Page 162

Then my hellhound surges up to meet it.

There you fucking are.

My hands shake as I push myself onto one knee. Something white-gold flashes beneath my skin. I stare at my arm as another streak follows, bright Holy Grace running between the glowing seams of my hellfire.

Sentinel.

His power came back with mine.

Still fused.

Still part of the thing we were never meant to make together.

My eyes find him across the chamber just as his find me, and I see the same realization hit his face.

We got it back.

All of it.

After weeks of having every growl, every bark, every fucking sound ripped out of me, my body decides for me, so I open my mouth and let it go. My roar tears through the chamber. Sound punches out of me with enough force to shake dust and broken stone from the ceiling. Hellfire rides through it in a violent red-orange wave, but Sentinel’s Grace burns through the center, turning parts of the blast white-gold as it rolls over everything in its path.

My own voice hits my ears, and I nearly fucking lose it.

I forgot how it feels vibrating through my skull. How deep it comes from inside me. How much of myself Malgrave actually took when he reached into my throat and ripped it away.

Echo turns toward me. Our eyes meet through the heat rolling across the chamber, and the look on her face hits almost as hard as hearing myself again. But the relief lasts maybe half a heartbeat before another blast of heat rolls over us.

The chasm is still open.

Lava bubbles over its edges and creeps farther across the stone, forcing the Kings back while fire punches up from Hell in violent bursts. The infernal guardians are still fighting. Dead bodies jerk and claw their way across the chamber. Demons keep coming because the doorway feeding them is still wide-fucking-open.

And on the other side of it stands the Devil.

Watching from that giant gaping chasm.

Then it hits me.

The seam.

That first fucking tear in the earth—the Devil opened that seam too.

Before Malgrave showed up, before he took my voice, before any of us knew what Sentinel and I had created, the ground had split open outside the depot, and something from the other side was pushing against it, trying to force the tear wider.

I shoved my hellfire into the opening to hold it back. Sentinel fed his Holy Grace into me, and when I roared, our powers fused.

We had no idea what we were doing.

We had no idea what we had made.

But we sealed that fucking seam.

We already know how to close a doorway to Hell.

But the tear closed… mostly.

My gaze drops to the chasm.

Jesus Christ.