49 pages • 1-hour read
The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy
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Chapters 17-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of violence, torture, and suicide.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Mr. Hungwell: Osric”
Osric visits the Harmacy to sell the stolen goods he took from Wellesley. Brythe comes by, and when Osric asks whether he will join in on the Carnegie job, Brythe cryptically declines, citing top-secret business in Danelaw. When Brythe leaves, Sacramore comments that Tristane must have accepted the job whose client wants to directly attack another Order. Because the Haelan Order is the only Order in Danelaw, Osric deduces Brythe’s plan and follows the other assassin, intending to stop him. He tries to contact Aurienne through his deofol, but she ignores him. With no other choice, Osric sets out to kill Brythe.
At the waystone, he ambushes and tortures Brythe, demanding to know who gave Tristane the job. Instead of answering, Brythe impales himself on Osric’s blade, taking his own life. Osric disposes of Brythe’s body in a nearby forge. When Aurienne’s deofol finally contacts him, Osric explains how and why he killed Brythe, and only at that moment does he finally notice that Brythe managed to stab him in the side with a deadly blaecblade. After some hesitation, Aurienne’s deofol directs Osric to Aurienne’s family home.
Once there, Osric introduces himself to her parents as Osric Hungwell, claiming to be Aurienne’s friend and a metallurgy expert. When Aurienne sees him, she is shocked and furious, as her deofol has not had the time to inform her of the situation. Her family is hosting a party, and although Aurienne and Osric try to steal a moment alone, they are repeatedly waylaid by partygoers. Eventually, they manage to isolate themselves, and Osric explains what occurred with Brythe and reveals his injury. He is slowly becoming nonsensical from the blood loss, and just as Aurienne brings him to her room, he collapses. When he temporarily regains consciousness, Aurienne’s worry comes through as she chastises him for nearly dying. As he slips again into unconsciousness, Osric believes that Aurienne will save him.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Aurienne the Criminal: Aurienne”
After two hours, Aurienne manages to stabilize Osric. As she and her deofol consider whether it would have been better to let Osric die, Aurienne cannot deny the deep-seated fear she felt upon seeing him injured. She now knows Osric is more important to her than she wishes him to be. Even so, she ignores her feelings and insists to her deofol there cannot be anything more between her and Osric.
Aurienne goes to Swanstone to steal supplies, and although Quincy nearly catches her, she manages to lie her way out of the situation. She then goes to a pub near Swanstone to meet her friend Cath, who is a surgery expert. She buys Cath’s silence with her favorite wine, then asks for her advice on Osric’s wound without revealing his identity. Cath is suspicious because the situation reminds her of Aurienne’s previous relationship with the Hedgewitch Amagris, but she nonetheless agrees to keep the situation a secret. Aurienne promises not to repeat her past relationship history. When Cath’s fiancée, Élodie, arrives, they all celebrate her discovery of a vaccine candidate. Later, Aurienne returns to Osric’s side to find that he is oddly affectionate and still nonsensical. He makes fun of the drawing she did of his wound for Cath, then he falls asleep again. Privately, Aurienne acknowledges that she and Osric are well-suited to each other, and she laments the fact that he is a Fyren. While taking her bath, she gives herself an orgasm to the thought of him, then vows never to think of him that way again.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Sharing Your Tragic Backstory with Your Hot Enemy: Osric”
After two days, Osric wakes to find Aurienne by his side. He laughs at the idea that Aurienne stole equipment for him, then blurts out his thanks for her help. In return, she thanks him for protecting her Order from Brythe. Osric attempts to explain away his actions as self-interest, and they both pretend to believe it. Then they discuss the fact that if Brythe had succeeded, he would have destabilized the Peace Accords. They most likely have about a week before Tristane acts.
Aurienne explains that she has hidden Osric’s effects to keep his identity a secret. She asks about the gold threads in the hilt of his Fyren blade, and Osric explains that they tally the number of his kills and indicate his rank in the Fyren Order. Over the next few days, Osric convalesces in Aurienne’s parents’ home under the guise of recovering from a fictional syndrome. He spends time with her parents, who come to appreciate him and think that he is decent; their good opinion disturbs Osric. He learns that Aurienne once had the opportunity to live a comfortable life but chose instead to pursue healing.
One night, as she sleeps on the couch by his bed, Osric masturbates to the sight of her. Even he is perturbed by the indecency of this action, but he is unable to chase away his fantasies. On the night of her parents’ 40th anniversary party, Osric watches her from the balcony and tries to resist his desire for her. When she finds him on the balcony, they speak of her dance partner, Aedan, who is still in love with her. Aurienne makes a reference to a past love, and Osric proposes to trade personal information.
Aurienne asks him why he killed his father, and Osric states that every year, when his mother would implore his father to recognize Osric as his son on his birthday, the man would physically abuse them both. Osric and his mother lived in abject poverty, and Mrs. Parson snuck them food. When he was 14, he had already apprenticed to Tristane, and he killed his father when the man next attempted to abuse him. However he was too late to keep his father from killing his mother. He then explains that he terrorized his father’s legal man into legitimizing his birth so that he could inherit his father’s assets. In return, Osric asks what happened between Aurienne and Aedan. She explains that he was too perfect and did not have any faults to love. Osric deliberately teases her, distracting her. He hopes to steal a dance from her.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Secret Calligraphies of Rain: Aurienne”
Aurienne finds herself appreciating Osric’s complex character despite his moral failings. After amusing Aurienne by making fun of Aedan’s appearance, Osric asks her to dance with him in order to convince her ex-lover that she has moved on. She initially hesitates but soon accepts. As they dance together, Aurienne asks him medically related, romance-killing questions, and they banter over Osric’s thieving habits. They discuss how Aurienne plans to announce the end of their fake relationship, and Osric asks whether things would be different between them if he belonged to a different Order. Aurienne refuses to entertain the thought.
