Chapter 80 Ways To Talk
(Apollo)
The dress clung to her trembling body. It offended him. It was proof.
Apollo stepped close.
Very close.
He pressed his clawed hand to the material at her hip. The dress quivered under his palm; Adelaide did too. He could feel the heat of her skin through the weave, the rapid jump of muscle as she tried not to flinch from his touch and failed.
Adelaide’s eyes widened in panic. “Apollo—please—don’t—don’t—”
His fingers snapped.
FWOOM— The dress ignited in black flame.
He burned it away.
The dress disintegrated into floating embers, drifting down from her skin like dying stars. They winked out just before they touched the floor, devoured by the hungry circle of runes beneath her feet.
She gasped — a small broken sound — tears spilling down her cheeks as she hung naked, trembling, breath shaking against the cold air.
He stepped close, chest heaving, claws flexing at his sides.
The sight should have calmed him. It didn’t.
Adelaide writhed, naked again, vulnerable in the dim, smoky chamber, every line of her body trembling.
She sucked in breath after breath in short, panicked bursts, chest rising and falling too fast.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
He felt her terror through the bond like heat against freshly broken skin.
And beneath it— A flutter. Of shame. Of exposure. Of unwanted awareness of him and his close proximity. The bond carried the sting of it straight into his spine, an ache that felt suspiciously like his own.
His claws tightened involuntarily. His wings dragged low, a predator’s stance. His nostrils flared. Lust cut through the rage like a sudden blade of heat.
He hated that. Hated her for causing it. Hated himself more for feeling it.
He paced around her like an animal.
Her breath hitched every time he moved. Every time his claws scraped stone. Every time his shadow passed over her bare skin. The bond throbbed.
Fear.
And underneath it— A tremor of something else.
Not hope now. But the leftover memory of what he’d done to her last time. Her body remembered him.
That made his blood sing with dark, violent satisfaction. The beast in him preened, curling its tail in the hollow of his ribs, whispering mine in a language made of fire and hunger.
Her fear. Her defiance. Her Lust. Her erratic heartbeat. He couldn’t tell where the bond ended, and his obsession began.
“Tell me,” He growled from behind her, voice thick with all the emotions he was trying—and failing—to control, “who came into this room?”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I don’t—I swear—I found it there—please—Apollo—please—”
He stalked back in front of her.
Her arms strained against the smoke-wrought bonds. Her legs trembled violently. Her head hung between her shoulders.
She looked up at him through tears—terrified, pleading, utterly lost.
Something inside him wrenched. Something he refused to name. For a heartbeat, the memory of another girl’s eyes—ember-bright, crowned in flame, begging for mercy he did not give—flashed behind hers, and the past and present blurred.
Her breath hitched again. She whispered, “I don’t know anything…”
His tail snapped against the floor, sending a crack racing across the stone.
“Try again.”
“It’s the truth!”
His hand came up—slowly, deliberately—and curled around her jaw. Not gently. Not harshly. Possessively. His thumb dragged along her cheek, smearing soot across her skin.
“You think I’m a fool,” he whispered. “You think I do not smell deception.”
His fingers tightened. “You think I do not know when another creature has been near what is mine.”
Her breath shook. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “You do.”
His face lowered, close enough she could feel the heat pouring off him, close enough his horns framed her vision like a cage.
Her body shook harder. He felt every shiver. Every drop of fear. Every confused pulse of defiance beneath it. Her skin glowed faintly under the haze of his smoke—lit by his fire, marked by his bite, bound by his magic.
Someone had given her hope. He would burn that out of her. Slowly. Deliberately. Thoroughly. He would scour every foreign imprint from her until the only future she could imagine wore his face.
He brought his mouth close to her ear.
She whimpered.
He breathed in her scent—fear, sweat, the faintest ember of her fire—and exhaled a single promise, low and lethal:
“There are ways to make you talk. And if your tongue resists,” he added, voice rough as grinding stone, “your flame will answer for you. The fire always tells me the truth.”
Her breathing went ragged the instant the words left his mouth.
He felt it through the bond—the spike of terror, the way her pulse hammered against the ropes of smoke binding her wrists, the tightening in her chest as every survival instinct screamed at once. The echo of it slammed into his ribs like a fist from the inside, her panic vibrating along the tether until his own lungs stuttered in answer.
Good.
Fear, he understood. Fear he could work with. Fear had weight, edges; he could pick it up, break it apart, shape it into obedience. Hope was smoke. It slipped through his fingers.
Her eyes were wide and glossy, reflecting his horned silhouette back at him like some monstrous god painted in gold and shadow. The cross held her weight with an ease that suggested it had seen a thousand bodies before her. The wood thrummed faintly under his claws when he laid a hand upon it, as if remembering old screams. Low, residual magic shivered through the grain, old blood-oaths and older agonies soaked so deep the structure itself seemed to breathe.
She would not be the first to hang here.
But she might be the only one whose pain he cared about in the wrong ways. Every tremor in her muscles scraped against something in him that had nothing to do with punishment and everything to do with possession.
Apollo dragged in a slow breath and forced himself to step back half a pace, enough to see her clearly from head to toe. Distance did nothing to blunt the impact; she filled his vision anyway, a single bright wound nailed to the centre of the room.