Chapter 75 Brave or Stupid?
(Adelaide)
Adelaide pressed her ear to the iron, heart racing. The metal cooled her flushed cheek, the faint hum of wards beneath its surface prickling against her skin like static.
“Please,” she whispered, the word slipping out before pride could catch it. “I just… I just need to know what’s happening. I need to know if I’m alone. I need—”
A new sound cut across her plea. A soft scrape. Not at the door. To the right of it. She drew back, frowning. The wall.
Very close to where Apollo had once appeared from nowhere, all shadows and smoke, watching her fall apart on his bed.
Adelaide turned.
The stone beside the door—seamless, smooth, pulsing faintly with its usual dull red glow—shivered. The veins of molten light running through it stuttered, their steady rhythm breaking into an uneven flicker, like a heartbeat missing a step.
Hair rose along her arms.
A line of darkness traced itself down the wall, thin as a crack in glass. Then, slowly, it widened. Stone, which moments ago had seemed solid and uninterested in her existence, peeled back like shadowed skin.
A gap opened.
Not big. Not dramatic. Just enough for darkness to seep through—a deeper black than the room’s natural shadows, threaded with faint glimmers of ember-red.
Smoke spilled out.
Not the choking, sulfuric kind that clung to Apollo when he warped himself through the room. This smoke moved like it was thinking. It coiled, drew back, then stretched forward again in hesitant curls, testing the air. The veins of molten light running through it stuttered, their steady rhythm breaking into an uneven flicker, like a heartbeat missing a step.
Adelaide stumbled back a step, heart slamming against her ribs.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, hating the way her voice shook.
The smoke thickened. A shape stepped out of it—though at first it wasn’t a shape so much as an impression. The hint of shoulders. The suggestion of height. Ember-bright eyes glimmered faintly within the haze, watching her.
A man. Or something wearing the outline of one.
He stayed close to the secret opening, half melded with the wall’s shadow, as if he had no intention of fully entering the room. One foot remained half-sunk in darkness, as though even his body didn’t trust the threshold.
Adelaide’s mouth went dry. This wasn’t Apollo. She knew that before he even spoke. Apollo’s presence filled a space, devoured it. This one… slipped in. Edged. Careful.
“Who are you?” she asked, forcing her chin up. “Did he send you?”
The smoke twitched. A low voice answered her. Calm. Rough-edged, but not like Apollo’s molten thunder. More like stone scraped with metal. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”
The words slid under her skin and lodged there. A stranger. In the Devil’s private chambers. Claiming the Devil didn’t know he’d come.
“Then you’re either very brave,” she said slowly, “or very stupid.”
A soft huff, almost a laugh, stirred the smoke. “Possibly both.”
Her fingers dug into the edge of her makeshift dress. “Step out,” she demanded. “Let me see you.”
The eyes in the smoke narrowed. “That would not be… wise,” the voice replied. “If he senses me—”
“Too late,” she snapped, fear sharpening her tongue. “You already shoved your way through his wall. If I can feel you, I’m guessing he can too.”
A beat of silence.
She could feel her pulse in her ears. In her throat. In the mark on her neck. The bite burned faintly, the skin there tightening as if trying to listen through bone.
The figure shifted. Smoke peeled away slowly, like mist lifting at dawn. Beneath it was a man. Young at first glance—young the way Apollo looked young: early twenties, if you forgot to count the centuries behind their eyes. He wasn’t as tall as Apollo, but he had the same kind of presence that bent the space around him. His build was leaner, more whipcord than brute strength, to the point of almost being deceptive.
His skin was a swirling mix of black and grey, but there was an undertone of ember heat—like he’d been warmed from the inside. Dark auburn coloured hair fell in slightly messy waves around his face, not quite long, not quite short. His eyes—
Her breath stuttered.
His eyes were the colour of dying coals. Not Apollo’s molten gold, not the black voids she’d seen in some of the creatures in the clearing, but a deep, smouldering brown brightened with flecks of ember. Intelligent. Watchful. Guarded. They skimmed over her in one smooth pass, taking everything in, giving very little back.
He wore dark trousers and a fitted black tunic, simple compared to Apollo’s opulence, but made of fabric that shimmered faintly with latent magic. A band of leather crossed his chest, holding a sheathed dagger at his side.
He looked like a guard. Or a scout. Or a hunter. But not like any demon she’d expected. There were no exposed fangs, no ostentatious horns, no wings unfurled for show. Just quiet danger dressed in restraint.
Adelaide stared.
The man lifted one brow, the barest hint of amusement touching his mouth.
“Not what you were expecting?” he asked.
“I’m not sure what I was expecting,” she shot back, dragging her gaze away from his face and down to his hands. Normal. Calloused. Not clawed. Her shoulders loosened by a fraction at the lack of talons, then immediately tensed again when she realised how starved she was for anything that resembled human.
“But it wasn’t… you.”
“Disappointed?” he asked, still annoyingly calm.
Suspicion flared instantly. “Are you trying to be charming?” Adelaide asked. “Because if this is some new trick of his—”
“It isn’t,” the man cut in, voice low. There was something in the way he said it that made her believe him. “He didn’t send me. He would flay me alive if he knew I was here.”
She swallowed. “Then why are you here?”
A shadow of something—curiosity? Calculation?—moved behind his eyes.
“I heard the bond flare,” he said simply. “Half of Hell did.”
Her body went cold.
He watched the reaction, gaze flicking briefly to the mark at her neck, then back to her face.
“You… burned,” he added quietly. “In a way no mortal should.”
Her hands rose instinctively to her arms, remembering flames licking over skin that hadn’t blistered. The phantom sensation of heat skated over her forearms, as if the fire at the memory alone could be coaxed out again.
“Were you watching?” she asked, anger sparking. “Like some kind of spectator?”
His expression didn’t flicker.
“No,” he said. “But you don’t unleash power like that in the Devil’s bed without the realm feeling it.”
He took a measured step into the room, then fully crossed the threshold. The secret opening slid shut behind him with a soft, final sound. The ember glow in the stone dimmed, then steadied.
Adelaide fought the urge to back up. Every instinct screamed at her not to let anything from Hell get closer, while another part of her leaned forward, hungry for any voice that wasn’t Apollo’s.
“Who are you?” she repeated. “And don’t tell me ‘no one.’ I’m locked in his private chamber. People don’t just stroll in here.”
He inclined his head slightly, like a soldier acknowledging a superior.
“You may call me Cael,” he said. “I serve as one of the palace guard.”
“Cael,” she repeated, testing it. It fit him. Short. Sharp. Something that could cut if you weren’t careful.