Chapter 72 Demands Unanswered
(Adelaide)
The palace had gone… quiet.
Not the normal kind of quiet— not the hush of a late hour or the pause between screams from some distant torture chamber.
This was different. Heavy. Smothering. A padded sort of silence that soaked into stone and bone alike, as if someone had thrown a shroud over Hell and told it not to move.
Adelaide lay on her back atop the oversized bed, staring up at the dark stone ceiling as if it might crack open and let real air through. The faint red veins in the stone pulsed lazily, like the whole palace had a heartbeat of its own, but even that seemed slower now. Muted.
Something had changed. She could feel it in the walls. In the way the bedframe occasionally hummed with a distant, muffled tremor, then went utterly still, as if the entire structure was trying not to be heard.
At first, she thought it was just in her head. A trick of nerves and exhaustion. But as the days slid past— if days even meant anything down here— the silence settled deeper.
Fewer footsteps in the corridor. Fewer distant screams. Less clanking of chains. Less… everything.
As if Hell itself was holding its breath. As if the whole realm were a creature pressed flat to the ground, ears straining for some approaching storm.
She dragged a hand over her face and exhaled, long and slow. The fur he’d given her—his fur, she reminded herself with a spike of irritation—was tangled around her hips, the once-sleek pelt now wrinkled and twisted from too many nights of restless sleep. It still held the faint, wild scent of him buried deep in the fibers; no amount of kicking it away or pulling it tighter seemed to change that.
Sleep. That was generous. She hadn’t really slept since the fire.
Her gaze dipped to her forearms. No flames. No golden light curling over her skin. No phantom heat licking at her fingers. Just flesh. Bruised. Marked. Human.
She flexed her hands, half expecting embers to crackle between her fingers. Nothing. That should have calmed her. It didn’t. Because the memory of it refused to fade: the wild roar of heat exploding from inside her, a fire that wasn’t his, that didn’t burn her, wrapping her in light while she screamed his name. She remembered the way the air had thinned around her, how sound had warped, how every nerve had felt strung between terror and something that tasted dangerously like freedom. The panic. The way the flames had stroked instead of consumed. The way he’d looked at her.
She swallowed hard.
Apollo’s face when the fire appeared had shaken her more than her own burning. Shock. Recognition. Fear. Real fear—on the Devil’s face.
What did you see in me?
Adelaide rolled onto her side, curling her knees up, pulling the fur closer around her. The sheets whispered under her skin, sinfully soft, as if mocking the turmoil in her chest. Every rustle sounded too loud in the starved quiet, like the bed itself was betraying her thoughts to the walls.
The room smelled faintly of smoke and him. That mix of heat and iron and something darker that always clung to the air after he left. She hated that she recognised it now. Hated that her body reacted to it—heart tightening, breath catching, muscles clenching as if expecting him to step out of the shadows at any second.
He hadn’t. Not once. Not since the fire. Not since his tail and his tongue and the way her world had detonated under his mouth. The memory flickered across her mind like a forbidden vision, all slick heat and helpless sounds, and left a phantom ache deep in her muscles.
Heat shot through her at the thought. She squeezed her eyes shut, furious at herself. Stop. Stop thinking about that. Think about something else.
Liam’s face surfaced unhelpfully. Soft brown eyes. Crooked smile. Calloused hands that had always touched her with hesitant sweetness.
He’d never looked at her the way Apollo did. No one ever had.
Liam had loved her. She knew that. In the gentle, terrified way, human boys love anything they’re scared to lose. But even when they’d touched—when she’d let him push her down into the moss and explore the lines of her body—it had never felt like this.
Not this brutal ache. Not this heat that made breathing hurt. Not this war between want and rage and shame.
Apollo’s kiss had scrambled something inside her. As if her bones had been quietly rearranged and put back in the wrong order, so nothing quite fit the way it used to.
The memory of him pinning her to the wall… the way his mouth had devoured hers like a punishment and a promise. The way her fingers had found his hair without meaning to. The way she’d said his name.
And then the way he’d thrown himself away from her, like touching her burned.
A bitter sound lodged in her throat.
He’d left her mark on her mouth. Literally.
Her gaze ticked to the bedside table where the empty silver goblet sat. She’d scrubbed her face raw that first night, trying to wipe his seed from her skin. She’d washed until her cheeks stung and her lips felt numb.
And still… she could remember the taste.
Salty. Smoky. Wrong.
Her stomach knotted.
What kind of person licked it off her fingers like she’d been starving? You’re disgusting, she told herself savagely. The thought landed like a stone in her chest, cold and heavy, but it didn’t stop the traitorous throb of heat between her thighs.
Her body didn’t seem to care.
A shiver ran through her, entirely unrelated to cold. The bond pulsed faintly in response—as if it were listening. As if it had opinions about her shame. A faint, low tug beneath her breastbone, like someone had plucked an invisible string and was waiting to see what note she made.
Sometimes she could almost sense him through it—a hot pressure at the edges of her mind. Not words. Not thoughts. Just… weight.
Presence. Watching.
She rolled onto her back again and glared up at the ceiling. “I know you’re there,” she muttered to the hot, stale air. Her voice sounded small against the vastness of the stone, swallowed almost instantly, as if the room had been trained not to carry her words too far.
Nothing answered. The bond stayed quiet. Which somehow made it worse.
He had vanished. Locked her in his room, wrapped her in his fur, and then simply… disappeared.
At first, she’d pounded on the door until her fists ached. Screaming. Cursing him. Demanding answers. Demanding to be taken home. She had paced until her feet hurt. She’d tried to pry the iron loose, fingers raw and bleeding.
The door hadn’t budged. The metal thrummed under her grip with old magic, stubborn and cold, like it found her efforts almost amusing.
She’d yelled at the walls. They didn’t care.