All Chapters of The Devil's Broken Doll: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

(Apollo & Adelaide)Adelaide didn’t know how long she sat on the cold stone floor after he left—seconds, minutes, hours. Time didn’t behave normally here. It stretched, twisted, pulsed in uneven breaths that reminded her she was no longer in the world she understood. The fur he had left wrapped around her body felt heavy, suffocating, too warm against her already overheated skin. She pulled it tighter anyway, gripping it like a shield she couldn’t let go of. The weight of it dragged at her shoulders, as if the pelt itself remembered other girls who had worn it before her and sunk heavier with the memory.It didn’t help. Nothing in this place felt like protection.The chamber pressed in all around her—every flicker of firelight stretching the shadows into clawed silhouettes that crept along the walls. The stone seemed to hum beneath her palms, as though alive with some deep, ancient heartbeat. Even the air tasted wrong—warm and metallic and faintly sweet, like burnt honey and blood. Ea

(Adelaide)Adelaide could still feel the echo of his breath on her skin long after the door closed. It lingered like phantom heat along her throat and jaw, as if the air itself remembered the shape of his mouth.The room felt too small. Too hot. Too charged. The very walls seemed to press inward, obsidian ribs closing around a heart that beat too fast and too loud.She sat frozen on the edge of the bed, heart pounding against her ribs as though trying to break free. The black fur had slipped down her arms, pooling loosely around her waist, leaving most of her bare skin exposed to the oppressive heat radiating from the stone walls.She tried to pull it back up, but her fingers shook violently. Her nails scraped uselessly against the pelt, catching in thick strands as if even the fur refused to obey her.She curled onto the bed, dragging the fur with her, breathing hard as she tried to settle her racing pulse. The sheets beneath her were impossibly soft—cool and slick like flowing water

(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 sc

(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

(Adelaide)Heat.That was the first thing she felt.A steady, enveloping heat pressed against her back, sinking into her spine, warming her skin in a way that no blanket, no fire, no sun ever had. Something solid rested along the curve of her hips, something that radiated enough warmth to make her toes tingle. A breath—deep, slow, heavy—poured across the nape of her neck. It smelled like smoke and spice and something darkly sweet, threading through the remnants of her dream until the line between memory and reality blurred.She drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, caught in that soft, blurry place where dreams still cling to the edges of reality.And in that haze, in that half-conscious moment fuelled by exhaustion and memory, a single thought bloomed through her fogged mind:Liam.Her heart fluttered with a fragile ache.She felt a body behind her—strong, warm, familiar in all the ways her young heart remembered. In sleep-drunken instinct, she pressed her back into him, seekin