Chapter Sixty-Five - Alone and Bound

(Adelaide)

Apollo cupped her jaw briefly — a shockingly tender touch, too gentle for what he’d just done — then stepped back. That brief softness felt like a trapdoor under her feet: disorienting, dangerous, meant to make her doubt her own hate.

And turned away. Just like that, as if she were already finished.

“No,” she whispered. “Apollo— Apollo WAIT—”

The plea scraped out of her before pride could stop it, and she hated herself for giving him even that much.

He paused at the threshold, looked over his shoulder, and smiled like the sunrise over a battlefield. A beautiful ruin. A promise of more devastation.

“You hang there,” he said. “Until you’re ready to talk.”

Her chest caved. “Apollo— please— I can’t—”

“You can,” he said simply. “And you will.” Two sentences, each one a nail.

Then, he walked out. Just walked out. The casualness of his exit was the cruellest part. Like breaking her was as ordinary as opening a door.

The door reassembled behind him with a shiver of smoke and iron.