Chapter 11 Things That Could Never Be
Things That Could Never Be
Aurienne
The droplets on Aurienne’s lashes softened the world. All was tremulous joy; all was a celestial shimmer. Mordaunt, his hair wet, his shirt soaked through, was surrounded by a twinkling halo.
Explanation burst from Aurienne. “It looks like we’ve reversed the demyelination affecting your cervical seith channels.
I’m fairly confident—only, of course, it’s not possible to do so—but the evidence—though, obviously, we need to confirm with a diffractor—but there is no known cure for demyelination.
In seith channels or elsewhere. Do you realise what this means?
This is extraordinary. There will be implications not only in our treatment of seith degeneration but for other demyelinating disorders—”
Mordaunt’s eyes glazed over. Aurienne laughed. “Sorry. Something we’re doing is working—that’s the important bit.”
The good news rendered Mordaunt unusually silent.
He looked at her, soft-eyed. His hands went down her shoulders, slid along her wet forearms, and grasped her hands.
Then, as though that wasn’t enough, he pulled her into a tight hug—and, again, as though that still wasn’t enough, he lifted her against him.
The squeeze cracked the dam of things Aurienne kept walled in; they surged and frothed joyously.
He spun her in a perfect circle under the round moon. She knew happiness then, and it was the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. She clung to him; cheek pressed cheek, heart pressed heart, and the world spun by in ribbons of purpling sky.
They stilled. In a flash of white, a smile broke across his face.
And Aurienne, breathless with wonder, sick with despair, felt the sunsetting of her hate.
He set her back down. He did not let her go. Time was suspended; a breath held, a heartbeat skipped. Neither of them moved.
“It’s not we,” said Mordaunt, his voice husky at the edges. “It’s you. It’s all you.”
“There would be none of this if you weren’t here,” said Aurienne.
“I wouldn’t be here much longer if it wasn’t for you.”
“I’ll let you have the last word tonight.”
Mordaunt’s grin was bright in the growing darkness. “Shall we get out of here?”
“Oh, I am not looking forward to that descent—”
“Fairhrim?”
“What?”
“Don’t look down.”
He swept her into his arms, held her like a lover, and shadow-walked the two of them down the treacherous muddy track and back into the glade. He was quick about it, and strangely gentle; Aurienne felt floaty and lightheaded rather than sick.
At the viewing platform they discovered that their things were missing—her hat, his cane, their gloves.
These things were unimportant. Mordaunt was still smiling; that was what was important, and the leafy boughs splaying dark lace against the sky, and the nightingale’s silver song wreathing the branches.
Once again, the whole world was singing.
Mordaunt whisked them from shadow to shadow until they were out of the trees and back at the lakefront promenade. Aurienne raised objections about overusing his seith, which he ignored.
He set Aurienne on her feet at the promenade.
The hotel, with its doors and windows flung open into the night, was a brilliant jewel in the distance.
The strains of a waltz reached their ears.
Guests in gowns and full evening dress moved across the terrace.
There were bursts of laughter and talk, distant and surreal in light of what had just happened at the top of the falls.
Mordaunt stepped in front of Aurienne, seized her hand, and pressed her tācn to his heart. “You’re brilliant. Merely saying thank you seems—insufficient.”
His chest was warm through his shirt. He was jubilant, almost boyish in his joy. Aurienne, too, was happy—stunningly, intoxicatingly, headily happy.
“We need a diffractor to confirm,” she said.
“We need to celebrate,” said Mordaunt.
The waltz rang from the terrace with a slow musical purpose.
“Dance with me,” said Mordaunt.
He offered her his hand. She, bemused, took it.
He led her along the promenade to the distant strains of music. They danced in the starlit night in long asymmetrical windings, making their way along the shore towards the hotel. Night birds wheeled and dipped and chased invisible things in arcs overhead.
No gloves separated their hands. There was a startling intimacy to this prolonged touch of palm on palm, his roughened by the hilts of knives and hers by her instruments.
His signet ring pressed against the side of her hand.
And their tācn touching thus—the hellhound and the Aer, in deliberate contact—a thing that hadn’t happened once in the centuries upon centuries of their Orders’ existence—truly, this was a night for marvels.
