Chapter Thirty-Five - A Woman Possessed

(Adelaide)

Adelaide didn’t move for a long time after the smoke of him faded. The last wisps of his presence curled in the air like dying embers, then vanished, leaving a hollow, ringing absence behind.

She sat frozen on the bed—naked, shaking, breath scraping in jagged pulls through her lungs—while the fur bunched uselessly in her fists. Her heart hammered so violently she felt its echo in the pulse between her thighs, that maddening throb that refused to go silent no matter how much she willed it. Each beat felt too loud in the suffocating quiet, like her body was betraying her to the room, to the stone, to him.

He had kissed her. He had watched her. He had stood in the shadows, silent, hidden, while she—

She squeezed her eyes shut, a choked, mortified breath leaving her. Her entire body felt too hot, too tight, too aware. She could still feel the echo of her own touch, the aftershocks rolling through her muscles like tremors after an earthquake. Every breath she took dragged the scent of sex through her nostrils—a scent she had released, a scent he had watched. It clung to the air like incense after ritual, sweet and heavy and impossible to pretend away.

Her stomach twisted violently. Gods, what had she done?

The sheets beneath her were damp with her sweat and the heat of her body. Every shift made the slickness drag against her skin, reminding her, taunting her. She couldn't escape the sensation—or the memory. The slightest movement sent a shiver of awareness over the places she’d touched, as if the bed itself remembered the rhythm of her hips.

She dragged the fur up to her face, burying herself in it as though it could smother the embarrassment. It didn’t. It made it worse. The fur smelled faintly of him—smoke and heat and something darker, masculine, maddening. Underneath it, a trace of brimstone and wild pine threaded together, the scent of the forest and the underworld woven into a single, unbearable reminder.

And beneath that… Her lips burned.

Her mind flashed to the moment he had grabbed her jaw, fingers strong and unyielding, the heat of his hand branding her skin. The moment he’d kissed her—hard, claiming, devastating. His mouth had stolen her breath and her sense all at once. The press of his lips had been a blow and a benediction both, leaving the imprint of him stamped along every nerve from her mouth to her chest

She froze.

Her hand lifted slowly to her face, fingers trembling as they brushed her mouth. Because she remembered now. The smear. The wetness. The heat. It hadn’t been sweat from the fight. It hadn’t been blood. It hadn’t been anything innocent.

No.

He had wiped himself on her.

The Devil had marked her mouth with the aftermath of his own desire. Like an unholy anointing, a blasphemous blessing pressed exactly where prayers should have been whispered.

Her stomach dropped as heat—horrifying, unwanted, traitorous—rushed straight between her legs.

“Oh gods,” she whispered, fingers shaking violently. “Oh gods, what is wrong with me?”

She should be disgusted. She should be enraged. She should want to scrape her skin raw. And she was. She did. But that wasn’t all she felt.

Her lips tingled, sensitive and hot, as though the touch he left there had soaked through her skin and seeped straight into her blood. The faint scent of him lingered—dark, smoky, male. Her tongue betrayed her; it brushed over her lower lip, chasing the memory before she even realized she’d moved.

Her whole body jolted.

“No,” she breathed—but her hand was already lowering, already trembling as she looked down.

Something slick glistened faintly on her fingertips. His cum. Her breath caught. Her pulse skittered.

A flicker of hunger—dark, confusing, humiliating—shivered through her.

Like a woman possessed, she lifted her hand and ran the pad of her tongue over her fingers. The taste was like an explosion on her tongue. Deep musky, salty, with hints of fire and ash. She rolled her tongue over her fingers, sucking them into her mouth. Her eyes fluttered shut against her will, as if the flavour had reached past her senses and tugged directly on the bond burning at her neck.

A soft, broken sound escaped her throat—a whimper or a moan, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

And then the trance shattered.

Her eyes flew wide. Her breath tore out of her in a gasp of horror.

“WHAT am I doing?” she choked, snatching her hand back as if burned. Her entire body shook with revulsion and need in equal measure. “Gods—what is happening to me?”

