Page 54 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

Mordaunt stepped in front of Aurienne, seized her hand, and pressed her tacn to his heart. “You’re brilliant. Merely saying thank you seems—insufficient.”

His chest was warm through his shirt. He was jubilant, almost boyish in his joy. Aurienne, too, was happy—stunningly, intoxicatingly, headily happy.

“We need a diffractor to confirm,” she said.

“We need to celebrate,” said Mordaunt.

The waltz rang from the terrace with a slow musical purpose.

“Dance with me,” said Mordaunt.

He offered her his hand. She, bemused, took it.

He led her along the promenade to the distant strains of music. They danced in the starlit night in long asymmetrical windings, making their way along the shore towards the hotel. Night birds wheeled and dipped and chased invisible things in arcs overhead.

No gloves separated their hands. There was a startling intimacy to this prolonged touch of palm on palm, his roughened by the hilts of knives and hers by her instruments. His signet ring pressed against the side of her hand. And their tacn touching thus—the hellhound and the Aer, in deliberate contact—a thing that hadn’t happened once in thecenturies upon centuries of their Orders’ existence—truly, this was a night for marvels.

There was sweetness in knowing that they wouldn’t go their separate ways after this, that they would spend more hours together, in the same room, and talk, and tease, and linger. When was the last time Aurienne had felt this? She did not think there had ever been such a moment—there were always other things to do, reasons to rush, deadlines, patients, obligations more important. Tonight was different. Tonight, she wanted to prolong.

They arrived at the dock where Mordaunt had threatened to push Aurienne into the water. He gave her a sidelong look, then seized her around the waist as though about to throw her in.

Aurienne gasped and snatched fistfuls of his shirt.

“We’re both filthy,” said Mordaunt. “We need a bath.”

“Don’t—you—dare—”

Full of laughter, he put her down upon the edge of the dock. She still held his collar. He held her hips. They caught their breath. Aurienne’s hands slid until they rested, hooked together, at the nape of his neck. Mordaunt glanced at her mouth.

And frankly, what was this? Feeling this alive, with her arms around him, and cheeks that hurt from smiling?

It was illogical, beautiful, soul stirring, real.

Aurienne felt herself on the cusp of something beyond right or wrong, not good or evil, but a truth.

There was a peculiar gravity in the crossing of breaths; it drew her and Mordaunt towards each other in little pulls. They locked eyes. His were intent and searching, though the question remained unspoken. One of her curls touched his cheek; he closed his eyes as though she had caressed him.

She felt a lovely ache to the left of her breastbone. She didn’t wish to examine it. It would be dissecting a songbird to see where the song came from. She let it be.

Their laughing elation turned to something deeper. Aurienne felt as though a sleeping part of her soul had awakened; she felt that lightning was about to strike.

Mordaunt’s fingertips made an involuntary movement at the small of her back. “Fairhrim, I—”

He bit off the end of the sentence and looked away. Aurienne’s heart taunted her with its beat. She did not control it; it throbbed as it would.

They teetered at the edge of the water. The fall was a half step away. Everything was precarious—the moment, the threshold, the balance. They were split. Irresolute. Harrowed. They wanted. They shouldn’t. It was madness. It was the purest sanity. It would be an end. It could be a beginning.

Aurienne’s fingers found the stubble-rough skin at the line of his jaw. He cupped her face in his hands. They looked at each other, star-crossed, moon-mad, for a heartbeat, and for a heartbeat they were about to—they were about to—

With desperate gentleness, his mouth found hers.

The place where their lips touched was the bright point upon which the rest of the world spun.

Aurienne pushed her fingers into his hair and kissed him back. She sought the dip of his scar with her lips. Every press of her mouth against his told him,We shouldn’t, but I want to, but we shouldn’t; and his answering push was,I know, I know. They inhaled pleasure and exhaled misery. Yearning hands slid down Aurienne’s back, splayed against her, held her hard. Hers, trembling slightly, twisted into his collar.

They kissed long in the lingering twilight, in the place between joy and suffering and sanity and madness. Aurienne made heart memories of the moon in his hair and the burnt sugar on his tongue and the night birds chasing summer.

He crowded her along the edge of the lake. The wind blew her dress against her from behind; her skirts brushed at his calves.