There was sweetness in knowing that they wouldn’t go their separate ways after this, that they would spend more hours together, in the same room, and talk, and tease, and linger.
When was the last time Aurienne had felt this?
She did not think there had ever been such a moment—there were always other things to do, reasons to rush, deadlines, patients, obligations more important.
Tonight was different. Tonight, she wanted to prolong.
They arrived at the dock where Mordaunt had threatened to push Aurienne into the water. He gave her a sidelong look, then seized her around the waist as though about to throw her in.
Aurienne gasped and snatched fistfuls of his shirt.
“We’re both filthy,” said Mordaunt. “We need a bath.”
“Don’t—you—dare—”
Full of laughter, he put her down upon the edge of the dock. She still held his collar. He held her hips. They caught their breath. Aurienne’s hands slid until they rested, hooked together, at the nape of his neck. Mordaunt glanced at her mouth.
And frankly, what was this? Feeling this alive, with her arms around him, and cheeks that hurt from smiling?
It was illogical, beautiful, soul stirring, real.
Aurienne felt herself on the cusp of something beyond right or wrong, not good or evil, but a truth.
There was a peculiar gravity in the crossing of breaths; it drew her and Mordaunt towards each other in little pulls. They locked eyes. His were intent and searching, though the question remained unspoken. One of her curls touched his cheek; he closed his eyes as though she had caressed him.
She felt a lovely ache to the left of her breastbone. She didn’t wish to examine it. It would be dissecting a songbird to see where the song came from. She let it be.
Their laughing elation turned to something deeper. Aurienne felt as though a sleeping part of her soul had awakened; she felt that lightning was about to strike.
Mordaunt’s fingertips made an involuntary movement at the small of her back. “Fairhrim, I—”
He bit off the end of the sentence and looked away. Aurienne’s heart taunted her with its beat. She did not control it; it throbbed as it would.
They teetered at the edge of the water. The fall was a half step away. Everything was precarious—the moment, the threshold, the balance. They were split. Irresolute. Harrowed. They wanted. They shouldn’t. It was madness. It was the purest sanity. It would be an end. It could be a beginning.
Aurienne’s fingers found the stubble-rough skin at the line of his jaw. He cupped her face in his hands. They looked at each other, star-crossed, moon-mad, for a heartbeat, and for a heartbeat they were about to—they were about to—
With desperate gentleness, his mouth found hers.
The place where their lips touched was the bright point upon which the rest of the world spun.
Aurienne pushed her fingers into his hair and kissed him back.
She sought the dip of his scar with her lips.
Every press of her mouth against his told him, We shouldn’t, but I want to, but we shouldn’t; and his answering push was, I know, I know.
They inhaled pleasure and exhaled misery.
Yearning hands slid down Aurienne’s back, splayed against her, held her hard.
Hers, trembling slightly, twisted into his collar.
They kissed long in the lingering twilight, in the place between joy and suffering and sanity and madness. Aurienne made heart memories of the moon in his hair and the burnt sugar on his tongue and the night birds chasing summer.
He crowded her along the edge of the lake. The wind blew her dress against her from behind; her skirts brushed at his calves.
She hooked her fingers into the open front of his shirt. “If I fall, you’re coming with me.”
“I think”— Mordaunt’s voice was a husky whisper—“it’s already too late.”
She could not say afterwards whose fault it was that they toppled into the lake—who had slipped, who had pulled, who had pushed.
Their fall was as slow and lingering as the twilight. He laughed into her neck, they clung together, the water closed over their heads.
Drowning was a thrill.
The Hunig moon shone over a lake that was placid, save for ripples widening around two wet, gasping heads.
“You all right?” asked Mordaunt.
“L-lost a shoe,” gasped Aurienne.
“You owe me a new pocket watch,” sputtered Mordaunt.
They clambered out of the water, gasping with cold and laughter, carrying a ruined watch and a single shoe, respectively. They stumbled back to the hotel freely blaming each other for the catastrophe.
They were stared at as they crossed the lawn. Aurienne did not care. None of these people knew that something impossible was happening. An unhealable disease was being healed.
And—and whatever had just happened at the edge of the lake.