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I was breaking the fucking lock.

“Stop it!” I scream.

And more sigils around the room explode with my sound.

Malgrave doesn’t move. He doesn’t have to, as the last intact symbol splits straight through the middle.

Silence hits—one horrible second where nothing happens—then the binding blows apart.

Carnage’s hellfire erupts across the chamber with Sentinel’s Grace blazing through the center. The broken binding blows outward, chunks of stone ripping free as the fused power tears toward the chasm.

“CARNAGE!” I hit the floor hard and scramble after it, my palms scraping over stone as I reach for something I can’t fucking touch.

The power reaches the edge. For one split second, hellfire and Holy Grace flare together, bright enough to turn the entire chamber white.

Then Hell takes it.

It plunges into the chasm, and everything below fucking erupts.

Fire rockets up the walls in towering columns. The ground bucks beneath me hard enough to throw me onto one hand as thousands of screams rise from somewhere below. A deep red glow spreads beneath my fingers, and I jerk my hand back.

Lava pushes through the cracks around the chasm. Thick, molten streams ooze over the black stone, spreading farther with every violent shudder while more bubbles rise over the edge. The heat slams into me, forcing me backward before the molten rivers far below burn brighter.

Hell isn’t staying down there anymore.

And through the fire, the screaming, the chamber shaking itself apart, I hear him.

The Devil.

Laughing.

Not faintly this time.

Not hidden beneath someone else’s voice.

Laughing because I just gave him exactly what he wanted.

I stare down into the fire, horror crawling through every inch of me.

Malgrave didn’t need Thessaly to deliver another weapon.

He needed her to deliver the key.

And I just opened the fucking lock.

Suddenly, a violent crack tears through the chamber. The broken stone beneath me splits wider, lava forcing its way through as I scramble back from the chasm. Another crack races across the floor, then another, chunks of black rock dropping away into the fire below.

Malgrave’s smile disappears, and his head snaps toward the chasm.

That gets my fucking attention.

The flames below surge upward.

Higher.

Hotter.

They climb the walls of the chasm and spill into the chamber, twisting together until the fire becomes so dense I can’t see through it.