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“They mistook a Bond for a chain.”

The words landed cold. Not soft. Not healing. Cold enough to steady me.

They had not chosen me because I was weak. They had chosen me because I carried something worth stealing. My brother. Sully. Kinship. Loyalty. Connection. Everything I valued, cut from my hands and turned back toward my throat.

For a century, Mammon had taught me those connections were vulnerabilities. He wanted me to believe every bond was another form of ownership.

Maisie watched my face intensely. She did not give me a speech. She only shrugged one shoulder, like she was commenting on bad weather instead of a century of Hell. “They stole something useful. That doesn’t make it theirs.”

I looked at her.

“You were useful to assholes. Congratulations. Still doesn’t mean they owned you.”

The corner of Hank’s mouth twitched. Guy looked like he wanted to frame that sentence and possibly put it on Fogarty’s grave.

But Maisie was not only talking about me. Hell had sampled her because she was useful. Tried to copy her. Name her. Add her to its map. Usefulness still was not ownership. The thought tasted like ash and copper, but for once the bitterness did not belong only to me.

Bernie’s eyes narrowed on the separated imprint. “That architecture creates a weakness.”

Every head turned toward her.

“The Hellmark expects sympathetic signatures to answer predictably,” Bernie said. “Kin answers kin. That’s its operating assumption. Maisie’s Magic does not answer predictably. It refracts. Blurs. Distorts.”

Carrick’s projection brightened. “Not merely scrambling Knox’s.”

“Give the tether the wrong kin,” Bernie finished.

Maisie blinked. “Magical identity theft?”

“You seem alarmingly comfortable with that concept,” I said.

“I worked retail.”

The plan took shape. Not victory. A route. A narrow one. We did not overpower the Hellmark. We made it follow a false sympathetic answer away from me, away from Guy’s Wards, away from Maisie. While the tether stretched toward the lie, Bernie would cut the Topside relay. Carrick would isolate the boundary. Sully and I would take the recoil. Maisie would keep the mark from finding me again. Simple, if a man ignored the part where failure probably taught Hell our names in a more useful order.

“Problem,” Bernie said.

“Of course there is,” Hank muttered into his coffee. The mug clicked softly against the counter when he set it down.

“Maisie can distort a signature,” Bernie said. “She can bend a shape already there. She cannot invent MacAllen Dragon Magic or Dragon King resonance out of nothing. A convincing false answer needs the right source.”

Guy did not hesitate. “Use me.”

“No.” The word left me before thought could soften it.

Guy’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Spend a century in Hell and then come home thinking you’re the only MacAllen allowed to make a choice.” His voice stayed even. That made it worse.

I hated that sentence on principle. More specifically, I hated that it was devastatingly fair.

“I like him,” Sully said.

“He’s your brother’s idiot.”

Guy did not need to enter Hell. He did not need to wear the mark. His part would be controlled. A measured echo of the kin signature the tether already recognized in the Wards. Lou’s resonance beneath it, ancient and bronze-gold, would give the lie enough weight to breathe. Maisie would refract it. Bernie would feed it into the false route. Give the leash something convincing to chase. On paper, it was all very tidy. In practice, it put my brother on the board.