Page 138 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
“Yes,” said Aurienne. “No choice. They’re decimating the Wardens, and we’ll be next, and then, those kids—”
Felicette stared at her.
“How do we get it into the Dreor without getting close?” asked Aurienne. “Injections? What sort? Intravenous? Intramuscular? Rapid systemic action is what we want. But how do we launch them from a distance? They’ve got armour covering every inch of them.” Aurienne squeezed Felicette’s shoulders. “Answer me.”
Felicette’s gaze had gone distant. She was calculating.
Then she said, “Let me try something,” and ran off.
Aurienne descended back into the courtyard to find the Warden called Echo down, being worked on by five Haelan. Ataraxia had been put back on her feet by Cath and her team and launched back into the fray.
The remaining Wardens fought the Dreor with the ferocity of the creature outnumbered. By Aurienne’s count, they had taken down twenty Dreor, and lost three Wardens. But the Wardens were tiring. Blood ran down platinum-blue armour. Their spears were coming up slower to parry the scythes; their reactions were delayed. Their light shields flickered. Every dodge of the black tacn happened at the last moment.
Tenet was caught in a scythe and subjected to the withering touch. When Aurienne next saw her, she stared at the sky with sightless eyes.
Verity fell to her knees and did not rise. Beorgan dragged her towards the waiting Haelan. Five white-glowing tacn flew to heal herwounds. Aurienne ripped off Verity’s gorget and pressed her tacn to her neck.
This was her fourth seith transfer into Verity. For the first time, there was fear in Verity’s eyes.
“How can we withstand so many?” asked Aurienne.
“There is nocan. It’smust.” Her wounds healed and her seith replenished, Verity slid her helm closed and regained her feet. Her armour was usually effortlessly carried; now it looked heavy.
This fourth seith transfer into Verity awoke Aurienne’s Cost. “Damn it.”
None of the Haelan fared better. Corinne and Nym were also depleting their seith with all of these transfers; Corinne’s joints were visibly beginning to seize, and a trickle of blood ran from Nym’s mouth.
A whizzing sound came from atop the battlements. Here and there amid the advancing Dreor, a gleaming projectile thrust itself into an eye.
The Dreor clawed at their eyes and pulled out quarrels glistening strangely in the dark. They were elongated glass vials.
“Felicette,” breathed Aurienne.
The Ingenaut had made the seith occlusion serum into projectile injectables. She had loaded them into a crossbow. Brilliant.
When the hit Dreor raised their tacn towards the Wardens, no seith came.
The surviving Wardens did not wait to discover why this was. They went for retribution. They slammed their tacn into the ground; wards blitzed out and mutilated the Dreor. A dozen were thus dispatched. Aurienne knew the exact amount, because she and Felicette had only synthesized twelve doses of the serum. Fria, she wished she had made twenty more—fifty more—
Hraith and Beorgan fell back to Aurienne for seith transfers. She pushed her tacn to bloody, sweaty skin.
“How much more seith have you got, Haelan?” asked Hraith, eyeing Aurienne’s Cost-damaged hands and wrists with concern.
“I’ll give until I have no more to give,” said Aurienne.
The brothers rushed back towards the Warden line.
“Please be careful,” called Aurienne.
“Haven is down,” gasped Cath, whose own Cost was gravely triggered. Hers was hair loss. Now even her follicles bled—blood beaded at her scalp, her lash line, her arms. Aurienne had never seen it this bad.
Echo used a ward to push Haven towards Cath. Cath and three of her team from Trauma, their tacn illuminated, ran to her.
Aurienne couldn’t help with Haven’s healing; her Cost was already upon her, and she must preserve what seith she had left to feed the Wardens’ depleted systems. At one point, there would be no seith left to heal them, and none left to transfer into them—and then what?
One of the Dreor burst through the Warden line.
“Hello, little Haelan,” he said, looming over Aurienne.
