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No.

Malgrave watches me get there. “A Hellwarden can’t break his own seal, Echo.” My throat tightens. “But a can.”

Everything inside me stops.

Malgrave takes another step toward the chasm. “Not every siren. Most voices wouldn’t put a crack in something this old.” His black eyes settle on me. “But yours?” His gaze drops deliberately to my throat. “The Conclave knew what they had when you were still a child.”

Don’t damage her throat.

Thessaly.

Three days.

Bring me alive.

My hand flies to my neck. “No.”

Malgrave laughs softly. “Why do you think they tried to silence you, Echo?”

My fingers press harder against the scar.

“They knew what your voice could do long before you did. A siren capable of breaking a Hellwarden’s binding simply by singing into it?” His eyes flick toward the fractured markings beneath our feet. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that made you?”

Sixteen years old.

Blood running down my neck.

Hands holding me still while I screamed.

I thought they were taking my voice because they wanted to control me.

No! They were fucking afraid of it.

“That’s why they guarded your throat, why they kept you close. Why, when you finally ran, they spent twelve years trying to drag you back.” Malgrave takes another step toward me. “They weren’t chasing a runaway siren. They were trying to recover the one voice capable of opening something even its maker cannot.”

My stomach churns as I look at the binding I just shattered.

“Why do you think we needed you here?” he asks.

The answer hits before I can stop it. “You couldn’t open it.”

Something almost pleased touches his expression. “No Hellwarden can. Once one of our bindings is sealed, even the Hellwarden who created it cannot break it. An ancient safeguard against our own kind.” His gaze settles on me again. “But you can.”

I look at the binding. The symbols aren’t flickering anymore. They’re breaking. One after another, cracks race through them, white-gold light bursting between the fractures as Carnage’s hellfire surges underneath.

“No,” I whimper this time.

I clamp my mouth shut.

Too damn late.

A sigil on the far wall explodes.

Then another.

The sound tears around the chamber as every note I just poured into Carnage keeps working through Malgrave’s binding.

I wasn’t pulling him free.