile was slow, sharp, merciless. “Offerings. Never more. Nevertheless. Bring the line before me every decade—each girl between sixteen and twenty—and I will select the one whose blood calls loudest.”
“You said one,” the Elder whispered.
“Yes. One.” He leaned down, eyes burning molten gold. “Unless you defy me. If you hide a girl, or attempt to deceive me, or refuse to bring them forward… I will take all I want.”
Torchlight sputtered. Some villagers cried out. One man collapsed to his knees. The ground under him blackened in a perfect handprint of scorched earth where his palm met the soil.
Apollo straightened lazily, wings unfurling in a gust that sent embers spiralling into the night sky.
“Obey,” he said, “and your village will know peace from the horrors your world is too weak to face. Defy…” His claws flexed, slicing through the air. “…and you will meet the same fate as your precious Queen.”
They agreed. Of course they did. Mortals always did.
They would trade their daughters, their futures, their very souls for the illusion of safety. They would call it sacrifice, call it duty, call it tradition, anything but what it was: fear dressed in ritual.
And Apollo— He walked away from that clearing satisfied.
A clean, efficient arrangement.
A tool. A trap. A net cast wide over bloodlines that should no longer exist.
When he returned a decade later for the first Offering, he felt nothing. Just the pulse of old power buried somewhere in the line. A faint echo in their shared blood, like the ghost of a song he once knew the words to and refused to hum.
He chose a girl at random—not because she interested him, but because he expected her blood to betray something. It did not. She was fragile. Quiet. Human.
He brought her to Hell. She lasted one week.
One.
He had returned from a battle in the northern rings to find her cold and limp on the floor of her chamber, throat torn by her own nails. The air still tasted of sorrow and terror. The walls there still whispered sometimes when the palace went silent, a thin, hysterical laugh that was only memory but never quite faded.
She had clawed herself apart trying to escape.
Disappointing.
The second Offering had been worse.
Pretty enough. Braver than the first. Too brave. She screamed at him, cursed him, and fought him every time he entered the room.
By the fifth night, she had gone mad. He killed her because mercy disgusted him and weakness enraged him. Her last word had not been a plea, but a curse spat in his face. He still admired that, in an abstract way. It had changed nothing.
After that… he learned.
Human girls were fragile. Easily broken. Fragile offerings of fragile worlds. He grew tired of the crying, the shaking, the endless terror that stained his halls and bored him to irritation.
So he stopped bringing them back to the palace altogether. Ten years, another Offering. Another chase. Another hunt.
He hunted them through the forest around their village, watched the terror bloom in their eyes when they realised the stories were real. Branches grabbed at their dresses, roots tried to trip them, the river foamed with reflected fire every time his shadow passed overhead.
Most never made it past the river. Some lasted longer. But none— not one—had ever stirred so much as a flicker in him.
Not interest. Not desire. Not even amusement. They were tasks. Obligations. Checks on a ledger of centuries.
Until Adelaide.
The memory hit him like a blow—her bare feet pounding through the dark forest, her pulse bright as lightning, her defiance shining through her terror, her weapon slicing his skin, drawing blood from a form that should have been untouchable.
His tail twitched as the memory rippled through him. He could still feel the sting of that first cut, an insult and a revelation carved into his flesh.
No other Offering had ever thrown herself into his jaws for someone else. No other Offering had stabbed him. No other Offering had drawn blood from his war-form. No other Offering had screamed at him with that much defiance, that much fury, eyes blazing with a fire that should not exist.
No other Offering had erupted in flames not his own.
His claws bit deep into the throne armrest, molten gold oozing from the fresh cracks.
Maybe, he thought grimly, this was his punishment.
He had created the pact to hunt a threat he refused to name. He had kept it going long after the village had forgotten why. Ten years, another girl. Another decade, another Offering. A habit of power. A rhythm of cruelty.
He exhaled sharply, claws digging into the stone at the thought.
Adelaide was not an Offering.
She was a reckoning.
A girl from that very village. Marked by him. Awakened by him. Burning in his bed.
And he was not ready for what she meant. Not ready for the way her name sat on his tongue like both a prayer and a curse. Not ready for the way his realm bent around her presence, the way the old prophecies he’d refused to read suddenly felt less like superstition and more like a countdown.