Page 138 of Fallacies

The discomfort is fading, tapering off enough that I’m able to take a full breath without feeling like I might vomit. When the sensation subsides, I crack my eyes back open, glancing at my wrist—at where he’d held it.

I’m not entirely sure it helped.

I raise my head, finding that he’s already looking back at me.

A log in the fire pops, but neither of us flinches. It’s my turn to talk. My turn to ask a question, but I’m fighting internally over what to ask first. There are so many things I want to know.

“Why are you here?” I spit out.

He finishes off his drink and reaches to pour another. “Be more specific.”

I should have known this would be a game with him. I should have known it wouldn’t be easy. Inhaling a full breath for patience, I sit all the way up in my chair. “Why are you in Streatham?”

The Hound leans back against the couch, then says simply, “I’m here for you.”

“You said you’d answer honestly.”

“I did,” he replies, exhaling his response as if he thinks it funny.

I shake my head, regretting it instantly when a throb of pain follows the movement, cascading down my shoulders and squeezing my lungs. “I don’t understand.”

The Hound nods, taking a generous sip before setting his glass down on the small table before him. He watches me as if he’s trying to determine how much I can handle. That expression alone sets my heart pounding.

“I’ve been a prisoner of the King for fifty years,” he confesses, and I almost fall out of my chair. And not due to snaring effects.

“Alaric?” I force out.

He nods again. “At first, I didn’t understand why, but he’s after you. The King knows you and your kind of power exist, and he wants it.” The Hound gestures to where I sit. “Wants you.”

I swallow against the bile rising in my throat. “And that’s why you’re here?”

Another log in the fire cracks.

Blue eyes burn into mine. “Yes,” he says. “Alaric sent me to find you.”

Every muscle in my body locks up, tensing beyond possibility as more pieces click into place. All of them stem from my limited knowledge of the Hound—of what he’s capable of and what he specializes in. His purpose is to tame and condemn, but his power is…

“The Hound is a hunter,” Pa had said the night I was poisoned at Selumira, “there isn’t a thing in the Chiaros that he can’t track down, life, death, fury, anguish. He can smell it in the dirt, on any land.” My jaw slackens. “If he’s been set after you, there isn’t a corner of this world you can hide in.”

“You…” I can hardly get the words out. “You’ve been…”

“Hunting you,” the Hound says matter-of-factly, picking his glass back up for another drink. “For a few weeks.”

Instinct takes over, and I rush to my feet, the room swaying as I stand. The burst of adrenaline rushing through me urges me to run. To run as far and as fast as I can. So I force my feet to shift, making it halfway to the door before I’m stopped dead in my tracks.

“Don’t run,” he advises, enough warning in his tone that I freeze. “I’ll want to chase you.”

My boots sink into the carpet.

He hadn’t said it as a threat, though I know it was one. It came off more as guidance—a simple fact that he wants to make sure I’m aware of.

“And if you leave,” he continues, “you won’t get your answers.”

Turning slowly, I face where he sits, maintaining my close distance to the door. This time, when I look at him, I see right past his beautiful exterior and straight into the predator beneath it.

His head tilts, gauging my reaction. “Lucina, if I were going to hurt you, take you, or turn you in, don’t you think I would have done so by now?”

My heart pounds all over my body, beating against my chest, thumping through my heart. I feel it in the bottoms of my feet and in the palms of my hands.