Page 66 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

She sighed, then her mouth found a stubborn set, and she pressed her palm to the waystone. Osric did the same.Mind the gapflashed, and they were whisked into the ley line.

The ride through the ley line did not agree with Fairhrim, who turned a swampy sort of green upon arrival at Rosefell Hall. Osric gently propelled her up the drive towards the house. Her limbs went in every direction but forward.

She flopped into a flower bed and was violently sick.

Amid the sounds of retching came the voice of the critique cricket, unusually pensive: “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you and vomits in your peonies, it’s yours.”

“Do fuck off,” said Osric, helping Fairhrim into the kitchen.

Mrs. Parson was within. She gasped upon discovering Fairhrim’s state and led her to the nearest toilet to freshen up.

Having shut the door on Fairhrim, Mrs. Parson turned to Osric. “Poor thing. What happened yesterday?”

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, but—between you and me, Parson, I will acknowledge that the woman can handle a cock.”

Mrs. Parson stared blankly at him. “I meant the healing.”

“Oh—right,” said Osric. “It went well. We’re here to confirm success with the diffractor. Also, we drank a bit too much. Hence the—”

From the toilet came the sound of more retching.

Mrs. Parson tutted. “How could you put her through a ley line in this condition?”

“I didn’t know she was that bad. She only looked a bit tiddly last night.”

“There’s only one of her. Take better care.”

Osric was prepared to argue his innocence. However, this injunction left him quite abashed. Mrs. Parson was right: there was only one of her.

Mrs. Parson returned to the sink and made her displeasure with Osric known by dealing harshly with the crockery. Still glaring at him, she jammed plates into the Cochrane machine, an apparatus recently purchased by Mrs. Parson that cleansed dishes of their sins.

Her accusation spurred Osric into knight-errantry. He knocked at the toilet door. There was no answer from Fairhrim. He opened the door, quite expecting to find her dead. He thought wildly of where he would bury her. He would plant Frostbells on her grave and water them with his tears.

Fairhrim was curled up on the floor. When asked whether she had died, she answered, “Yes.”

Osric gathered her into his arms, as a chivalrous knight might sweep up a damsel, and carried her into the sitting room. She slumped upon the sofa, pale-lipped and pathetic. Osric put a pillow behind her head, then sat beside her awkwardly with his hands upon his knees. He was not used to taking care of others. Bit rubbish at it, frankly.

Mrs. Parson conducted some of her teacraft and came in with a steaming pot smelling powerfully of ginger, as well as a bowl of soup and some crackers. These were absorbed by Fairhrim with mumbled words of gratitude and had an immediate revitalizing effect.

Fairhrim looked at Mrs. Parson with wonder. “What’s in this tea? Other than”—she sniffed at it—“ginger and thyme.”

“Oh, bits of this and that,” said Parson with a vague gesture, before gasping that she had left the hob on and trotting away.

Fairhrim bathed her face in steam from the teapot with suspicious mutters about kitchen witchery.

“You’re feeling better?” asked Osric.

“Yes. Where’s the diffractor?”

Osric went to fetch the accursed instrument. The diffractor had nottaken kindly to its kidnapping from the clinic. It made a nuisance of itself wherever it was placed, flinging its long wires out to trip Osric, Mrs. Parson, Mr. Parson, or the dogs at every opportunity. Osric had shoved it into a dark corner of the boot room, where it now loomed, intimidating and malicious.

Osric espied it from the door and then, without hesitating, lest he begin to be afraid, launched himself at it, and snatched it into his arms as one might grapple with a wild beast. The diffractor boxed his ears. He slapped away its wires. It attempted to throttle him. He caught the wires in his fist. The perverse instrument extricated a single tentacle and whipped at the tenderest parts of his anatomy. Osric sprinted down the hall. He got to the sitting room and cast the diffractor wildly forth, and followed it into the room, breathless and discombobulated.

It had been close. Only two letters differentiate victim from victor.

“Are you all right?” asked Fairhrim in light of this dramatic entrance.

“Fine,” panted Osric.