by A J Hackwith
“Hero!” The boat had drifted down the flooded hallway with the momentum. Hero stood at the side staring inscrutably at her. Behind him, Rami had risen, but before he could reach out, Hero dove into the water without a sound. He broke the surface again a second later, water coursing off his hair and high cheekbones like some gods-damn Byronic antihero. Claire gulped another mouthful of water in surprise.
The water wasn’t deep, but it was deep enough that Claire had to tread to keep her head comfortably above water. Hero, with his height, had no such encumbrance. He began to forge through the water with a dark glint in his eye.
“Now, you have every right to be upset—” Claire tried to backpedal but it turned into a flailing splash.
“You lied to me.” Hero’s shirt was soaked through and plastered to his pale skin. A bit of froth clung to his absolutely ruined velvet jacket but he didn’t appear to care. “You let me think you would hurt us.”
Claire heard a muted splash that she assumed was Rami abandoning the boat to save her. She grimaced and lost her footing again. “It’s unforgivable, I admit it. We couldn’t risk—”
“You . . .” Hero reached her, clutching her upper arm too tight, which at least kept Claire from drowning. But he didn’t stop there. He took another step and water drenched her neck again as Claire’s shoulders hit the hallway wall. She could feel the heat radiating off him. “You were never going to leave Rami behind.”
“. . . No,” Claire admitted in a bewildered voice. She was no longer flailing in the water, but Hero still had his grip on her arm, bracketing her in against the wall. She couldn’t read Hero’s intense expression at all, but at least she felt he was no longer at risk of drowning her. The chill of the water pricked goose bumps up her spine. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“A tactical decision,” Hero muttered. He paused, water sloshing between their chests where she was caged in against the wall. “Go ahead. Call yourself a monster again.”
“I’m—” Claire hesitated, regret sinking like a stone in her stomach again. “It was necessary. I am a monster. I understand if you don’t—”
The air between them grew smaller as Hero leaned down, nose almost brushing hers. His eyes were furiously dark and green, but this close Claire could see tiny streaks of violet, which was distracting. “I. Don’t. Care.” He bit out the words. And Oh, he’s so mad that he’s going to bite me. Claire just had the time for the utterly ridiculous thought to flit through her head before Hero caught her lips.
The force of the kiss pressed Claire against the cold stone of the wall. The chill sank into her skin and muddled with the heat flooding up her face, coals at her lips, arms, collarbone, anywhere Hero touched. She anchored herself by the velvet lapels of Hero’s coat, and when Hero finally eased back she was horrified to hear herself gasp for air a dumb moment.
“I don’t care,” Hero repeated at a fair growl. “I don’t care if you’re a monster or not. If you’re a monster, then you are our monster. We can be monsters together.”
Claire opened her mouth again, but this time, Hero drowned her. He kissed her again, and his foot slipped and they slid underwater. This would have normally been much more alarming to Claire if Hero were not currently doing the most distracting cleverness with his tongue.
A new set of hands gripped her waist and dragged them back to the surface just as she was running out of air. Hero surfaced with an indignant kick, but Rami didn’t let go of either of them. “God, I thought you were drowning!”
“No, you glorious idiot. We were kissing.” Hero’s laugh was a little drunken and he grinned at him through the wet hair that hung in his face. Hero turned just enough—without letting go of Claire—to place a very waterlogged kiss on the corner of Rami’s startled frown. “I thought I’d taught you the difference.”
The heady rush of heat was slowly draining from Claire’s cheeks, just enough for reason to get a foothold. She gaped at Hero, “Why—why would you—”
Hero sighed and allowed his weight to rest on Rami’s arm, dragging Claire back with him. “Why would I kiss you?”
“We agreed, I . . . not that I didn’t enjoy it, mind.” Claire did a mental stumble to find that positively true. She hadn’t thought she could feel that kind of heat again as a dead woman. “But we agreed it wasn’t what we should do—what we should be, you and me. There’s too much history. There’s too much—I’m an author, and you’re—”
“I am a former character from a story,” Hero corrected archly. “Yet I appear to have lost my book along the way. As you have lost yours. Well—” Hero made a face. “Long-lost Beatrice doesn’t count. Exes never do.”
“But—”
“So you are not a book,” Rami said with a somber tone. He glanced shyly at Claire. “And you are not an author, or an acting librarian. It would seem the question is, What do you want to be?”
“No, not you. Us,” Hero said almost to himself. “What do you want us to be?”
“I . . .” Claire swallowed her impulse for a quick response and considered. Things usually went the way Claire planned, but then, things never did when it involved Ramiel and Hero. It was a strange alchemy, the family she had found. It was nothing so straightforward as a sexual attraction, and nothing as well trod as a romantic entanglement. No, the lines between them had always been more thorny than that. Hero was a book, she had been an author, and both of them had unfortunate pasts with that power dynamic. That had been enough reason to maintain her distance. And then the magnetic pull between Ramiel and Hero had convinced her it was for the best. She hadn’t counted on being pulled into their orbit, but it felt natural, like all gravity did. And Claire was so tired of struggling against gravity.
They will not thank you, a pitying voice said in her head.
No, Claire thought, but they will love me.
