Page 51 of Fallacies

Something uneasy settles over the room.

When no one else speaks up, I blurt the question burning on the tip of my tongue. “The Hound? As in, Pyra’s Hound?”

Why am I the only one who feels afraid right now?

Pa had told a story about the Hound at the last Selumira. About how Etis sacrificed her soul in exchange for his help in breaking the curse on our Disciples. Truthfully, that story is the extent of what I know about him. Aside from the widely known belief that he’s the devil’s right hand. Growing up, belief in Pyra’s Hound went hand in hand with faith in our Gods. Even as commoners.

The looks I get in response to my shock are borderline sympathetic.

“What?” I glance around the room. “Why isn’t everyone freaking out right now?”

“Because it’s not possible, Cin,” Callan huffs a laugh.

“As I said,” Hunter shrugs, “gossip and rumors.”

It doesn’t do much to settle the sudden race of my heart.

After a few beats of silence, Easton speaks up from the couch behind us, “But if it is true⁠—”

“It isn’t,” Callan snaps back, definite and resolute.

“I said if,” Easton continues. “Maybe we should be prepared…just in case.”

“And how would we prepare for that, E?” Pax asks. I’d been thinking the same thing. “You think we can outrun the Hound?”

“Well, we do have the Banyan,” I chime in, and am met with avoidant stares. “Right?” The silence lingers. “The Hound would have to pass through the Banyan and make it through judgment like the rest of⁠—”

“Lucina,” Devon interrupts, his voice deep and his tone blunt. “The Hound is a God. If he truly wanted into Pirn, he’d snap the Banyan like a twig.”

More fear sinks in my gut as I imagine what that would look like—a crack through the center of the trunk, heavy limbs splitting and falling to the ground, deep roots yanked from the earth. All of us in Pirn with nowhere to hide. We’d be utterly defenseless.

“But…if that’s true,” I swallow against the tightness in my throat, “how would Alaric be able to control him, then? To have him kneeling at his feet?”

“He isn’t,” Callan says sharply, and I try not to take offense at his tone. “That wouldn’t be possible. It’s likely a power tactic Tenebrus is using to rally the Rogues. He wants to make them think that they have a god at their disposal when, really, it’s all a bluff.” Callan shakes his head at the absurdity of the thought. “There isn’t a single person in the Chiaros that the Hound would willingly bow to.”

I roll my lips together, choosing to swallow the rest of my burning questions.

“Lucina.” Callan pulls me out of my blank stare. “Tell them what you found out.”

Right. The threshold.

I ended up telling him about my little experiment at the breakfast table. Only because he kept asking, and I couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse for why Selene and I were mixing our blood in a glass and passing it back and forth through her ward.

“I, uh—had Selene’s help, but we figured out that the threshold to pass a blood ward is fifty percent. All we’d need is enough Rogue blood to counteract the same portion of Sol blood, and it should…nullify or cancel out. Then the ward would be passable.”

By me.

“Disciple Rogue blood,” Easton corrects, and my brows furrow. “It’s not a bad plan, Lucina, but we can’t just kill any Rogue; we’d need one from their original bloodlines to do something as risky as tricking a blood ward. You know…Harmlet, Quillen, Peregrine, Slater, Tenebrus…one of them.”

“I know…” I sink back into the barstool. “It was just an idea.”

“The only one we have right now,” Callan adds. “What Aster suggested is too risky.”

“It’s all risky,” Devon points out as I chew nervously on my bottom lip.

I just have to make it through tonight. Once I’m initiated, I’ll tell them. I just have to get through tonight.

Callan takes a deep breath and gestures to his coven. “Let me think about all this, and we’ll regroup tomorrow.” Everyone begins to peel themselves out of their positions around the living space. “Initiation starts at sunset,” he reminds them. “Don’t be late.”