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This time, we make it let go.
The first piece comes loose anyway.
A streak of white-gold tears upward through the chasm, wrapped tight in curling black flame, and slams into my chest like a fist.
Then another.
Then another.
Each one drives deeper, agony twisting through relief until they are so tangled inside me, they have become the same thing.
The Devil’s expression finally breaks.
Not his face. His calm. That patient, indulgent smile drops away, and something furious rises underneath it, like he genuinely cannot believe anyone would dare pull something out of his hands once he’s decided to keep it. Fire erupts through the chasm as he wrenches back with everything he has, and the entire chamber starts folding in on itself around us, stone cracking, lava climbing higher up the walls.
The power keeps coming anyway.
Then I hear it.
Not in my head. Not filtered through Echo’s voice or Sentinel’s Grace. Coming straight up out of Hell itself, low enough to shake the floor beneath my knees.
My roar.
Every instinct I have freezes at once. Echo hears it, too, her song faltering for half a second before she throws her voice even harder into the fight, screaming the last of it straight down into the chasm.
“Take it!”
The roar explodes out of the darkness and slams into me whole.
Everything Malgrave stole comes home at once—hellfire, Grace, my voice, my roar. All of it crashing into a body that was never built to hold this much at one time. My spine bows, and my vision whites out at the edges. Sentinel’s arms lock around me before I can tear myself apart from the inside, Holy Grace pouring out of him fast enough to stabilize the fusion before it burns straight through me, and Echo keeps singing, keeps giving the returning power exactly one place to land.
Me.
The Devil gives one last savage pull.
I don’t let go.
The final piece tears free of Hell and hits me so hard my body leaves the ground. I slam onto the stone, shoulder first, pain shooting through my ribs as I roll onto my back. For a few seconds, the chamber disappears beneath the rush inside me. Heat floods every vein, too much and too fast, my hellhound thrashing beneath my skin while something forces its way back into places that have been empty for weeks.
My fingers claw against the floor.
There’s so fucking much of it.
Hellfire pours through my chest, filling every hollow Malgrave left behind when he stripped me down piece by piece. It burns through my lungs and races along my spine until every nerve feels exposed, but beneath all that fire there’s something else.
A vibration.
Deep.
Rough.
Mine.
My breath catches. I know that feeling. I know it better than my own fucking heartbeat.
My roar.
It slams back into place. The force bows my spine off the floor as weeks of silence end inside me all at once. My throat burns, my chest locks around the pressure building behind my ribs, and for one terrifying second, I don’t know if my body can hold something this big.
