Yrene✨’s Reviews > The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy > Status Update

"Not now," said Fairhrim. "He needs rest. Come on, Mor—er, Osric."

It was lovely to be fussed over, Osric thought. Tartiflette was sent to set a warming pan in Fairhrim's bed. The serving boy held up the pudding for Osric's inspection. Fairhrim's hand squeezed his. He took a step towards her. She was a dreamlike blur in his fading vision. In spite of all her finery, she smelled like herself, like hlutoform and soap.

Her eyes were dark with concern, only she hated him, so they weren't, but it was lovely to pretend.
So very lovely.
He fainted face-first into the pudding.

OSRIC FADED IN AND OUT OF AWARENESS. SOMETHING NEW HAPPENED every time he opened his eyes—he was carried into a bedchamber by Fairhrim's relatives-Fairhrim chased everybody out-blackness— sharp pain at his side, followed by coolness— a gentle hand in his hair— blackness again.

Osric came to in a soft-lit room. It was Fairhrim's hands he saw first in his blurred, queasy return to consciousness.

The soft glow came from diagnostic images floating above him.
"Dress-ruined," pointed out Osric.
"Don't talk," said Fairhrim.
"Have I got custard in my hair?"
"You're an idiot," said Fairhrim. Her voice was tight and clipped; she was withholding a high-pressure torrent of further opinions.
"Answer me about the custard."

Fairhrim's withheld torrent found a crack. "Do you know how lucky you are that your bowels weren't perforated? I'm still not certain whether or not I need to involve Cath—"
"Who's Cath?"
"A trauma specialist."
"Short for Catheter, I suppose."
"No. Stop talking."
The crack widened; Fairhim's torrent gushed forth. "What were you thinking? What was the operative theory here, Mr. I'm-Nigh-Untouchable? Well, you certainly got touched. And then what? You thought you'd just... hold the blood in? Keep your guts braced through sheer force of will? Flirt with Aunt Plectrude with a knife thrust into you? Find death in a pudding?"

Osric raised a feeble finger. "It seems unfair to tell me to stop talking and then ask questions."
"The questions are rhetorical. Honestly, what's in your head? Close your eyes. Can you manage that? I'll happily sedate you if you can't." Fairhrim's palm was at his side.

The torpraxia didn't affect his ability to feel her seith; it swept into him in cool, controlled pushes. Unlike his seith degeneration, Osric had, this time, presented Fairhrim with a problem that was enormous but solvable-and she solved.
He had known that she was brilliant, but he truly understood now what that brilliance meant. Her seith surged into him in a curative wash, impossibly knitting him closed from the inside out.

He was going to be all right, thought Osric as he sank back into unconsciousness and Fairhrim's seith flowed through him.
Blood on her cheek and sharpness on her tongue, she was going to save him.
💖

After two hours of work, Aurienne, lightheaded from seith depletion, her hands a mess of livid wounds, her neck aching, her favourite dress a blood-splattered disaster, sat back, satisfied; Mordaunt was stable.
Ciele had told her what he'd seen and thus converted her frightened anger into confused gratitude.

Her deofol hovered above Mordaunt's face. His tail swept about restlessly.

"I'm not entirely sure I can explain to myself why I've got a wounded Fyren in my childhood bedroom," said Aurienne.
"Everything happened so fast. He said something about a Fyren headed for Swanstone. He thought you were there. And, given that he didn't know what the other Fyren wanted, he killed him. The Fyren— our Fyren, I mean—didn't even realise he'd been stabbed."

Aurienne contemplated the man, drifting somewhere between unconsciousness and true sleep, lying on her bed. His face was ashen, his hair—she had rinsed off the custard-soaked with new sweat. His left hand, in a blood-crusted glove, lay on his chest. Aurienne had left the glove on, lest any visitors spot his tācn.

"This is mad," said Aurienne.
"I know," said Ciele.
"He's mad. He killed one of his own Order."
"And roasted the corpse," added Cíele.
"I find him far more disturbing when he's quiet."
"D'you think it matters to him? Having murdered one of his own?" asked Cíele. "Do you think it's normal for Fyren to kill each other?"
"I don't know how far this strays beyond whatever their code is—if they've even got one."

Ciele fixed Mordaunt with a searching look. Aurienne did the same.
The deofol voiced the question Aurienne hadn't dared ask: "Should we have let him die?"
The answer came more readily than the question had. "I couldn't have."
"I saw," said Ciele. "You saved him before you even knew what he'd done."
"Seeing him so hurt was—it was—"

Aurienne stopped trying to describe it, because words were insufficient. No utterance could capture the fear she'd felt when she had pulled off his blood-soaked cloak and understood how close he was to Hel's final embrace. The touch of his fevered hands had no grammar; there was no orthography to the pain of her heart squeeze.

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Aurienne wished that she were satisfied by this conclusion, by this retreat into the safety of definitions, of classifications and structure.

Mordaunt was a Fyren. Just a Fyren. But was he just? When a man kills one of his own Order for you, nearly gets himself eviscerated for you, shows up half-dead at your door because of you, and collapses into your arms—is he just?

When Cíele had first explained what he had seen, Aurienne had felt things she hadn't a name for—or, more honestly, that she didn't want to name. She did not wish to admire the Fyren, to hold him in regard, or to glow with gratitude at the thought of him. And yet, what massacre might the other Fyren have wrought at Swanstone? How many people had Mordaunt saved?

She knew that Mordaunt had sound, perfectly solipsistic reasons to do what he had done, of course. He was protecting his Means to an End. He hadn't done it for her so much as for himself. And yet, he had done an act of Good.

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She left Tartiflette with instructions to stand guard outside Mordaunt's room: no visitors. The man needed rest.

Before meeting up with Cath at the pub, Aurienne stopped at Swanstone for supplies.
It was a Saturday, and mercifully quiet in the Centre for Seith Research. Aurienne nevertheless summoned Ciele to stand watch as she slipped into the supply room.
Cíele floated at the door, his tail sweeping back and forth in displeaure. "We're stealing. I hope we don't go to prison… I don’t think I’d do well in prison."
"We won't go to prison for a few cannulae and clamps," said Aurienne as she stuffed her satchel with those, along with IV tubing, painkilling infusions, antibiotics, and packets of powdered bhreue. "My parents' first aid kit is, unfortunately, not quite up to par for our needs."
Also to note: she was now a thief as well as a murderer. Mordaunt really was rubbing off on her.

"What about an infusion stand?" asked Cíele.
"Can't exactly stuff one into my bag," said Aurienne. "I’ll work something out at the house—a coatrack or something."
When she had crammed her pilfered stock into her satchel, Aurienne realised that because she kept impeccable inventory at the Centre, she would also have to modify the books to spare herself and other Haelan interrogations from Quincey when the numbers didn't add up.
A bit sweaty about the armpits, Aurienne added forgery to her list of crimes.