The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

This is the second and final book in the Dearly Beloathed duology, set in an alternate Britain called the Tiendoms, an archipelago of ten petty kingdoms where magic, known as seith, is wielded by members of eight professional Orders. Each Order grants its members a tācn, a magical brand seared into the palm. The novel continues the enemies-to-lovers romance between Osric Mordaunt, a Fyren (an elite assassin who walks the Dusken Path, the shadow-based branch of seith), and Aurienne Fairhrim, a Haelan healer-scholar (a pacifist researcher who walks the Bright Path, the healing-focused branch of seith). In the first book, Osric, who has seith rot, a degenerative magical disease, bribed the Haelan Order with twenty million thrymsas, the Tiendoms' currency, to have Aurienne treat him. Their collaboration uncovered that the Platt's Pox epidemic ravaging children was deliberately unleashed. They developed an unlikely bond, shared a kiss, and Aurienne agreed to break into the Færwundor, the Druidic enclave at Glastonbury Tor, for the next healing.

As the novel opens, Osric recognizes he is falling in love with Aurienne but considers the feeling impossible given their opposing Orders. He spirals into depression at his crumbling estate, Rosefell Hall, before dismissing his feelings as infatuation. Aurienne experiences a parallel crisis. They plan the break-in at Rosefell, and since Osric has never entered the Færwundor, he proposes shadow-walking them through its defenses, a Fyren ability to move through shadows. They practice, with Aurienne suffering violent nausea from each passage.

On the Begbéam (June) full moon, they infiltrate the Færwundor. Inside, they find a magnificent oak tree displaying all four seasons at once above a rushing underground river. Hallucinogenic flowers impair their cognition, and the sentient oak warns them they are caught in the Threefold Death, a layered Druidic punishment. Dreor, death-knights of a nearly extinct Order, attack. The oak hides them and directs them underground, where they discover a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility and lines of dead Druids. A dying Druid reveals that the Dreor forced the Druids to produce the Pox. Trapped, Aurienne plunges them into an underground river. Osric shadow-walks them through miles of darkness, his Cost (the physical toll of overusing seith) blinding him, while Aurienne shares her own seith energy to sustain him. A diagnostic afterward reveals a previously rotted node has regenerated, a medically impossible result.

When Aurienne returns to Swanstone, the Haelan Order's fortress headquarters, she learns the Færwundor has been destroyed. She reports to Xanthe, her mentor and one of the three Haelan Heads, and discovers all Dreor research materials across the Tiendoms have been systematically purged. Novel wards placed around Swanstone's waystone, a magical transit stone, capture Tristane, the Fyren warchief, when she arrives to attack. Aurienne blocks Tristane's seith channels with an experimental procedure, and the Orders at the Stánrocc, the stone circle where disputes are resolved, sentence Tristane to death.

At a remote clinic, Aurienne confirms Osric's healing using a diffractor, a device that images seith channels, and reveals Tristane's capture. Osric tries to rescue his warchief, who raised him from poverty. Aurienne activates seith markers she placed in his system, paralyzing him for two hours to ensure Tristane reaches Tintagel Castle, headquarters of the Wardens, the martial Order that guards Swanstone. Osric is furious.

Their healing sessions continue each full moon as their entanglement deepens. At the Hunig (July) moon atop a waterfall, Aurienne discovers reversed demyelination in Osric's seith channels. Celebration gives way to a lakeside kiss and a night that ends in their first sexual encounter. Meanwhile, Aurienne visits Tristane at Tintagel and secretly loosens her seith occlusions in exchange for intelligence: Three sovereigns orchestrated the Pox to raise a Dreor army, since Pox survivors more readily accept the Dreor tācn.

Osric and his colleague Leofric discover Brackenbury Asylum, where dozens of sedated, Pox-infected children are tended by kidnapped Swanstone nurses under the mind control of an Agannor, a member of an Order that possesses others through its tācn. They kill the Agannor, and Osric gives the intelligence to Aurienne freely, an unprecedented act of selflessness. She mobilizes Swanstone to rescue the children. Wightlings, brainless undead foot soldiers created by the Dreor, attack, and Aurienne destroys them alongside Osric. Every address in the Agannor's files proves to be another incubator. Aurienne and Xanthe present their evidence linking the Pox to the three sovereigns at a summit of allied Orders.

Tristane escapes during her transfer for execution, thanks to Aurienne's loosened occlusions. At Rosefell, Lady Windermere, whose lover Brythe was killed by Osric in Book One, drugs Osric and prepares to torture him. Aurienne intercepts her and destroys Lady Windermere's cranial seith channels, killing her instantly. Afterward, Aurienne and Osric spend a day exploring Rosefell's ruined grounds, and Aurienne kisses him first. Osric provides letters proving the Kentish queen's direct involvement in the conspiracy.

On the Thunor (August) moon, a Leyfarer named Ruain flies them by leycraft, a vessel that travels magical ley lines, to the Isle of Stígr for the final healing. Surrounded by surfacing whales and bioluminescent water, Aurienne finds no remaining trace of the rot. Osric is completely healed. They make love in the storm, knowing their collaboration has ended.

The farewell is agonizing. Aurienne calls them a could-have-been and Osric presses his signet ring into her palm. Mrs. Parson, his steward, reveals to Aurienne that Amagris, her former Hedgewitch lover, likely ended their relationship because Hedgewitches, a secretive people separate from the eight Orders, possess extraordinary longevity. This reframes Aurienne's heartbreak and the hagstone necklace she has worn as Amagris's gift and her talisman against loving again.

Osric warns Aurienne that the Dreor are marching on Swanstone. She promises to leave but stays to fight. The Dumnonian queen simultaneously besieges Tintagel, trapping the Haelan leadership and most Wardens. Only eight Wardens defend Swanstone. Wightlings breach the walls, followed by Dreor whose haemokinesis, the ability to control blood, proves devastating. Four Wardens fall. Aurienne rallies the Haelan to fight, breaking their pacifist creed. Osric arrives and destroys Dreor from within their shadows, but his Cost blinds both eyes and a scythe pierces his chest. Aurienne throws herself over his body. Tristane appears, hired with the last of Osric's fortune, and decimates the remaining Dreor. Swanstone's Ingenaut, an engineer-artificer, loads Aurienne's occlusion serum into crossbow projectiles, blocking the Dreor's seith. Reinforcements arrive from Tintagel.

Furious that Aurienne broke her promise, Osric tells her he does not want to see her again and leaves without saying goodbye.

On September's Bédrip moon, Aurienne walks the stone spiral at the Fairy Glen on the Isle of Skye, where the Monafyll Stone, the ancient obelisk whose inscriptions guided the healing protocol, was discovered. She snaps the hagstone necklace from her neck and drops it into a pond, abandoning her vow never to love again. Osric arrives, guided by Ciele, Aurienne's deofol (an animal spirit familiar). They confess their love.

At a ceremony at Swanstone, Aurienne publicly reveals Osric's identity and declares her love before the assembled Orders. In a final epilogue set months later, the Tiendoms are at war. Osric offers Aurienne his signet ring and all of Rosefell Hall. She accepts. Under a blooming plum tree at the spring equinox, beneath the same moon that marked the start of their journey, they come together at last.