Page 154 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
There, between rocks: an absence of stars.
A figure stood like the essence of night, draped in a cloak of fine-cut shadows.
Osric was here.
An answer to her heart-wish.
Aurienne hadn’t seen him since their talk at his bedside. Sensations jerked through her—a violent pang at the heart, the dark ache of guilt, regret, fear, and then happiness, tolling through her like a bell, drowning it all out.
He took a step towards her.
“You,” breathed Aurienne.
He faltered. “If you don’t wish me to be here, I understand. I’ll leave at once.”
That was where it could have ended. But she wouldn’t let him go. That was the impossible thing.
“Stay,” said Aurienne. “How did you know to come here?”
“A friend.” Osric studied her from within the depths of his hood. In a voice grave with concern, he asked, “Are you all right?”
After what she’d done to him, she expected coldness or mockery. She hadn’t expected concern. “I’m fine.”
“You were here for a healing,” said Osric.
“Yes.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
“I daren’t make a list,” said Aurienne.
Osric was quiet for a moment before answering, “I doubt it’s longer than mine.”
He watched Aurienne as she stepped through wet grass towards him, as though he didn’t believe that she was all right and wanted to assess her, check her gait, scrutinise her for signs of some infirmity.
There was none to find. Shewasall right. She had cured a most stubborn ailment. Her heart beat in her chest, delicate and tender and new. She wanted to reach for Osric’s hands, but she had pushed those hands away cruelly before, and so she dared not. Atonement must come first.
“How are your eyes?” she asked.
“Healed.”
“Show me.”
Osric drew back his hood. He was perfectly healed. Silver eyes caught the moon’s liquid gold. And yet there was tragedy in them.
“You gave the ring back,” he said.
Aurienne saw that atonement must come now.
The fog rose amid the great stones heaped around them, lifting thedim earth to the sky. Ever and again, a breeze whispered between them. Autumn summoned her nighttime scents from the earth.
Osric stood, dark and blurred, like the shape of her regret; like an unpromised hereafter, possibly lost.
“Harm to nonehas been hammered into me all of my life,” said Aurienne. “Since meeting you, I’ve learned to be less rigid about it. Most of the instances of harm were justified by circumstance and necessity. So I tell myself, anyway. But one wasn’t.”
She clasped her hands together instead of reaching for his. “In wanting to protect myself from pain, I harmed you, badly. I regret it. And even after I pushed you away, that night at the waystone, you came back. You gave your seith, your fortune, your eyes, and almost your life, to save me. You gave too much. I watched the lifeblood pour out of you. I thought it was the end of you. I—” Aurienne took a breath; the hurt of the memory was still acute. “I showed you only selfishness, and you gave almost unto death. I did wrong. I don’t expect your forgiveness. I only want you to know how much I’m sorry.”
Osric’s hair was moonlight across his brow. At length he said, “I would do it all again.”