She couldn’t stay on this bed. Couldn’t stay in the scent of him. Couldn’t lie here any longer with the proof of her own betrayal clinging to her thighs.

Her gaze darted around the room—and landed on the basin of ever-warm water resting on a stone pedestal near the wall. The surface shimmered with faint steam, touched by some spell that kept it heated but never boiling. Several soft cloths hung beside it—too luxurious for a prisoner, too intimate for a stranger. Runes were etched subtly into the basin’s rim, tiny symbols glowing a dull gold when the steam curled just right, old magic humming faintly beneath the surface.

She rose on unsteady legs, clutching the fur around her until she stood before the bowl. Her feet slapped softly against the heated stone, each step reminding her she walked barefoot in the Devil’s private den, a mortal intruder in a place built for gods and monsters.

Her reflection in the water startled her. Eyes too bright. Cheeks flushed. Hair tangled from his hands, from the wall, from her own frantic tossing. She looked haunted and wild, a stranger wearing her face—a girl who had kissed the Devil back and moaned his name into silk.

She quickly looked behind her, searching the dark corners of the room for signs he was still there. She knew he wasn’t; she would have felt the heavy weight of his presence. But she also could no longer trust her own instincts.

She let the fur drop to the floor at her feet. It looked like a dark pool of sin, pulling her in with every moment she spent in Hell’s grasp.

Adelaide dipped the cloth into the warm water, wrung it out, and pressed it to her neck.

A hiss escaped her. The warmth hurt, but it soothed as well. The water smelled faintly mineral-rich, tinged with iron and some fragrant oil she couldn’t name, like crushed petals scorched over a flame.

She began washing in slow, mechanical strokes, cataloguing each injury as she went.

Her ribs were mottled with deep bruises from the chase. Scratches lined her arms from tree branches. The bite on her neck burned beneath her touch—red, swollen, pulsing faintly. And her hand— Her breath caught.

She lifted her palm. The wound from the Exchange throbbed, still raw and angry.

For a moment, the chamber faded. The firelight dimmed. She saw Lyra’s face instead. Her little sister’s frightened eyes. Her shaking hands. Her whisper: Don’t go tonight. Please don’t go.

Adelaide pressed her thumb to the wound and inhaled sharply at the sting.

“I would do it again,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I would always choose you, Lyra. Every time.”

Her throat tightened painfully.

“Where are you now? Do you remember me? Are they saying I died? Are they saying I failed?” Are they whispering about the girl who ran into the forest and never came back, whose courage wasn’t enough to beat the Devil?

A tear landed in the basin, rippling her reflection. The water distorted her face, splitting her eyes and mouth into blurred pieces, as if even her own image no longer knew who she was.

She scrubbed harder.

The dirt from the forest came away. So did the dried blood. But not the shame.

When she reached her inner thighs, she froze. Her skin flushed hot. Her breath shook. The sticky evidence of her loss of control still clung there—proof of her arousal, proof of the thoughts she should never have had, proof of the bond twisting her into something she didn’t recognize.

She cleaned it anyway. Slowly. Thoroughly. Angrily.

The cloth trembled in her hand. “This isn’t me,” she whispered. “This is his fault. His magic. His realm. Not me.”

But the way her breath hitched at the memory of him watching said otherwise.

She cleaned between her thighs again. And again. Scrubbing until the skin grew tender, until the water clouded faintly.

It didn’t help. His grip on her jaw still echoed in her bones. His voice still wrapped around her. His mouth— She clenched her thighs together, furious at the pulse that answered.

“No more,” she snarled.

She dunked the cloth back into the water, splashing some onto the floor. Then she washed her face, her neck, her chest—everywhere his eyes had lingered. Each pass of the cloth felt like a plea: erase this, erase this, erase this. The magic in the water hummed softly against her skin, but it could not reach the places his name had sunk into.

When she was done, she stood trembling, dripping, staring into the basin like it might tell her how to be clean again on the inside.

It didn’t.