Chapter 98 Teeth or Mercy
(Caelum Ashborne)
Time would soon tell if the prophecy had teeth—or mercy. And whether mercy, down here, could survive being noticed.
Caelum’s pace quickened.
The corridors on the top level were nearly silent now. Most demons had been driven out days ago; the few allowed to remain kept to the lower floors, scuttling like shadows that prayed not to be noticed. Even Hell’s creatures knew when to keep their heads down. The polished obsidian walls reflected dim, distorted fragments of him as he passed—a tall figure in black, ember-brown eyes lowered, expression carefully blank.
Cael Asher. Loyal functionary. Convenient ghost.
Not Caelum Ashborne, last-born son of the Emberborn leader, raised on stories of the Queen’s fire and the monster who had killed her. Raised on warnings that monsters rarely looked like monsters when they won. And that kings could be made of the same element as saviours, if the fire was fed differently.
He turned down the side passage that ended in what looked like a solid wall. To anyone else, it would be just that—unmarked obsidian, veined with cooling magma. To him, the cracks glowed faintly, like slumbering embers.
He laid his palm flat against the stone and exhaled.
Fine threads of golden flame seeped from his skin into the wall, tracing old sigils hidden in the rock. The secret door—built centuries ago by hands that spoke his kind of magic—shivered once, then softened. The sigils did not just open. They answered. For the briefest instant, the lines under his palm rearranged themselves into a shape that looked like a stylised wing, then returned to their original pattern as if ashamed to be seen.
Stone parted like smoke. He stepped through.
The stone closed behind him, sealing him into the cramped darkness of the passage. Heat pressed in from all sides, sweat pricking at his temples. He moved quickly, half-crouched, one shoulder scraping the rock. The tunnel felt narrower than it used to, as though the palace had decided it disliked secret kindnesses.
Through the wall to his left, he could feel the faint hum of the main corridor—the polished floors, the gilded sconces, the emptiness where steward and guard had once paced. Above and to the right: a heavier weight. Wardstones. The outer layer of the Devil’s private floor.
And beyond that… Her.
The bond he didn’t share with her still brushed his skin like static, residual from the shockwave. The residue of their joined fire clung to the hallway like smoke after a burn. It clung differently to him than Apollo’s magic did. Apollo’s wards bit. Hers… reached. A hand in the dark, groping for a language it hadn’t learned yet.
Queen’s blood. Devil’s mark. Bound.
Caelum ground his molars together.
Prophecy has a sick sense of humour.
The air was cooler in here, shot through with the metallic scent of wards and old dust. He followed the curve by memory, counting his own breaths. On the third inhale, his ember flared without being summoned, then settled. A warning, or a greeting. He couldn’t tell which.
Every few seconds, he brushed the air with his magic—just the faintest spark, just enough to test the wards humming through the walls. They buzzed under his touch like disturbed hornets. Apollo had doubled them since the girl arrived. Tripled them after her fire awakened. Apollo layered wards the way he layered ownership: more, always more, until the thing underneath could no longer pretend it was free. Caelum’s flame had been trained to do the opposite, to slip into spaces and leave no bruise behind.
But that flare they’d just released? It had done more than make the palace shake.
It had cracked things.
Cracks were his specialty. Apollo shattered doors. Caelum sought seams. The difference was not power. It was intent.
He felt the chamber before he saw it.
Heat throbbed through the wall to his right, a slow, exhausted pulse. The bond between two great fires had scorched itself into the stone—Devil’s flame and Queen’s ember clawing through each other’s wake. The scorchmarks made a pattern. Not random. Not entirely. A spiralling knot that resembled an ancient Emberborn glyph for return. He swallowed hard and pretended he hadn’t recognised it. But he had. And the meaning wasn’t going to stay hidden forever.
Caelum swallowed. His throat was dry.
Carefully, he pressed his eye to the thin slit where the stone didn’t quite meet and peered through.
The chamber beyond was dim. The ever-burning braziers had been turned down low, banked coals instead of roaring flames. Shadows draped the room like cloth. Even the light seemed exhausted, as if it had watched too much and learned to look away.
The bed—damn it all—looked as pristine as the rest of the restored space. Sheets straightened, pillows fluffed. The shattered furniture he’d seen in his last brief infiltration was gone or mended. The floor had been scrubbed of blood and dust. The Devil’s idea of order: erase the mess. Keep the aftermath breathing.
Only one thing looked wrong.
The cross still stood.
An obsidian X fixed into the floor, arms outstretched, runes burned into the stone beneath it. Smoke-ropes coiled from beam to ankle, glowing faintly where they met skin.
Her skin.
Adelaide hung limp against the wood.
For one wild heartbeat, panic clawed at his throat—too still, too quiet, too slack—but then he saw the minute rise and fall of her chest. Shallow. Uneven. But there.
His lungs loosened. Barely.
Gods. She looked…