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Echo turns her head. “He was being hurt.”

“You didn’t know what you were reaching into.”

Echo narrows her eyes at him. “And neither did you.”

Sentinel opens his mouth, ready with an argument, but apparently he can’t find one.

Despite the rage still chewing through me, the corner of my mouth pulls up.

She’s got you there, angel.

His eyes narrow on me. “Don’t fucking start.”

My grin breaks free. Echo looks between us and laughs under her breath. “Glad we cleared that up.” Echo catches my grin and gives me the smallest lift of her eyebrow before turning back to Raze. “The deeper I went, the more I could hear. Carnage’s hellfire was the easiest part to find because I already know what it sounds like.”

Something inside me shifts at that.

She knows my hellfire.

Not just the heat of it against her skin or what it feels like when my hellhound pushes close. She knows the fucking sound of it well enough to pick it out from everything else inside me.

A week ago, that would've probably made me run for the nearest door. Now all I want to do is reach for her and pull her closer.

“But it wasn’t alone,” she continues. “Sentinel’s Grace is still there too.”

Sentinel straightens. “Inside him?”

“Not exactly.” Echo shakes her head, frustration flashing across her face while she searches for a way to explain something none of us can hear. “It’s still joined to his hellfire. Whatever happened when the two of you combined your power at the fracture, it didn’t completely separate afterward.”

The humor disappears from Sentinel’s face.

That white-gold blast comes back in pieces—Sentinel beside me, the fracture ripping wider, my hellfire pouring into it while his Grace hit mine. And, instead of destroying each other like Heaven and Hell were apparently supposed to do, the two powers locked together.

Then everything fucking exploded.

We sealed the fracture and walked away.

Apparently, our power didn’t.

Raze looks between Sentinel and me. “Where’s Malgrave pulling it?”

“I don’t know.” Echo’s fingers tighten around her own arms. “But he’s pulling both together. Hellfire and Grace sound different on their own. Inside Malgrave’s binding, they don’t. They’re fused so tightly I can’t separate one from the other. And whatever has hold of them is dragging both the same way.”

Raze’s expression hardens. “Toward what?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

Nobody around the table moves.

Scar is the first to break the silence. “That would explain why removing the roar mattered.”

My eyes cut to him. ‘How?’ The question leaves my mouth on nothing but air, but Sentinel catches the shape of it.

“He wants to know how.”

Scar’s gaze stays on me. “Because maybe the roar was never the prize.”

Echo’s head snaps toward him. “Fuck.”