(Apollo & Adelaide)
The steam curled around them like breath.
It rose in slow, ghostlike ribbons, catching the amber bathhouse light and turning it to drifting gold. Each coil carried the mineral bite of heated stone and something faintly sweet, like scorched herbs dissolving into warmth.
Adelaide floated in the cradle of Apollo’s arms, the heat of the bathhouse soaking into her bones until she felt almost boneless. The water glowed faint gold from the Hellfire veins beneath the stone floor, each shimmering ripple brushing softly over her skin. For the first time since she’d been dragged down here—since she’d been strung up, burned, used, tested, broken—her body didn’t feel like an enemy.
She felt… held. Suspended between drowning and rest, her muscles loosening in increments th
