(Apollo & Adeliade)
Adelaide’s knees ached against the warm obsidian.
The floor radiated a living heat, not searing but insistent, like the slow breath of something buried far beneath the palace. Each pulse seemed timed to the beat of her heart.
The stone wasn’t smooth; it had a strange, faint grit, as if ash had been ground into its surface over centuries. Heat seeped steadily through her skin, a slow burn radiating up her shins, into her thighs. Her arms trembled, still stretched overhead, wrists bound in glowing smoke and anchored to the truncated arms of the cross.
She could breathe more easily now that her weight wasn’t hanging from her shoulders, but every inhale still felt thin. Fragile. Borrowed.
The chamber smelled of fire and old magic, of scorched stone and something s
