Page 160 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

“I willnotbe giving a speech,” muttered Osric to Aurienne.

“Don’t. I will. I’ve got something important to say,” said Aurienne.

The gleam of determination in her eye made him nervous.

She maintained her grip on his hand as she went to the front of the stage amid applause. She stood proud-necked, her silver epaulets flashing in sunlight. Her ceremonial Haelan robes outlined her figure to her waist, then fell full-skirted to the ground.

She reached her arms out to the crowd to silence them and looked briefly like a smaller version of Fria. “Swanstone is first and foremost an institution of research,” she said. “A place of discovery. Through all of this loss and pain, I’ve discovered that heroism comes in different forms. In the courage of the children fighting the Pox. In the indefatigable work of Paediatrics and Virology. In the Wardens holding the line to the very last. And—most surprisingly—in the form of a Fyren.

“Our Orders are in many ways one another’s mirror image. Our tacn place us at diametrical opposites. Life and death. Beginnings and ends. Neat boxes. Easy distinctions. Perhapstooeasy. Our job as researchers is to interrogate preconceptions. Before meeting Osric Mordaunt, I didn’t interrogate them. I simply accepted.”

Aurienne tugged off Osric’s glove. She raised his left hand to the crowd. “In the past six months, this tacn has saved more lives than we will ever be able to account for. Thousands. Possibly tens of thousands.”

The crowd was silent, but it wasn’t a shocked or outraged silence—it was the same grave, respectful silence that had followed the naming of the Wardens.

“He has changed my understanding of what it means to walk the Bright and Dusken Paths,” continued Aurienne. “I know now that they parallel each other. They sometimes cross over. At times, they merge into one.”

“Are you so determined to be sentimental?” muttered Osric.

“I’m determined to say the truth,” whispered Aurienne. She turned back to the crowd. “We discovered that the Pox was a manufactured plague thanks to him. The children rescued from Dreor incubators are recuperating in our wards thanks to him. And at the very last, when things were so dire, he came to Swanstone. I’m standing here thanks to him.”

The crowd applauded.

“Please don’t degenerate into eulogy,” whispered Osric, who could feel himself reddening.

“I will say what’s in my heart,” came Aurienne’s returning whisper.

“You had better stop.”

“No.”

“Stop, or I shall kiss you right on your provoking mouth.”

“In front of everybody?”

“In front of Fria and everyone.”

The crowd quieted. With a defiant look at Osric, Aurienne spoke again. “I’ve learned that goodness isn’t about who you are or what tacn you bear, it’s about choices. This man—” Aurienne stepped up to Osric and took his face in her hands. “This man made the right choices. Good choices.”

There were tears in her eyes. She drew his face closer to hers. She was going to kiss him, in public. She was mad.

He was going to let her.Hewas mad.

“And I love him,” she finished.

He kissed her right on her provoking mouth.

Radia and Rosbert stood speechless. Dinadan gurgled something incoherent. Cath and Élodie clung to each other. Xanthe wiped away a tear.

Osric cared about none of it.

Time slowed. He pressed his lips to Aurienne’s and she kissed him back.

Then came an eruption of cheers—a storm of applause and shrieks.Xanthe made them clasp their hands together and lifted them up—Aurienne’s smile was brighter than the wild sun. Osric stammered that he wasn’t worthy of her—she kissed him again and, laughing, asked him not to be an idiot. Her hands threaded into his hair. She was all dimples and shining eyes. He lifted her against him. Her skirts swept around his legs.

In that moment, he knew sheer, exultant joy. There was magic in the air. This was another thin place; to kiss her was to be on the edge of a new world, a glowing, luminous one, no longer fractured by Order or Path or tacn or dogma, where things could be whole.

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