Page 13 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

Make a plan.

Aurienne delved deep into the font of her patience.

“Your plan is to come up with a plan?” she asked.

“Bit shit, isn’t it?”

“It’s well shit,” said Aurienne. “You are riding my last nerve.”

“My favourite place to be,” said Mordaunt.

“But at least you’ve been inside the Færwundor. That’s something.”

“Er—I haven’t, actually.”

“You haven’t? But you killed the Druids’ Seer.”

“I killed him at a restaurant,” said Mordaunt. “In London.”

“A restaurant?” repeated Aurienne.

“It was his birthday party.”

“You killed a man at his own birthday party?”

“Obviously: I knew he’d be there. What?”

Aurienne and Mordaunt stared at each other in mutual incomprehension. The gap between their principles yawned wide.

“So many of the things you do frankly erode my faith in our species,” said Aurienne.

“I’m not convinced we are the same species,” said Mordaunt.

“Immoralist.”

“Valkyrie.”

Aurienne pressed fingertips to the bridge of her nose. “Right. Excellent. Perfect. So we’re going into the Færwundor blind.”

“Not that blind,” said Mordaunt, pointing to the table. “You’ve got a map.”

“Exterior only. We’ve got a few Druid contacts at Swanstone—they’re a major source of plantings for our medicinal gardens—but I daren’t ask for too much information about their headquarters. All this map confirms is Glastonbury Tor’s position over three ley lines and that two watercourses cross somewhere within it, which coincides with Widdershins’ translation notes for the Begbéam moon.”

Widdershins was a professor who claimed to have translated the inscriptions on the Monafyll Stone, an ancient obelisk depicting a healing pilgrimage to be followed at the full moon. Aurienne and Mordaunt had harassed the man in his own home to obtain his translations, which described the pilgrimage in the vaguest and most unhelpful terms.Aurienne was using Widdershins’ notes to guide her interpretation of the data—it being understood that by “data” she meant a quantity of ill-sourced, poor-quality, unverified anecdotes describing miraculous healings at the full moon.

This was the sum total of the research project upon which Mordaunt’s healing was predicated: maps with scribbles on them, fabricated translations, and anecdata. Ludicrous.

Ludicrous,and yet.

Frankly, the most ludicrous part of it all was that, following this poorly conceived “treatment,” Aurienne had arrested Mordaunt’s seith degeneration. Somehow, on the basis of fairy stories and healing sessions at the full moon, they had done something heretofore medically impossible and stopped the progress of an unstoppable disease. That was immense. A triumph. Or a coincidence. It was too late to be sceptical, but too soon to celebrate.

Aurienne looked up. Mordaunt had placed two heart-shaped nipple pasties over his eyes.

No: the most ludicrous part of it all was him.

“La vie en rose,”said Mordaunt, looking about.

Aurienne had been using the nipple pasties as markers on her map. She plucked them off his face. “Focus, please. The two watercourses may be subterranean. There’s a persistent legend that Glastonbury Tor is hollow—that there’s a large cave system within the hill. Some myths suggest that passage to Annwn can be found down there. The Celtic Otherworld,” she added, in the face of Mordaunt’s blank look. “A paradise of eternal youth, where disease is absent.”