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Something moved across Knox's face in that sudden silence– devastation and disbelief, as if Sully had whispered one word I couldn't hear.

He looked like a man who had forgotten what silence inside his own soul could feel like. Not the dead, empty silence of Hell. This was clean. Open. Free. For three heartbeats, no one owned him.

Then the Hellmark snapped back.

Black-red Magic whipped across the tabletop where my fingers had been a heartbeat earlier. The oak was scorched in a jagged line. Bernie swore. Guy shoved back from his chair. Knox moved faster than all of them.

One second, I was leaning over the Hellmark. The next, I was yanked out of my chair and slammed against a wall of hot, hard Dragon Man. Knox’s arms locked around me like iron bands, my face mashed against his chest, his heartbeat pounding beneath my cheek.

For half a second, everyone froze.

I cleared my throat against his flannel. “You can put me down, Sasquatch.”

Knox’s grip tightened before he seemed to realize he still had me plastered to him. “You almost got hit.”

“And yet, mysteriously, I remain un-dead.”

“Alive.”

“That’s the boring word.”

Bernie ignored all of that, because apparently Necromancers were immune to romantic tension when there was data to collect. “You didn’t weaken it.”

Knox finally set me on my feet. “That’s encouraging.”

“Maisie,” Bernie said, eyes bright and sharp, “you confused it.”

“I’m very talented that way.”

Bernie pointed at the scorched table, then at Knox’s forearm. “I don't think the Hellmark lost power. I think it lost Knox. For those three seconds, it behaved like it couldn't identify his Magical signature.”

His pupils elongated. The whiskey-hazel shifted to brilliant, glowing emerald. Something ancient looked out through Knox's eyes. Sully. In the next breath, Guy's expression shifted from outrage to calculation.

“Maybe we don’t have to break the tether first,” Bernie continued, her voice careful now. “Maybe we make it lose track of Knox long enough for us to cut it. I’m not calling that a solution yet, but it’s the first opening we’ve had.”

“So, I don’t overpower Hell,” I said slowly. “I screw up its GPS.”

Guy nodded once. “And if the same tether is using Knox’s MacAllen Magic to knock on Arrhythmia’s Wards, then blurring his signature might interrupt more than Hell’s ability to find him.”

"Confusing the tether may also confuse the knock," Bernie finished. "Maybe. We are not declaring victory." She tilted her head and pointed at the scorch mark. "The table is still smoking."

Guy’s gaze returned to Knox. “If they went through that much trouble to put you in Hell alive, what did Mammon use you for?”

Knox didn’t answer. The silence stretched until the floorboards seemed to groan beneath it.

At last, he said, “I was his Enforcer.”

Guy’s jaw tightened. “Mammon has Demons for muscle.”

The quiet that followed made my skin prickle.

“He didn’t need a Dragon Guardsman just to break bones,” Guy finished.

Knox stared into his coffee. “Some summonses were different. Thresholds. Gates. Seals. Places where Hell Magic didn’t cross cleanly.” His voice roughened. “I thought Mammon wanted me because Dragon Magic could survive what lesser creatures couldn’t. Now I’m wondering if he needed something in me that could open what Hell could not.”

He looked up. “Son of a bitch. I wasn’t just the muscle.”

Bernie pushed back from the table. “Guy, contact Carrick. I want records, rumors, anything involving Keevandrie, infernal gateways, and Dragon Magic during the period Knox disappeared.”