Page 34 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

Aurienne found peace.

The rage had not extinguished itself. It settled on her like a cerement.

After what Aurienne had witnessedat the Færwundor, the tasks that awaited her as Director of the Centre for Seith Research did not seem as overwhelming as usual. She invited Quincey into her office with his pile of Dreaded Admin and faced it head-on. No problems were as horrific as the bloodied bodies of dozens of dead Druids, none as insurmountable as Grön dying before her eyes.

The libraries failed Aurienne. Quincey read their responses to her Dreor Order request with increasing agitation. When he went through the first apologetic notes, Aurienne thought that it was a peculiar coincidence. But as the apologies continued, coincidence no longer sufficed as an explanation. In every library, texts relating to the Dreor Order were missing.

Someone had done a clean sweep of the greatest libraries in the Tiendoms and purged them of Dreor-related material. Yet another actthat would have taken months and serious resources to carry out. With every layer of this plot she peeled back, Aurienne felt herself on the cusp of discovering something bigger and bigger.

She dismissed Quincey and turned her thinking to privately held collections. However, if the Dreor Order had orchestrated a careful purge of research libraries, was there also a chance that they had done the same for private ones? Could the owners of those collections be counted on not to report a Haelan’s uncharacteristic interest in the Dreor Order?

Who had a private library, who she knew could be trusted?

The answer displeased her spectacularly.

Mordaunt.

She had no desire to ask a favour of him, or to be further in his debt.

Did she have a choice?

One positive among the repeated horrors of the last twenty-four hours was the result of the last healing: she had seen—to be confirmed by diffractor—real progress in Mordaunt’s condition.

Her feelings she was less thrilled with. She was beset by memories of Mordaunt’s lips on her hand, of the weight of his arm on her hips, of the strange bliss of their seclusion. She sought refuge in logic, which she, being devoutly pragmatic, brought to bear upon her emotional problems with unhealthy regularity.

Logic could only explain away so much; it could not explain the small revelries of her heart. These joys she hadn’t felt in ages. She was bewildered, ashamed, both happy and not.

Love wasn’t the risk here, that was one certainty—she had given her heart away once and would never do so again.

Still, confusion and crossness plaited themselves over and over in her head. She shouldn’t think of him. She thought of him. Did he think of her? He shouldn’t think of her. He’d better be thinking of her, because she was thinking of him. She mustn’t think of him.

She wished for serenity; she wished to uncramp her brain.

As a senior Haelan, Aurienne was rarely hands-on in the lab anymore, but in the days that followed, she found solace there, in the rigorous application of methodology and protocol. She seized her feelings with both hands and subjected them to the same; she decanted, she stoppered, she stored securely in spark-proof refrigerated compartments. That was what one did with volatile compounds.

Compartmentalising and compartmentalising again. Could one run out of compartments?

Aurienne fixed tissue specimens and her feelings in 2.5 percent glutaraldehyde until Cath popped in to go to lunch. Cath, the Director of Trauma and Acute Care, was, along with Élodie from Virology, one of Aurienne’s closest friends. Cath kept her head shaved because of her Cost, which caused hair loss. She had a tongue and an intellect as sharp as her wing tips.

Aurienne felt proud of herself as she strode to the cafeteria: she had not thought of Mordaunt for over three hours. Then Cath asked, “How is Tit Wank Man?” and ruined everything.

Tit Wank Man was the nickname—perhaps even more unfortunate than Onion Boy—given to Mordaunt by Cath, who only knew him as a mysterious man that Aurienne had saved from a stab wound.

Aurienne meditated flight. In the most detached tone she could manage, she said, “Tit Wank Man is fine.”

“Only fine? And yes,” added Cath, peaceably, “I am a right nosy cow.”

“Fine,” said Aurienne. “Gone, actually. Out of the picture.”

“Is he?” Cath’s burgundy-lined gaze searched Aurienne’s. “I’d believe you if you weren’t actively looking for exits.”

Aurienne, who had indeed been evaluating the nearest window for auto-defenestration purposes, said, “Don’t be silly.”

They came to Swanstone’s cafeteria. It wasn’t much of one; it consisted of a long row of tables in a corridor, the regular cafeteria having been converted to Ward 14 (Platt’s Pox).

They loaded up their trays and found a table. Seith was bestreplenished with food, the higher calorie the better; the fare at Swanstone was consequently rich and heavy to fuel seith-depleted Haelan.

Cath heaped a cracker with whipped goat cheese and fig preserve. “Does Xanthe know about this situation with Tit Wank Man?” she asked. “The stabbing and everything?”