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Chapter Seventy-Two - Lethal Calm

Author: Kristy Pearson
last update publish date: 2026-01-06 11:08:01

(Apollo)

The palace had stopped trembling hours ago. Apollo had not.

The quiet pressed against him like a hand at his throat, familiar and unwelcome. The stillness sat wrong in the bones of the place, like a held breath stretched too long. Rage simmered under his skin like magma trapped beneath brittle stone. Every step he took down the obsidian corridor scorched faint, glowing trails in his wake—lines of molten gold that faded only when the palace, cowed and nervous, hurried to heal them. The
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    (Apollo)Cael did not breathe. The pause stretched, thin as wire. Apollo heard the silence behind the door too: Adelaide holding her breath as if breath itself might be a confession.Apollo felt the tremor through the leash. Felt the truth coil and resist. It was a living resistance. Not a refusal

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