Page 36 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
The deofol shrugged. “All light involves burning.”
Aurienne went to bed mulling over this cryptic observation.
Her repose was short-lived. A few hours later, she was awoken by the press of velvety seith at her tacn.
She raised her tacn to let Xanthe’s deofol, Saophal, through. The axolotl shimmered into existence and said, “You’re wanted urgently. Follow me.”
Aurienne lurched into alertness. A thousand reasons why she might be wanted urgently spiralled into increasingly ridiculous suppositions—was it to do with the Færwundor? Was it to do with Mordaunt? Had someone discovered their deal? Was she about to be sacked, have her Haelan wings stripped, be thrown out of Swanstone?
“Chop-chop, dear, bit of pep in the step, please,” said Saophal as Aurienne pulled on her boots.
Aurienne threw a cloak over her sleeping things. “What’s going on?”
“We have need of your skills for a patient,” said Saophal, perching herself upon Aurienne’s shoulder. “You’re being summoned to Ward Thirteen.”
“Ward Thirteen?” repeated Aurienne in confusion as she descended the north tower’s spiral stairs. Ward 13 was a disused ward in Swanstone’s dungeons. In less civilised times, it had served as the Order’s lunatic asylum.
“How are your seith reserves?” asked Saophal.
“All right. I’ve slept a bit. What time is it?”
“Half three,” said Saophal.
“What’s the matter with the patient?” asked Aurienne. “Presentation? Symptoms? Why Ward Thirteen? Is it something contagious? Are we isolating?”
Saophal clung to Aurienne’s shoulder as she ran. “We’re going to need you to disable their seith system.”
“Disable it? What? You mean my micro-occlusions?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s experimental, reserved for specific therapeutic scenarios like seith haemorrhages— Oh, so sorry, Haelan Abercorn—”
“Qu-quite all right—didn’t need my diaphragm anyway,” wheezed Abercorn, whom Aurienne had just run into, elbow first. Around the corner behind him whipped Haelan Prendergast. Both were hastily adjusting housecoats over their sleeping things.
Along with Xanthe, Abercorn and Prendergast made up the Haelan Order’s leadership. Why were they here? Aurienne grew more anxious.
“In there,” said Saophal.
Aurienne pushed open the door of what had once been a cell in Ward 13. Abercorn and Prendergast crowded in after her. Barbarous restraints rusted on the walls, but those were not what held the patient today.
Five Wardens, their gauntlets removed, their tacn blindingly bright, were standing in a circle. Wards, sizzling with power, crisscrossed between the five of them. At the centre of the circle slumped a woman, stripped of vestment save the shimmering wards at her ankles and wrists. Her head hung low; her slick black hair was in disarray. Her face was bloody. One of her ankles looked broken.
Xanthe, in a droopy nightgown, was already there. Uplit by the wards, her wrinkles looked especially deep. She waved Aurienne, Abercorn, and Prendergast in.
“What’s happened?” asked Abercorn.
“Who is this?” asked Prendergast.
Verity, the leader of the Wardens who rotated through Swanstone, reached into the wards. She pulled the prisoner’s limp hand out and unfurled her left palm.
Upon it grinned a hellhound’s skull.
Gasps filled the room.
“A Fyren, at Swanstone?” asked Prendergast.
“This isn’t just any Fyren,” said Verity. “This is the Fyren Order’s warchief. Tristane Épervier.”
