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Her asset is not coming home.

Raze doesn’t chase them. He stops at the edge of the clearing, ice still curling around his knuckles as Scar comes up beside him, fangs down and blood streaked across his shirt.

Neither of them needs to follow because the message is pretty-fucking-clear.

Come back, and the Kings will finish it.

A wall nobody sane tries to walk through twice.

Thessaly steps out from behind the enforcers anyway. She’s alone, arms down, palms open where we can all see them. Her eyes flick to what’s left of Malgrave before landing on Carnage, taking in the red-orange glow still burning beneath his skin and the streaks of white-gold Grace moving through it.

Something shifts across her face.

She didn’t expect to see him standing here with his power back, and judging by the way she’s staring at him, she has no fucking idea what to do about it.

I brace for the speech, the birthright law, the three days already spent, and the ultimatum that follows.

It doesn’t come.

“I’m not staying.” Her voice comes out flatter than I’ve ever heard it, stripped of the Conclave polish she usually wears so well. Her eyes drop to the scorched stone where Malgrave’s body still smokes. “I felt what came through him in there. Whatever’s behind this, I want no part of being this close the next time it reaches through someone.”

Raze steps forward. “And Echo?”

Thessaly’s eyes find mine. “The Conclave’s claim has not changed.”

Carnage shifts beside me.

Raze’s expression hardens. “Then neither has ours.”

“I’m aware.” Thessaly looks around at the bodies scattered through the chamber before her gaze returns to Carnage, lingering on the red-orange glow beneath his skin, and the white-gold Grace still threaded through it. “But I’m done doing Malgrave’s bidding. Whatever deal I thought I was making with him…” Her mouth tightens. “It wasn’t Malgrave pulling the strings.”

“Took you long enough,” Scar mutters.

Thessaly cuts him a look but doesn’t bite, and that might be the most unsettling thing she’s done all night. “This isn’t over,” she says, looking back at me. “The Conclave doesn’t forget what you are or what your voice is capable of. If the Devil has made you do this once, Echo, he can make you do it again.”

My stomach tightens.

“But whatever happens next comes from us. Not a Hellwarden. Not whatever was using him. I won’t walk the Conclave into someone else’s war again.”

She turns to leave, then stops. “You should all understand something.”

Raze’s eyes narrow. “What?”

Thessaly glances toward the place where the chasm used to be. “He used me and Malgrave.” Her gaze comes back to us. “And judging by what I felt in there, losing tonight isn’t going to make him go away.”

That is a warning.

She turns before anyone answers, and for the first time since Thessaly walked into our lives, the warning in her voice sounds like it’s aimed inward as much as it’s aimed at us. Thessaly takes one last look at me before water gathers around her feet, spreading across the broken stone in a thin, dark sheet. It climbs up her legs, around her waist, and over her shoulders. For a second she stands inside a column of water that shouldn’t be able to hold itself upright.

Then it crashes to the floor, and Thessaly is gone.

Water races between the cracks in the stone and hisses where it meets the last pockets of heat.

Carnage turns to me. Blood, bruises blooming purple-black along one cheekbone, smoke still curling faintly off his shoulders, and underneath all of it, something in his eyes that has nothing to do with the fight we just survived. For a second, he just looks at me, completely fucking naked, his body battered to hell and that familiar grin slowly pulling at his mouth.

Then, he speaks, “So, is the staring because you missed my voice or because my dick’s out?”

I hesitate, and then a laugh bursts out of me so fast it catches on the sob already sitting in my throat. “Seriously?” I swipe at my face. “Those are the first words you’re going to say to me?”