Page 86 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
Aurienne’s rage fell upon her, cold, dispassionate.
No: neither was defenceless. She was here.
The wightlings identified Mordaunt as the greater threat. They lurched towards him.
Their mistake.
Tonight, Aurienne did not care aboutHarm to none.
She walked into the group of wightlings with her tacn alight. She pressed it to every bit of exposed flesh she could reach and blew out their synovial joints. The floor was splattered with yellowy fluid and black blood. Wightlings fell to their obliterated knees.
A deformed death’s head tacn swung towards her. It met Mordaunt’s blaecblade instead.
“Get out of here,” he said. “You’re worth too much to deal with these ambulatory corpses, you lunatic—”
Aurienne stepped around him to blow out another wightling’s cervical spine. “I’m going to protect these children.”
“Are you mad?” asked Mordaunt as the wightling’s head rolled past his feet. “You’re a Haelan. You don’t know how to fight. And you can’t kill members of another Order.”
“Can’t kill what’s already dead.”
“Hel’s blood,” said Mordaunt, and he lopped off an arm reaching for Aurienne’s throat.
He came into the fray with her. He had no seith, but he had his blaecblade, and he made excellent use of it. There was a strange synergy to their movements—to the way they fought back-to-back, to both of them mutilating in their own ways, toHarm to all.
The six wightlings were reduced to squirming on the floor. The last one fell to its hands and knees in front of Aurienne. She pressed her tacn to its head and blew out its atlantoaxial joint. It collapsed into a quivering pile.
She and Mordaunt stood in silence, breathing hard.
Mordaunt looked at her, flabbergasted. “How did you do that?”
“Blew out their joints. Easy to manipulate synovial fluid with seith,” panted Aurienne. “The consistency is perfect. Your arm—quickly. The embolus. I told you your system was still fragile—you’re not healed yet—you must be careful.”
Mordaunt held his left arm out. Aurienne pressed her tacn to his skin. She found her concentration lapsing. Her heart raced. Somewhere in this building, there was a Dreor, and they had just wrecked that Dreor’s personal retinue of wightlings.
She found the embolus—a smaller one than last time, which was promising—and, with a gentle push of her seith, dissolved it.
“Cleared,” she said.
“Yes,” said Mordaunt as his tacn flamed back into life.
“Hello,” came a voice at the door.
It was the Dreor.
He loomed, as tall as one of the Wardens, and as broad. His helmet, adorned with twisting horns, made him faceless; there were only slits for eyes. Black plate armour creaked as he took in the mess of wightlings on the floor.
“What have you done with my little friends?” asked the Dreor.
He slid the palm of his gauntlet open on its hinge. His tacn gleamed black. A tingling heaviness took over Aurienne’s limbs. She, with horror, felt her own hands make their way to her throat and start to squeeze, and saw Mordaunt do the same. The haemokinesis—he was controlling them through their own blood.
Blue seith shimmered behind the Dreor, crept up his greaves, and pulled him to his knees.
A platinum-white spear emerged from his neck.
The heaviness in Aurienne’s limbs released.
Verity and Haven stepped into the dormitory, their Warden tacn alight. Each had a ward on the Dreor’s legs. With a brusque tug, they split him in half.
