All Chapters of The Devil's Broken Doll: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

(The Devil)The room within was cavernous, filled with shadows and firelight from sconces along the walls. A massive bed dominated the space—dark wood, thick furs, silk sheets the colour of spilled wine.Heat shimmered faintly above the stone floor, the temperature rising and falling in slow breaths as though the chamber itself recognised its master’s return. The walls, carved from obsidian veined with living magma, cast ribbons of molten orange across the far corners. Every flicker of flame seemed to lean toward him—toward her—as if the room were watching. Waiting. High above, in the vaulted ceiling, old symbols had been carved into the stone—crowns, thorns, suns split in half. Tonight, faint lines of gold threaded through them, like veins remembering how to glow.He crossed the room and laid his Little Flame gently upon the bed.Her body sank into the softness, her limbs slack and pale against the dark fabric. Her dress—what remained of it—clung in torn, filthy strips barely coverin

(Adelaide & The Devil)Why did you bite her? Why did you taste her? Why did you carry her instead of killing her?The questions hissed through his mind like venomous whispers.He squeezed his eyes shut. He saw her immediately. Her body limp in his arms. Her pulse fluttering beneath his bite. Her skin pressed bare against his chest. Her fingers twitched against his shoulder before going still, as if some stubborn part of her refused to stop fighting even as consciousness fled.He groaned, head tipping back against the wall. He had never reacted like this at an offering. Not once. Not even to the old bloodlines.Her taste had been worse than intoxicating. It was binding. It curled around his magic like a noose made of silk and fire, soft and merciless at once.He had licked her blood. And the mark on his arm still burned in response.He paced the corridor like a caged animal. Claws itched beneath his human nails, his shoulders rolling with contained violence, his teeth grinding as if hi

(Adelaide & The Devil)“Apollo.”The name felt strange on her tongue—too soft, too human, too real for the creature who had ripped her from the world she knew. She didn’t mean to speak it aloud. The sound simply escaped, barely a whisper. It slid out like an accident, like breath forced from her lungs after a fall—unplanned, uncontrollable, treacherous.But it hit him like a blow. His pupils dilated. His chest rose sharply. The glow of the tattoo on his arm flared and dimmed again, pulsing like a heartbeat.Her heartbeat.Adelaide jerked the fur tighter around herself. The movement sent a jolt of pain through her ribs, grounding her in the ache of her own body instead of the way he was looking at her.“No,” she said quickly, breath shaking. “No, I’m not calling you that. You don’t—you don’t get to be… human to me.”Apollo’s jaw tightened. “So you’ll call me Devil instead?” he asked quietly. “Or monster? Or beast?”“Yes,” she snapped.“Then say it again.”Her throat dried. “What?”“You

(Adelaide )The silence after he slammed the door wasn’t silence at all.It throbbed.It rolled through the chamber in suffocating waves, vibrating across the stone walls and humming beneath the floor like something alive. The iron in the door still rang with the echo of his exit, a faint metallic tremor that crawled up through her bare feet and set her bones on edge. Adelaide stayed pinned against the wall where he’d left her, breath shallow, limbs trembling, her heart clawing up her throat like it was trying to escape her body.Her lips tingled. Her skin burned. Her legs barely held her weight. The imprint of his hands on her waist felt like phantom bruises, hot and shaping the air around her even though he was gone.She didn’t move for several seconds. Couldn’t. The kiss — if she could even call it that — had obliterated thought. It had pulled something loose inside her chest she didn’t know existed. Something she wanted to kill immediately. It felt like he’d reached inside and rea

(Apollo)The door shuddered behind him.So did he.Apollo stood in the corridor, chest heaving, fists clenched so tightly his claws had already broken skin. Blood slid down his palms in slow, hot lines, dripping off his fingertips onto the obsidian floor. Each drop hissed faintly as it hit the stone, swallowed instantly by the heat of Hell and leaving faint, smoking specks that vanished as if they’d never existed.He stared straight ahead at nothing.The torches along the hall flickered madly, reacting to the surge of power he’d barely contained. The very walls seemed to hum, veins of red light pulsing in time with his racing heart. Shadows crawled up the stone like wary creatures, then flattened themselves as far from him as they could, recognising a storm when they felt one.He’d almost lost it in there. No—he had lost it. He could still feel the impression of her against him—her back hitting the wall, the way her legs had trembled, the way her fingers had gripped his hair, even as