Chapter Thirty-Seven - A Caged Animal

(Apollo)

Apollo re-formed in the outer corridor of his palace with a violent crack of air, stumbling one half-step before he caught himself on the glowing obsidian wall. Smoke curled off his shoulders as if he’d brought the heat of his own fury with him. His body throbbed with the lingering pulse of release, but there was no satisfaction. None. Only hunger sharpened to a blade’s edge. The air heaved around him, hot and metallic, as if Hell itself had to readjust around the violence of his return.

He pressed both palms flat against the stone. It burned his skin, but he didn’t pull back. He deserved the burn. He’d crossed a line. He knew it. He’d known it even as he was doing it. He should have stayed away from her. He should have fled to the lower pits, the only part of Hell loud enough to drown out the sound of her moans.

Instead, he’d gone to her. He’d watched her. He’d touched himself to the sight of her writhing in his bed. Then kissed her like he meant to brand her lungs from the inside.

And she’d kissed him back. Not for long. Not entirely willingly. But long enough.

Long enough to send the mark on his arm blazing like molten gold. Long enough to make his heart slam against his ribs with something too close to panic. Long enough that, for a breath, he hadn’t felt like a king or a monster—just a man drowning in the taste of a single mortal girl. Long enough to scare him.

Apollo dragged a shaking hand through his hair, the motion frustrated, desperate. What in all nine hells was happening to him?

The palace air pressed in around him—hot, metallic, vibrating with distant screams. He could hear the crackle of fire from the throne room. He could feel the shift of shadows in the hallways. Hell responded to him instinctively, recognizing his unrest like a beast sensing its master’s unsteady pulse. Tiny fractures of red light spidered through the walls as his magic bled outward, veins of power widening and then shrinking again as he fought to reign it in.

But it wasn’t Hell he feared.

It was her.

The bond tugged at him again—light, faint, gentle as a whisper—but impossible to ignore. He felt her breath hitch across the distance. Felt the racing pulse in her throat. Felt the heat lingering between her thighs from what she’d done. From what he’d watched her do.

Apollo squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled sharply.

That sound she’d made—broken, pleading, his name like a prayer—he didn’t think he’d ever forget it. It clung to him. Branded him. It threaded through the centuries in his memory, more vivid than the last queen he’d killed, more searing than the first soul he’d damned. He had every intention of making her sing that name again, and again, and again.

He pushed away from the wall, pacing the corridor like a caged animal.

“How did this happen?” he growled under his breath. “How did she get into my head?”

His footsteps echoed, each strike a violent punctuation on the obsidian floors. His magic rose with every aggravated pass, making the torches flare gold-white, heat licking at the air.

He hadn’t been this out of control in centuries. He'd broken kingdoms with less provocation. Armies had fallen for less than the way her thighs had squeezed together around his name.

He shoved both hands into his hair, gripping until his knuckles went white. The mark pulsed again. Harder this time. A beat so sharp he staggered into the wall. His eyes widened. This pulse wasn’t lust. This was fear. Hers.

Not overwhelming, not terror—something smaller, quieter. Like her heart had stuttered while her mind tried to make sense of something she saw or felt.

Apollo’s chest tightened. He didn’t like that. He really didn’t like that. The instinct that rose in him was old and ugly—protect, destroy, rip apart whatever dared to make her flinch.

“What is she afraid of now?” he muttered, pushing off the wall.

He took a step toward the hall that would lead him back to his chambers. The bond tightened like a leash, pulling him closer.

He didn’t move. He couldn’t. Because if he walked back in that room right now, he didn’t trust himself to keep his hands off her. Off her throat. Off her hips. Off her mouth.

His breath caught sharply at the image. He could still taste her on his tongue. He growled and forced himself to turn away.

“Not yet,” he muttered. “Not while I’m—” He clenched his fists. “Not while I’m like this.”

He needed distance. He needed answers. And neither would come while she was lying naked in his bed smelling like sin and shame and desire. The combination was a poison in his blood, an alchemy he’d never meant to conjure.

Apollo strode down the corridor, deeper into the palace, toward the oldest wing—the one he rarely entered unless he needed to think without the noise of his own power.

The temperature dropped as he walked. The air shifted. Shadows thickened along the walls. The screams from distant levels dulled to a low, constant thrum. Even the fires here burned lower, their flames a deeper, older red—as if this part of Hell whispered instead of roared.

This wing was older than him. Carved before his reign. Before his ascension. Before the throne chose him. The stones here remembered a different king. A different queen.

Apollo’s footsteps slowed.

He didn’t know why he ended up here. He hated this hallway—always had. Its walls bore carvings of ancient flames, runes etched by a long-dead hand. A queen who had once ruled Hell not through brutality, but through something far more dangerous:

Power older than the throne. Power born into blood, not shaped by the crown.

He scowled at the carvings as he passed. He didn’t like to think about her. Didn’t like to remember a time when Hell bowed to someone other than him. Someone whose power had burned brighter, purer. Someone the old gods feared enough to destroy.

The last of her bloodline had died centuries ago, before he rose to the throne.

His jaw clenched.

He didn’t know why the thought clawed its way up from the depths of his memory now—why his mind dragged him back to her. To the queen burned from history. To the fire she wielded like a living thing. To the way her very presence had felt like standing too close to the heart of a star.

He ran a hand along the old runes. The stone burned beneath his fingertips.

There was something about the dream he felt through the bond. He couldn’t see it, not clearly—but he’d felt the heat of it. The pulse of it. Something ancient brushing against Adelaide’s subconscious. And that terrified him. He hadn’t felt that type of magic in a thousand years. It tasted of prophecy and ruin, of old pacts sealed in blood and flame.

He shook the thought away. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered, turning sharply. “She’s human. Nothing more.”

But even as he said it, the lie curled bitter on his tongue. She wasn’t normal. He’d known that the moment the mark reacted to her bite. The moment the spear she’d made wounded him. The moment he tasted her blood.

Her blood tasted— Apollo’s breath caught.

He leaned one hand against the wall, the other gripping the edge of a carved rune as the old memory hit him like a hammer.

Her blood tasted like fire. Not his fire. Not demonic fire. Not mortal fire. Something else. Something older. Something he had tasted once before—long ago, in a battle that ended with an entire pantheon trembling.

Apollo’s stomach dropped. “No,” he breathed. “It can’t be.”

The bond pulsed again—warm, hot, then suddenly trembling. Her fear spiked. Not much. Just enough for him to feel it like a whisper against his skin.

Apollo straightened. A growl built low in his throat, instinct rising sharp and possessive. The walls around him seemed to shudder in response. Dust sifting from the ceiling, runes flaring a fraction brighter, as if the palace itself answered to his sudden urgency.

He should have left her alone. He should have given her space. He should have let her process what just happened.

But the thought of her afraid.

His body moved on its own. In three strides he was already halfway back down the hall. By the time he reached the main corridor, he was running.