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I reach down and catch her hand before she can fold it back around herself, threading my fingers through hers, and her eyes lift to mine.

I can’t tell her this isn’t her fault.

I can’t tell her I’d rather lose every fucking sound I ever made than have whatever is inside me get its claws into her.

So I squeeze her hand, and she squeezes back.

Then Scar’s voice cuts through the moment. “Holy Grace reacted violently to something connected to an ancient presence powerful enough to use a Hellwarden and interested specifically in combined Heaven and Hell power.”

Raze slowly looks toward Sentinel, then me.

Nobody says anything for a long-fucking-second.

I don’t need a voice to know where every mind around this table is heading, and judging by the way Sentinel’s face changes, neither does he.

“It isn’t Malgrave,” she says. “He’s not even close to strong enough to run something like this. He’s a leash. Somebody else is holding the other end.”

Silence settles over the table like a held breath.

“This wasn’t born in Hell.” Sentinel stares at the burn across his palm. “Grace knows Hell, demons, hellhounds, Hellwardens. I’ve stood beside Carnage for years, and my power has never reacted like this.”

Raze’s eyes narrow. “Then what the fuck did it react to?”

Sentinel looks up. “Something that started where I did.”

Scar leans forward. “Heaven?”

Sentinel nods. “Whatever Echo heard was celestial once. Powerful enough that my Grace still recognized what it used to be beneath everything it’s become.”

Raze’s jaw tightens. “A fallen angel?”

“Not just any fallen angel.” Sentinel turns his burned palm over. “The fallen angel.”

Everything inside me stops.

Fuck. I know exactly who he means…

… the Devil!

And for one ugly second, I’m not sitting in Church surrounded by my brothers anymore.

I’m back in Hell.

Chains around my wrists. Heat pouring off stone walls. Blood drying against my skin while some asshole warden tells me this all stops the second I learn my fucking place.

‘Hunt what we tell you to hunt.’

‘Kill what we tell you to kill.’

‘Obey.’

My hands clamp around the back of Echo’s chair.

I got out. That’s the thought that hits hardest. I fucking got out.

I tore apart their holding level, turned my roar on the bastards who thought they owned me, and blew my way through their gates. They burned their mark off me and dumped me topside like something they’d decided was too dangerous to keep.

Fine!