(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 al
