Chapter 33
Lucina
Iwake up groaning, sore from my temples down to my feet.
Cracking my eyes open, I wince at the dim lighting of the room. It’s bright enough to send a throbbing wave of pain through my head. It’s the world's worst hangover—minus any actual fun.
I’m in the same chair I woke up in last time, but instead of watching me from the door, the Hound has made himself comfortable on the two-seat couch in front of the fireplace.
He’s taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white undershirt, exposing marked ivory skin.
There are three black bands inked into his flesh, circling his left forearm, and on his right is a faded silver marking.
My vision is too blurry to truly make it out.
And I’m too focused on not puking to care any further.
I watch him through half-lidded eyes, feeling like I might have the upper hand for a moment—observing him while he thinks I’m still good and unconscious.
I’m not sure what I think I’ll find, but who knows what he might reveal if he thinks no one is watching.
Currently, I’m battling between the reputation that precedes him and what I’ve witnessed firsthand. For me, his reputation consists of stories told at Selumira. Myths. Legends. It seems wrong to believe in those over what’s sitting right in front of me.
But who is sitting right in front of me?
The tendons in his forearm flex as he raises a glass of what looks like whiskey to his lips. He stares intently at the fire, his other arm slung over the back of the couch, thumb mindlessly running across the leather stitching.
His expression is pensive enough that it makes me wonder what thoughts have him so engrossed. What does someone like him even think about?
Maybe that he’s wasting his time helping the girl stumbling her way through the Estate with a plan that she’s too stubborn to admit she needs help executing. Maybe he’s thinking it isn’t worth it—being an accomplice to my murders.
But I didn’t seek him out. He found me. He offered advice I didn’t ask for, and he’s gone out of his way to assist me ever since. I’ve offered him nothing in return.
The Hound swallows whatever he’d taken a sip of, rolling his lips together as if to savor the taste.
Then he looks at me.
My heart stops.
“Would you like some?” He lifts his glass in offering.
I pretend like I’m not startled, forcing myself up straighter as I glance at the full decanter of amber liquid. Every movement sets my head pounding. “No, thank you.”
He knew I was awake.
Lowering the tumbler back to his leg, the Hound refocuses his attention on the fire.
“What is…snaring?” I force out, gripping the armrests when a wave of nausea rolls through, twisting my stomach. “And why does it feel like death?”
He snorts. “It’s a means of travel.”
I raise my brows expectantly.
“It’s a power of mine,” he explains. “It’s intended for capture and transport, and it feels like death because your body isn’t meant to travel that way.”
“Great,” I exhale, closing my eyes for a moment.
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.
“Lucina?”
“You work for Alaric.”
He shakes his head. “No, I made a deal with Alaric.”
“Same thing,” I fire back. “What deal?”
“Please sit down.”
“No.” I fold my arms across my chest, standing my ground by the door. “What. Deal.”
The Hound exhales, the muscle in his jaw twitching, and when he finally answers, I wish I’d not been so stubborn about taking a seat. “I bring him you, and I get my freedom.”
For a good long minute, I just stand there, watching him while he watches me.
He said he’s been a prisoner for fifty years—that’s half of a mortals life span. Who knows what portion of his life his imprisonment has taken up? It’s impossible to tell how old he is when he looks only five or so years older than me.
But still. I can’t confidently say that I wouldn’t also take that deal if the roles were reversed. So then, why the hesitation? Why hasn’t he taken me? He so easily could have. Many times.
His words from the other night come flooding back to me: At this current moment, I care an awful lot about freedom.
If what he’s just said is true, then I’m the ticket to his freedom. Me. The nauseated, mind-blown, sacrificial lamb that has been unknowingly fraternizing with its hunter. Burning bodies in the woods with him. Gods, I’m in his fucking bedroom!
I’m thrilled to not be Alaric’s pet right now, but why? Why aren’t I being Snared off to Onyile?
“But that…” I shake my head at him. “...that doesn’t make any sense. I’m right here.” He’s watching as I gesture to myself. “You… found me? So why haven’t you—”
“Why haven’t I taken you to the King?”
More of what he’d said the other night becomes clearer in my memory: There’s only one thing I care about more than freedom.
“Retribution?” I whisper, and he’s nodding again. “For the Captures?”
“That is part of it, yes.”
My brows rise. “And the other part?”
The Hound stands with his drink, straightening to his full height, and I’m cautious of every movement he makes as he steps towards me, stopping at the edge of the rug.
“I’d like to save all of your people,” he tells me, and there’s nothing but determination and sincerity in the way he says it.
Still, I take a step back. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“The original Solian Disciples,” he explains. “Their curse? I want to break it.”
My eyes widen, and he takes a sip of his drink, all kinds of follow-up questions buzzing through my head.
There hasn’t been much talk in Pirn of breaking the curse. Not with all the setbacks they’ve faced in the last twenty-something years. I know finding the cure is Kimber and the rest of the Diviners’ department, but she’s never spoken to me about any breakthroughs. Nobody has.
Folding my arms across my chest, I watch him curiously. “You know how to do it?” I ask.
“I have a theory,” he replies, leaning against the chair beside him. “But I can’t do it alone.”
Realization dawns. “That’s your proposition?” I gape at him. “You’re asking me to help you with the curse?”
“Yes,” he says simply. To both questions, I presume. “I help you, and you help me.”
“That’s what this has all been about?”
“Yes,” he says again, adding nothing else to his response.
I eye him as if he’s lost his mind. And perhaps I have too, because a part of me is…considering it.
For valid reasons.