Torin understood. “Aeron and William took Amun into hell on a rescue mission. And yeah, they got Legion out of there. She’s alive, healing, but Amun…”

Strider filled in the rest and wanted to punch a hole in the wall. The keeper of Secrets had new voices in his head.

He’d been with Amun for thousands upon thousands of years. Eons, what seemed countless millennia. He knew the warrior’s demon absorbed the darkest thoughts and deepest mysteries of anyone nearby. Things long buried, horrific, gruesome. Unwanted, humiliating. Soul-changing. And if Amun had been in hell, where demons roamed in their purest form, his head was now churning with all kinds of evil. Malevolent whispers, wicked images, both drowning the essence of who he was.

Or rather, who he’d been.

“The angels?” Strider gritted out. Yeah, he knew it was rude to discuss the beings as if they weren’t there, but he simply didn’t give a shit. He didn’t love many people, but he loved the other demon-possessed residents of this fortress. Even more than he loved himself, and that was a whole hell of a lot.

“They wanted to kill him, but—”

“Fuck no!” he roared. Anyone touched his friend, and they’d lose their hands—followed by their limbs, their organs and, when he tired of torturing them, their lives.

He hefted Ex off his shoulder and into his arms before easing her to the floor and stalking forward, already reaching for a blade.

Defeat sensed his need to destroy and laughed. Win!

“Stop.” Torin raised his arm to ward him off, even as he backtracked to maintain distance. “Let me finish, damn it! They wanted to kill him, were supposed to kill him, but they haven’t. Won’t.”

Yet hung in the air like a noose around his neck. Strider chose to ignore that noose—for the moment—and stopped, already panting and sweating with the force of his instant and white-hot rage.