Page 53 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

The shimmering diagnostic, incomprehensible to Osric, continued its slow pivot. Fairhrim’s eyes were luminous as she studied it, vivid with curiosity. She pressed her hands to her mouth and nodded.

Before him was beauty trebled by brilliance. She was doing it. Moon by moon, she was healing him. She was doing the impossible thing.

What could have been between them if he wasn’t what he was and she wasn’t what she was?Could anything mend the breach?he had asked himself at the Stánrocc.

She wiped at her muddied cheek and smiled at him. His soul thrilled as though resonating with something holy.

Could little human heartstrings span a breach so vast?

11

Things That Could Never Be

Aurienne

The droplets on Aurienne’s lashes softened the world. All was tremulous joy; all was a celestial shimmer. Mordaunt, his hair wet, his shirt soaked through, was surrounded by a twinkling halo.

Explanation burst from Aurienne. “It looks like we’ve reversed the demyelination affecting your cervical seith channels. I’m fairly confident—only, of course, it’s notpossibleto do so—but the evidence—though, obviously, we need to confirm with a diffractor—but there is no known cure for demyelination. In seith channels or elsewhere. Do you realise what this means? This is extraordinary. There will be implications not only in our treatment of seith degeneration but for other demyelinating disorders—”

Mordaunt’s eyes glazed over. Aurienne laughed. “Sorry. Something we’re doing is working—that’s the important bit.”

The good news rendered Mordaunt unusually silent. He looked at her, soft-eyed. His hands went down her shoulders, slid along her wet forearms, and grasped her hands. Then, as though that wasn’t enough,he pulled her into a tight hug—and, again, as though that still wasn’t enough, he lifted her against him.

The squeeze cracked the dam of things Aurienne kept walled in; they surged and frothed joyously.

He spun her in a perfect circle under the round moon. She knew happiness then, and it was the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. She clung to him; cheek pressed cheek, heart pressed heart, and the world spun by in ribbons of purpling sky.

They stilled. In a flash of white, a smile broke across his face.

And Aurienne, breathless with wonder, sick with despair, felt the sunsetting of her hate.

He set her back down. He did not let her go. Time was suspended; a breath held, a heartbeat skipped. Neither of them moved.

“It’s notwe,” said Mordaunt, his voice husky at the edges. “It’s you. It’s all you.”

“There would be none of this if you weren’t here,” said Aurienne.

“I wouldn’t be here much longer if it wasn’t for you.”

“I’ll let you have the last word tonight.”

Mordaunt’s grin was bright in the growing darkness. “Shall we get out of here?”

“Oh, I am not looking forward to that descent—”

“Fairhrim?”

“What?”

“Don’t look down.”

He swept her into his arms, held her like a lover, and shadow-walked the two of them down the treacherous muddy track and back into the glade. He was quick about it, and strangely gentle; Aurienne felt floaty and lightheaded rather than sick.

At the viewing platform they discovered that their things were missing—her hat, his cane, their gloves. These things were unimportant. Mordaunt was still smiling; that was what was important, and the leafy boughs splaying dark lace against the sky, and the nightingale’ssilver song wreathing the branches. Once again, the whole world was singing.

Mordaunt whisked them from shadow to shadow until they were out of the trees and back at the lakefront promenade. Aurienne raised objections about overusing his seith, which he ignored.

He set Aurienne on her feet at the promenade. The hotel, with its doors and windows flung open into the night, was a brilliant jewel in the distance. The strains of a waltz reached their ears. Guests in gowns and full evening dress moved across the terrace. There were bursts of laughter and talk, distant and surreal in light of what had just happened at the top of the falls.