Page 139 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
She was backed against the stone wall. She looked, desperately, for a chink in his armour where she might press her tacn, but there was none, only plate after overlapping plate of black metal, stained with Warden blood.
Her only hope would be if he raised his tacn to her—if she could press her palm to his, and she was quicker with her seith, then maybe—
No. He was going for his scythe.
For a moment Aurienne saw double; something blacker than the Dreor moved behind him. Then it was gone.
Aurienne scrambled sideways. The Dreor’s scythe swiped where her head had been. She tripped over the remains of a wightling.
“Haelan Fairhrim,” came Verity’s panicked cry. She whipped a ward towards the Dreor, but it was too late, the Dreor loomed—
Then it exploded.
A figure stepped out from within the remains of the Dreor. A figure cloaked in black, his silver hair soaked in black-red blood.
A wet gloved hand pulled Aurienne to her feet.
It was Mordaunt.
His hands clutched her arms, her shoulders. “You’re all right?”
“Mordaunt,” gasped Aurienne.
“You promised to leave.”
“I couldn’t—I can’t leave my Order behind—whyare you here?”
“You weren’t in London. So I knew you were here.You promised to leave.”
Mordaunt, hard-eyed, turned away. Aurienne watched, speechless, as he stepped from Dreor to Dreor, eviscerating them from the inside out.
The Wardens watched, too. Haven pushed her visor up in disbelief. “Is that a Fyren?”
Mordaunt had learned his lesson from the asylum. He didn’t attempt to stab any of the wightlings or Dreor; he merely walked through them.
“Traitor,” hissed a Dreor. “You walk the Dusken Path.”
“You’re the traitors,” said Mordaunt. “Orders mustn’t attack one another. And really—the Haelan? Not very sporting of you.”
A death’s head tacn was held his way. He shadow-walked into the offending Dreor.
Mordaunt’s moves from Dreor to Dreor weren’t without sacrifice. They learned his pattern and anticipated his next jump. He was grabbed by a black tacn; his right arm withered before he could shadow-walk away.
He had once told Aurienne that walking through unconnected shadows was a heavy drain on seith. This wasn’t sustainable.
He took down at least ten Dreor before his Cost was triggered; one eye went blind, the other filmed over. The Wardens took advantage of the chaos he caused. All who were still standing regrouped across the courtyard, defending the door that led into the fortress and from thence to the sick children. Aurienne, Corinne, and Nym tripped between them, transferring stuttering, final bursts of seith.
Still more Dreor came. There was a finite number of them. There had to be. How was the breach blackened again with them?
Mordaunt became the focus of the enraged Dreor. He was pulled in towards a black tacn. Ataraxia whipped a ward towards the Dreor responsible and tore off the Dreor’s arm. On his other side came a scythe. He shadow-walked away. Because of his Cost, he could no longer see well. He walked into a Dreor, left her half-disembowelled, and was hooked through the chest by a scythe.
Verity dragged him to safety behind the line.
Aurienne ran to him and pressed her hands, so damaged by her Cost they were beyond feeling, to his chest. “Why did you come?”
“I have nothing to lose.”
“But I haveyouto lose—”
