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Another note follows, fuller this time, and something inside me surges toward it.

Toward Echo.

The difference between them is so fucking immediate I feel stupid for ever thinking what Echo does to me could be the same thing.

Thessaly’s song wraps around my thoughts and makes me forget I ever wanted anything except what she wants.

Echo’s song gives everything back.

Her voice is clear and strong, but there’s something rough beneath the beauty of it, something that feels entirely hers. It reaches into the fog Thessaly shoved inside my head and tears through it, dragging my anger, my fear, my hellfire, and every stubborn piece of myself back to the surface.

My hellhound’s head comes up, heat sparking beneath my ribs.

Echo’s note climbs, and everything inside me surges toward the sound so fucking hard my breath catches. The connection between us pulls tight, and suddenly I can feel her through it. Her fear is hammering hard enough to shake the note, but she holds it anyway. Underneath that is anger, white-hot and fucking determined, all of it aimed at the woman who thought she could walk onto Kings’ territory and use her song to take control of everyone standing behind Echo.

My hellhound explodes to his feet. Hellfire tears through my veins, burning away the last of the false calm Thessaly forced into me, and this time, when I tell my body to stop—It. Fucking. Stops.

My boots plant in the water, and I drag in a breath that burns all the way down.

Echo’s song keeps pouring through the yard, and more notes join the first until her voice fills the space Thessaly’s had wrapped around us.

It isn’t as polished.

It isn’t as controlled.

But I like it so much-fucking-better.

There’s power in every imperfect edge, and when Thessaly pushes back, her smooth harmony curling around Echo’s song and trying to drag me under again, Echo holds on.

The two songs collide hard enough that my teeth ache.

Thessaly offers warmth, quiet, that same false peace that made surrender feel like the easiest thing I’d ever done.

Echo gives me a choice.

And I choose her.

Around me, the brothers start coming back to themselves.

Raze jerks to a stop with the water almost to his chin, his entire body going rigid before he stumbles backward. Maul catches his shoulder, only to nearly lose his own footing when whatever hold Thessaly has on him breaks at the same time.

A few feet away, Flux doubles over with a strangled curse, his body flickering through shapes he clearly isn’t choosing before he gets control of himself and staggers out of the water. Calder comes free just as hard, dropping to one knee with both hands hitting the ground before he sucks in a rough breath and forces himself back up.

Wreck crashes into Ruckus, both of them swearing as they scramble away from the water, while Sentinel’s wings burst wide with enough force to send mist rolling away from him.

Echo keeps singing until every last brother is backing toward dry gravel, and only when we’re all clear does Echo’s voice finally cut off.

The silence afterward leaves my ears ringing and my internal organs shaking. I stand there breathing hard, soaked from the shins down, every nerve in my body buzzing while my hellhound paces beneath my skin with enough fury to make up for every second Thessaly forced him down.

Then I turn toward Echo. She’s several feet behind me, silver hair falling across her face, chest rising hard while one hand presses against her throat. Whatever that song cost her, I can see it in the slight tremble running through her body.

But she’s still standing.

More importantly, she’s fucking furious.

Her hand drops from her throat as she stares past me at Thessaly. “You don’t get to do that to them!”

Thessaly’s smile is gone. Her pale eyes stay fixed on Echo for several seconds, and for the first time since she appeared at our gates, that perfect calm slips enough for something else to show through—surprise.