Page 17 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

He spent a long time in his dressing room, getting ready. This wasn’t a date or anything, obviously; he simply liked to make himself devastatingly attractive.

He would get to sweep Fairhrim into his arms again tonight. Not that doing so sent his heart skittering into pleasant, uneven throbs; he simply liked to whisk her about, and hear her little gasps, and feel her cling to him. It was great fun to undo her a little—she was always so tightly wound.

“Are you getting ready for a date?” came a voice.

It was the bloody critique cricket. Whenever it had been silent long enough, Osric assumed it had died. Then it came back again when it was least wanted.

“No. Go away, you little brute,” said Osric.

“Then why have you spent an hour fussing over your hair?” asked the cricket.

“I like it to be perfect,” said Osric, continuing to fuss in the looking glass. “I never do things by halves, you know.”

He couldn’t decide if he looked better with his hood up (mysterious, sinister) or down (devil-may-care, dashing) and alternated between the two, all while admiring the cut of his jaw.

“I think you’re trying to impress the Haelan,” said the cricket. “She makes your papule of a heart go pitter-patter.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Osric stepped back from the looking glass. “How do I look?”

“When I want to see clowns, I go to the circus.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You fancy her,” said the cricket musically.

Osric, sufficiently offended to detach his eyes from his reflection, looked about for the cricket, but there were too many hiding places amid the luxuries heaped about his dressing room. He sent his seith to his tacn and searched the shadows on the bureau, between bottles of hair oils, pots of crèmes, pomades, and shaving articles. No cricket. He swept his tacn towards the frock coats, waistcoats, boots, and gloves lying about. It was of no use—every garment offered a place of refuge, and in getting ready to see Fairhrim, he had pulled out a lot of garments.

Osric regained his composure. “I am far too concerned with myself to admire anyone else.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true.”

Full of grave pity, the cricket said, “You can be honest with me, if not yourself.”

“I don’t know how else to tell you you’re wrong,” said Osric lightly.

“You think about her every day,” said the cricket.

“Because she’s helping to heal me.”

“Have you forgotten that I witnessed your Agonies?”

“An overreaction on my part,” said Osric, pulling on his gloves. “I’m prone to those.”

“You might have a chance with her. If she’s secretly a murdererphile. Or moronsexual.”

“Oi.”

“I shall pray for you,” said the cricket.

“Don’t bother.”

“When human means fail, one ought to give the gods a chance.”

The cricket’s Parthian shot aside,Osric remained in an excellent mood. With sprightliness in his step, he took the waystone to the Hairy Hodmedod, the pub near Glastonbury Tor where he and Fairhrim had arranged to meet. He popped out of the ley line in the Somerset lowlands at twenty past three (he was late due to the cricket, not his hair).

The full moon was at its zenith. A small cloud dappled its light.