Excerpt from THE EXQUISITE TORMENT OF LOVING YOUR ENEMY by Brigitte Knightley:
Osric
Tall and stark stood the fortress of Swanstone. Its steep battlements, overtopped with moss and seaside centaury, tumbled towards the shore. Beyond the ramparts shivered an agitated sea. White waves crested like knife-cuts before collapsing into black water. The tide was rising.
Outside the tallest window of the tallest tower sat Osric Mordaunt. Bastard by birth, Fyren by profession, scoundrel by inclination.
Inside the tallest window of the tallest tower sat Aurienne Fairhrim. Respected Haelan, preeminent scholar, and champion of moral good.
Once upon a time, Osric had regarded Fairhrim as purely functional, as a Means to an End whose sole merit was that she was the only one who could heal his disease. He had considered her haughty and cold, insufferably high-handed, and-most damning of all-pretty at best.
He had thought he hated her.
He had been wrong. He had been wrong about many things.
Fairhrim asked, “Is something the matter?”
Osric shook his head, but it was a lie. Something was the matter. He was falling for her. Thrilling. Sickening. He held the truth unspoken. He tasted it on his tongue.
The sun rose like a lover, languid and sublime, and ambered the sea. On the windowsill between Osric and Fairhrim sat a row of glass cloches covering medicinal plants and rare orchids. The orchids caught the dawn on petals of apricot and white. The shadows that protected Osric from detection by patrolling Wardens shrank.
Fairhrim-always the sensible one, Fairhrim-said, “Shouldn’t you be going?”
Osric said, “I ought to. I’ll send my deofol to you in a few days to make arrangements for the Færwundor.”
“Thank you, again, for everything.” Fairhrim lifted a cloche and picked a bloom from one of the orchids. “Take this.”
He asked, “Why?”
She said, “You’re an appreciator of beautiful things.”
She gave him the flower. He contrived to brush his fingers against hers as he took it.
Home he floated.
At Rosefell Hall, the Mordaunt family seat, Osric placed the orchid upon the mantelpiece among jewelled music boxes and a collection of Germanic daggers. Bereft of water and heated by the hearth, the flower lasted a few days before fading.
The timeline matched Osric’s feelings exactly. Fresh and vital to begin, by the third night, they had withered into shame. He studied the flower’s remains with a drink in one hand and a whetstone in the other.
A Fyren in love with a Haelan. Absurd. Farcical. Impossible.
He was a fool. He was a cretin. He was the author of his own misery. Gods save him.
Gods save him, please, he added as an afterthought.
The gods were unresponsive. Which was fair; Osric did little to please them as a general rule, and oft took their names in vain, frequently in conjunction with asides about their tits.
A Fyren in love with a Haelan. Lucky he hadn’t told her. What would she have done? Collapsed into shrieks of ungovernable laughter, probably. Or thrown herself out the window.
Osric reached for the desiccated orchid. He caught sight of the tācn on his open palm as he did so-the red hellhound skull that branded him a member of the Fyren Order. The skull grinned at him. Normally he wielded his tācn with pride; it had been earned through decades of sweat and blood, and gave him his power. Tonight, however, the fanged grin mocked him. It reminded him that, upon her palm, Fairhrim bore a white swan-the tācn of the Haelan Order-and that the two could never meet.
Osric was not used to dealing with impossibility. Prior to Aurienne Fairhrim, he hadn’t been confronted by impossibilities in life. Difficulties, yes, but they were always surmountable through the judicious application of money or of a blade at someone’s throat.
This problem was not so readily solved. The blade was intriguing, but Osric was not certain whose neck it would best be applied to, to rectify the issue. His? Hers?
The fire flickered sullenly in the hearth. He threw the orchid into it. So delicate were its petals that they ignited before touching the flames. They fluttered into the chimney’s updraught, unquiet embers amid black ash. Then they vanished, much like Osric’s will to live.
Excerpted from THE EXQUISITE TORMENT OF LOVING YOUR ENEMY by Brigitte Knightley Copyright © 2026 by Brigitte Knightley. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
THE EXQUISITE TORMENT OF LOVING YOUR ENEMY by Brigitte Knightley
Narrator: Heath Long, Thomas Judd
The stakes are high, the love is forbidden, and the slow burn turns steamy in this swoony, witty, and heart-stoppingly romantic sequel to instant New York Times bestseller The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy.
Osric is a member of the Fyren Order, a guild of assassins who gleefully murder for money. Aurienne is a Haelan, a scholar-healer whose Order’s motto is Harm to none. Clear-cut absolutes separate them: good and bad, right and wrong, light and dark . . .
Until they don’t.
When Osric first bribed Aurienne to heal him, he never imagined those lines would begin to blur. But every healing session draws them closer together. He finds himself developing unwanted feelings for Aurienne as her capable hands heal his body—and his heart.
Aurienne’s perfect life has been flung into chaos in the form of a devastatingly handsome assassin. She should be in her research lab, not illicitly healing a Fyren every full moon—nor wrestling an attraction to him that threatens to slip into something else.
Things go superbly sideways when Osric and Aurienne discover more about the deadly Pox deliberately unleashed through the Tīendoms. The plague may be the work of another Order—an Order far nastier than either of them can handle.
As the lines between Osric and Aurienne continue to blur, the balance between peace and war, and love and hate, trembles, shifts, and hinges on a heartbeat.
Romance Fantasy [ Ace, On Sale: July 7, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593819487 / eISBN: 9780593819500 ]
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About Brigitte Knightley
Brigitte’s modus operandi is to write what she wants to read: enemies-to-lovers romances that put the unresolved back in UST. Her work is enjoyed by fans of slow burns, tongue-in-cheek romcoms, and suffering. The spirits of Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome pervade her writing, but Austen is at its soul.
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