Chapter 77 Devil Be Damned
(Adeliade)
Adelaide hated how relief made her knees weak. Heat rushed to her face, ashamed of how much she cared whether the Devil’s attention was on her or not.
“Then we understand each other,” she said quickly, covering it with sarcasm. “I keep your little rebellion a secret. In return, you make sure I don’t go insane staring at the same four walls.”
“And if I refuse?” Cael asked.
She bared her teeth in something that wasn’t a smile. “Then you wasted your first illegal visit,” she said. “And I scream his name until he rips that wall down and finds you standing in the middle of his room.”
They stared at each other. Ember-brown eyes against storm-lit defiance.
Finally, Cael exhaled slowly. “You’re not what I expected either,” he murmured.
“You and everyone else,” she muttered.
A tiny spark—wry, painful, almost warm—flickered between them.
“All right,” he said. “We have a bargain, Adelaide.”
Her name in his mouth sounded different from when Apollo said it. Apollo’s voice curled around it like possession. Cael’s wrapped around it like a description, like he was noting down a fact.
“How do you know my name?” she asked abruptly.
Something shuttered in his expression. “He said it,” Cael replied simply. “More than once. Loud enough, the palace remembered.”
Her heart gave a traitorous thump. “Right,” she said. “Of course.”
Cael glanced toward the wall again, as if checking the invisible lines of wards and listening for footsteps she couldn’t hear.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “They’ll notice if I’m gone too often.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” she asked.
“People you don’t want noticing you yet,” he said, which was not an answer and very much was at the same time. Old loyalties, old enemies, old fires—she heard all of that in the single evasive word.
“You’ll come back?” she asked, hating the hope in the question.
“Yes,” he said. “With clothes. Real ones.” His gaze flicked over her sheet-dress, and something almost gentle crossed his face. “Armour looks better on people who can breathe.”
“Armour?” she echoed.
“Figurative,” he said. “For now.”
Then, almost as an afterthought, he moved his hand, and a small bundle of folded black fabric appeared on the bed in a swirl of smoke.
She flinched. She hadn’t seen him cast. One moment his fingers were empty; the next, shadow thickened in his palm and condensed into weight and thread.
“You already brought some,” she said quietly.
“Always be prepared,” he replied. “Rule one in Hell.”
“What’s rule two?” she asked.
He looked at her for a moment longer. “Never assume the Devil is distracted,” he said. “He usually isn’t.”
A chill walked down her spine.
He stepped back toward the wall, smoke already starting to curl around his boots.
“Cael,” she said impulsively. He paused. “Why are you really helping me?”
He studied her, ember eyes unreadable.
“Because,” he said at last, voice low, “things that burn like you don’t survive long here. And for reasons that are not your concern yet… I’m invested in seeing how long you can prove me wrong.”
The answer made no sense and too much sense at once. It sounded like prophecy spoken sideways, wrapped in practicality so it wouldn’t look like hope.
Before she could respond, the stone behind him softened, shadow parting like a curtain. Smoke wrapped around his form, cloaking him once more in ember-threaded darkness.
He stepped backward into the wall and vanished. The panel sealed with a soft, almost inaudible click. Heat hummed in the silence he left behind.
Adelaide stood there for a long moment, staring at the stone as if it might change its mind and give him back.
It didn’t.
Eventually, she turned to the bed. The bundle he’d left lay where it had fallen—dark against the wine-coloured sheets. She approached slowly, like it might bite.
Her fingers brushed the fabric. Soft. Thick. Real. A simple black dress made of some Hell-woven material that felt cool and strong at once. There were even undergarments. Boots.
Her throat tightened. He had thought about this. About her size, the width of her shoulders, the way her feet had looked against the stone. It was a level of attention that made her uneasy and strangely seen.
She sat on the bed and pulled the dress into her lap, running her hands over the seams, the weight, the feel of not being draped in stolen sheets and someone else’s fur.
Clothes meant something. Clothes were a choice. A barrier. A refusal.
And Apollo—
Her breath hitched. How would she explain this to him?
Would he smell Cael on the fabric? Would he know instantly it hadn’t come from his hand? Would he drag her back to the bed and tear it off her body the moment he saw it? Would he assume she’d been touched? Helped? Given anything without his permission?
Her stomach twisted.
Could she hide it?
Not from him. Not really. He was too perceptive. Too territorial. Too everything. He read her without needing words. He filled the room like awareness itself. He would walk in—whenever he decided to return—and one glance would be enough.
He’d know. He always knew.
Her fingers curled in the fabric.
So what? So what if he knew someone dared to help her? So what if he roared and shattered the walls? So what if his anger came down like a storm?
She had been stripped, terrified, branded, hunted, and claimed. And still she was here. Still breathing. Still her.
She was tired of feeling small. Tired of being on display. Tired of wearing nothing but the remnants of his choices.
Her jaw tightened.
Slowly—almost defiant in the gesture—she stood and pulled the dress over her head.
The material slid over her skin like shadowed water, settling against her hips, her spine, her collarbone. The boots fit perfectly. The undergarments were soft and surprisingly comfortable. She caught her reflection in the polished obsidian mirror across the room.
For the first time since the Offering night, she looked like herself. Not prey. Not a possession. Not a trembling mess on the Devil’s bed.
A girl. A woman. Something burning that refused to go out. The mark on her neck glowed faintly in the mirror’s dark surface, a small crescent of claimed flesh above a body that no longer looked entirely owned.
She tucked the sheet-dress beneath the mattress, just in case, though a small, stubborn part of her whispered: Let him see it. Let him ask. Let him realise he isn’t the only one watching you.
A pulse shivered through the bond at the thought—distant, faint, questioning.
Her heart kicked. He felt something. Adelaide lifted her chin. “Devil be damned,” she murmured. “I’m wearing it.”
She squared her shoulders, facing the doorway like she expected him to walk through it right then.
He didn’t. But he would. And when he did… She would not be naked. She would not be meek. And she would not pretend she hadn’t been offered another path.
Not freedom. But something dangerously close to choice. A fork in a road she hadn’t known existed until a shadow stepped through her wall and left her a dress.
She sat on the edge of the bed, dress settling around her like armour, and whispered into the charged silence: “Come find me then.”
Hell held its breath.