Yet even as it begins to rain, they continue to dance. As their attraction blooms, their tācns touch—an intimate act in this society. As a plausible reason to kiss Aurienne, Osric offers to put the “poor bastard” out of his misery. Convincing herself that he is referring Aedan, she accepts. They part ways, shaken by the new closeness between them.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Something Becoming: Osric”
Osric was initially surprised that Aurienne accepted his request for a dance, but he now regrets the entire affair, as the “poor bastard” he’d referred to was himself. He now holds the damning knowledge of what it feels like to kiss her. Days later, Osric returns to the Fyren headquarters. As Tristane is tortures a man, she informs Osric that Brythe has gone missing. Osric acts surprised and dismissive. However, when Lady Windermere arrives, murderous and paranoid over her missing lover, Tristane orders her to lead a search party.
When Lady Windermere leaves, Osric tentatively asks about the details of Brythe’s job. He offers to take it on, but Tristane refuses, declaring that she will complete the job herself. Osric leaves and attempts to contact Aurienne through his deofol, but when she remains unreachable, he scales the walls of Swanstone despite the Wardens’ new wards and finds her sleeping in her bedroom. When she wakes up, he tells her about his encounter with Tristane and instructs her to add more security measures to Swanstone. For once, they both feel as if they are truly cooperating. She informs him that the substance in Wellesley’s whiskey bottle was indeed preserving the Pox. Osric deduces that the only benefit of creating a sickness that affects children is to breed war. Together, they realize that the sick children are ideal candidates for becoming Dreors. She thanks Osric earnestly for his help in protecting her Order, though Osric insists that his efforts were all for her. She asks if he is available next Friday to break into Druid territory, admitting that she trusts him now. They talk for hours in the moonlight, and Osric has the terrible realization that he loves her and that she unknowingly owns his heart.
Chapters 17-21 Analysis
In these final chapters, Knightley continues to blur the lines between her third-person narration and the main characters’ perspectives, alternately revealing Osric or Aurienne’s private thoughts from chapter to chapter in order to deepen the tension of their turbulent dynamics. This strategic approach to the narration adds dramatic irony to the moment in which the two protagonists dance together; by invoking the expression “poor bastard” in different contexts throughout this scene, Knightley conveys a wealth of conflicting ideas. Osric first uses the expression to amuse Aurienne when he mocks Aedan, saying, “Poor bastard […]. That suit looks exactly like someone vomited on it” (321). As a descriptor, the expression is now textually attached to Aedan by default. When Osric later uses the expression again in his request to kiss Aurienne, he says, “Let’s put the poor bastard out of his misery” (327). Although he is ostensibly referring to Aedan, the context creates a distinct element of ambiguity, hinting that he may in fact be referring to himself and his wistfully romantic feelings.
From Aurienne’s limited perspective, Osric is simply playing along with the masquerade of their fake relationship, and she tells herself, “A lie—that’s what was between them now” (327). Yet even she can see that in this moment, “[h]is eyes flashed ardent, wanting” (327). Thus, although Aurienne persists in believing that the two of them are creating a falsely amorous spectacle merely to vex her former lover, the physical details of the scene suggest that Osric holds far deeper feelings for his dance partner. Only when the narrative shifts to reporting Osric’s inner world do the assassin’s thoughts explicitly confirm the reality of the amorous undercurrents between him and Aurienne. As he admits, “When he had asked her to put the poor bastard out of his misery, he hadn’t been referring to Perfect Aedan. He had been talking about himself” (329). Through this alternation of limited perspectives, Knightley heightens the emotional stakes of an otherwise playful scene, capturing the longing ache that Osric feels for Aurienne.
Due to the structural demands of a duology, Knightley ends the narrative precisely when all of the loose threads are at their most uncertain, postponing the requisite happily-ever-after conclusion until the duology’s final installment. Thus, this novel ends at a point that would be considered the middle of a typical romance novel: the crisis in which the protagonists acknowledge their love but cannot yet act on their desires. As Osric morosely realizes, “He and she sat in the moonlight as lover and beloved. He hadn’t paid attention. He had been stupid—gods, so stupid. He no longer owned his heart. The thief was unconscious of her crime” (342). With the bitter longing in this passage, Osric comes to grips with his long-denied feelings and labors under the false belief that Aurienne will never reciprocate them.
Yet despite the author’s decision to leave the protagonists in limbo, the novel’s last line—“Far above, the moon hung like a promise” (342)—implies that the enemies-to-lovers trope will eventually be brought to a logical conclusion. Likewise, by referring to Aurienne as a “thief” of his heart, Osric raises the possibility of a rapprochement between the characters. The phrase “common thief” is first used in Chapter 16 when Aurienne delivers a mocking insult of Osric’s pilfering in Wellesley Keep. However, as their relationship continues, the expression gains a fonder connotation because it is infused with their shared history. (For example, Osric delights in turning the phrase back upon Aurienne when she steals medical equipment to treat him secretly.) Thus, his thoughts of her in the conclusion, when she becomes “the thief” of his heart, recalls this affectionate history. Ironically, because Aurienne has successfully and unknowingly stolen his most vulnerable possession, he implicitly concedes that she has bested him in their intellectual sparring contests, proving herself his equal. Although he has always secretly admired her, he now truly loves her as she is, despite the forbidden nature of their relationship.
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