Page 167

I know his frequency. I know the vibration of his silent laugh against my body, the growl he couldn’t make, and the roar I spent weeks listening for beneath the silence Malgrave forced on him.

But this?

This is the man.

His actual fucking voice.

My siren grabs onto every rough edge of it, hearing the hellfire still humming underneath, the faint trace of Sentinel’s Grace woven through the deeper notes. It runs over my skin and straight down my spine, leaving goose bumps behind.

Of course, his voice sounds like that.

Because apparently the bastard wasn’t dangerous enough when he couldn’t talk.

Carnage wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes still fixed on Malgrave. “Guess you weren’t that fucking important.”

There it is again. That deep rasp rolls straight through me, and despite the blood, the bodies, the cooling lava, and the fact that we just went toe-to-toe with the fucking Devil, my thighs clench.

Oh, I am in sooo much trouble.

Malgrave’s black eyes track the space where the chasm used to be, that terrible stillness that Hellwardens wear like armor finally slipping, and for one suspended second, I watch something genuinely close to fear move through his composure.

Then he lunges.

Not at Carnage… at me.

I don’t get a scream out before Carnage moves, a blur of naked skin, blood, and pure furious instinct closing the distance between us before Malgrave’s hand closes around anything, and the sound that rips out of his chest isn’t a warning this time.

The roar detonates across the clearing with hellfire braided with Grace, twin colors twisting around each other in a way that shouldn’t exist and somehow makes perfect sense standing this close to him. The force of it slams into Malgrave like a fist made of every year he spent harvesting pieces of a man who never once agreed to give them up. Malgrave’s body leaves the ground, and his robes ignite mid-air, the fabric curling black at the edges before the flame eats through to skin, and when he hits the broken stone thirty feet away, he doesn’t get up.

The roar keeps rolling through him, Grace burning through the hellfire, and Malgrave’s scream disappears inside it, swallowed by a sound powerful enough to shake chunks of stone loose from the ceiling.

Then Carnage’s roar cuts out.

My ears ring in the sudden quiet. Dust drifts through the chamber while pieces of rock clatter around us, and I’m still trying to get my heart out of my throat when boots scrape against stone somewhere to my left.

The three Conclave enforcers still standing are backing away.

I almost laugh.

I have spent twelve years running from men and women wearing those colors. Twelve years knowing exactly what happens when they find me, how relentlessly they follow orders, how little mercy exists once the Conclave decides something belongs to them.

And right now? They look fucking terrified.

One lowers his weapon without taking his eyes off Carnage. The woman beside him follows, backing toward the corridor while the third turns and bolts without waiting for either of them.

The others don’t need convincing.

They are gone seconds later.

I stare after them, something viciously satisfying curling through my chest.

Let. Them. Run.

Let them crawl away and tell anyone still stupid enough to answer to Thessaly what happened here. Tell them my voice broke a Hellwarden binding. Tell them Carnage took his power back from the fucking Devil.

And as for Thessaly? She can stand right there and watch us walk away, knowing there’s not a damn thing she can do to stop it.

Because there’s one thing she needs to understand.