Page 32 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

Mordaunt looked a combination of confused and pleased. She gave him a quick smile.

He blinked at her and said, “Did you know that you’ve got a dimple?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t.”

“And?”

“It’s…” Mordaunt looked as though a dozen words passed over his tongue. He settled on “pleasing.”

“Is it enough to make you admit I’m prettier than you?” asked Aurienne.

There was a swift, gorgeous laugh. Mordaunt pushed a hand into his hair. “Fairhrim. You’re asking me to set aside my ego.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Aurienne. “Thank you for finally admitting it.”

“It took me too long to see the truth.” Mordaunt’s mouth laughed still, but there was something serious in his eyes, something almost sad.

“You mustn’t be sad,” said Aurienne. “You can still be pretty, just not prettiest.”

“You’re better than me in every way that matters.”

“You’ve got an unknown psychotropic drug in your system.”

“I’ll happily blame it for any stupid things I say or do.”

Aurienne wanted to sayLikewise, but was overpowered by a wide, irresistible yawn.

She and Mordaunt pushed their straw-filled pillows into some semblance of a shape. They settled upon their respective sides of the bed and faced away from each other.

Sleep was tinged by mournful dreams of the oak and the Druids.

Aurienne awoke in the nightto a low fire in the hearth and a heavy arm across her hips. She and Mordaunt had slid into each other as they slept. Her back was against his chest; her head rested on his arm. She wished to pin responsibility on him for this state of affairs, but having cracked open an eye, she found that she was in the middle of the bed as much as he was, and therefore equally to blame.

Was he awake or asleep? His breathing came calm and regular against her neck. Aurienne sought her panic, her revulsion. A Fyren was holding her.

The feelings did not come. She was comfortable. She was safe.

A hundred years hence, none of this will matter.

She did not move away from him. It might have been the lingering effect of the drug, but for once in her life, Aurienne neither questioned nor analysed. Held in Mordaunt’s arms, she simply existed.

Firelight gleamed upon the walls and caught at the hairs on Mordaunt’s forearm. Sun-dried grass scented the air. The moment was a breather, an interval without demand or obligation, hidden away, protected. It was the freedom of seclusion, of all anxieties and duties set aside to be dealt with another time. It was a new sort of being together.

Aurienne felt herself on the verge of some wild, uncompassed course. Felt that swell of exhilaration that comes with going beyond where one is meant to be.

She and Mordaunt had been drawn to each other in sleep—by the oddness of the unconscious, by the strange logic of souls. The healer in the arms of a killer, the sinner entangled with the saint. They lay as two halves of a whole, fragments held together in a new form, and it was wrong yet right, and so it was ugly-beautiful.

A Haelan and a Fyren lying together. Proof indisputable that magic existed.

She found, in his arms, the strangeness of belonging.

Mordaunt shifted. His tacn was briefly visible. The hellhound was a perfect symmetry of eye socket and curved horn and bone.

Firelight could make the foulest things beautiful.

Mordaunt’s hand closed. Now he lay beside her as a man and nothing more.