“I . . .” Claire tried again. It was a struggle for every syllable, but not because of the water or the cold. She felt . . . she felt warm. “I want this,” she admitted. “Even if I’m . . . I’m not sure I’m meant to have it.”
Hero chucked her chin. “That’s what makes it fun to take. Steal it. Take it, Claire. Whatever your terms, whatever you want, take a little bit of happiness.”
Claire was already shaking her head. “Now is not the time—”
“Of course it is. You beat Hell itself! Who does that?”
“You deserve happiness, Claire.” It was a simple comment, nothing more. Said as simply as everything Rami did. He was the only one of them moderately dry above the shoulders, and he kept them afloat, their anchor when Claire and Hero, in their bladed natures, might lose sight of shore. A small furrow appeared in his brow as he studied her and saw—no, Claire amended, he couldn’t suspect. “You deserve happiness. Even for just right now.”
Claire didn’t have an answer for that.
“What we deserve,” Hero announced, breaking the pause, “is to get out of this freezing water.”
“You’re one to complain,” Claire grumbled, even while accepting Hero’s hand to drift toward the boat. Rami had thankfully made sure they didn’t lose it down current. At least one of them had been thinking. “You pushed me in.”
37
RAMI
Never trust a demon with the details. Hell is full of lawyers, accountants, and other lesser thieves.
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1988 CE
Scrawled later, in the margins:
Really, Gregor? A lawyer joke? I expected better from you.
Librarian Claire Hadley, 1991 CE
The hull of the boat scraped against the floorboards before they reached the stacks. The water was receding, if slowly. Claire trudged on ahead of them, the ankle-deep water dragging at the fabric of her trousers. Rami thought of offering to carry her, but if the waters had not harmed her with a full plunge, he supposed a few more puddles wouldn’t hurt.
It was
a relief to be back in his own skin. Rami had recoiled when Claire explained her plan to fool Hell, but the experience had been so much worse than he could imagine. It wasn’t being in the demon’s skin. It wasn’t even the way Hell had welcomed him as one of their own—a cruel kind of twist, considering how many countless years he’d spent looking for just such a realm to call him. No, the worst of all of it, the knife that twisted in his stomach through all of it, was a single glance. The wild disgust in Hero’s first glance almost broke Rami’s will over the illusion right there. Every subsequent barb and cruel interaction that followed . . . well, Rami would have almost preferred to be left to the mercies of Hell.
Almost.
He slowed enough to risk a sideways glance again. The iron tic of displeasure in Hero’s jaw was still there. It underlined his fine features, reminding Rami that the man was far stronger and unyielding than anyone—including himself—thought. Normally, he admired that. Now, it promised he was going to have to earn every inch of conversation. “I’m sorry.”
“You said that already.” Hero managed to barely move his lips as he stared straight ahead.
“I . . .” Rami resisted the urge to squirm under the silence. “I wanted to say it again.”
“The definition of madness is repeating an action and expecting a different result.” Hero’s chin did that careless chuck to the side that Rami knew well. The more angry—truly hurt—Hero was, the more full of smiles and ease he became.
“I’m sorry,” Rami said again, like a dunce.
“For what?” Hero said sharply, catching him by surprise. He stopped walking but didn’t turn to meet Rami’s eyes. His gaze was pinned forward, but not on the point where Claire was rapidly disappearing down the aisle. Perhaps he looked at the books, or simply tallied Rami’s crimes in his head.
“For . . . causing you distress.” He studied the high color in Hero’s cheeks and considered everything he knew about the man before taking an awkward guess. “It’s no embarrassment, what you—”
“You think I am embarrassed of my feelings?” Rami took an unintended step back when Hero reeled on him, eyes blazing. He was disheveled, still soggy and wild from the dunk in the water. His velvets were soaked and wrinkled. Normally coifed bronze curls splayed every which way on his head. His lips were still bruised pink, and Rami felt a small thrill of distinctly unangelic pleasure wondering whether it had been he or Claire who had done that. Hero looked terrifying, he looked eternal, and he looked glorious, and all Rami could think was, Be not afraid.
It was difficult to focus on words. “Y . . . Yes?” Hero was a proud, proud creature, and it grieved Rami that he’d been driven to that point.
“You are a terrible and beautiful idiot.” Hero’s lip curled and he took another step until it was Rami’s turn to back into the sharp edge of a stack of books. “I am a creature of fiction. Feelings are what make me feel alive. It’d take a coward to be ashamed of them. I love you. I love Claire. And the idea that either of those statements could be a shame is, frankly, a bitter insult.”
Every time Ramiel thought he understood humanity and . . . well, the human-adjacent, he found a new way to be confused. “But—yes, Claire is Claire—but I’m fallen—”
“You beautiful idiot man,” Hero said the way others might have cursed someone’s parentage. His hand sank into the front of Rami’s coat and clenched until Rami could feel the heat of his fist against his heart. “I told you this in the labyrinth realm. You heard what I said about your qualities earlier. I’ve read a Dust Wing full of stories, and nowhere have I found a story once where a man can’t be redeemed by his choices. You are not broken, or found wanting. I am not angry because I am ashamed. So.” Hero abruptly let go of him and stepped back. “So try again.”
Rami was somewhat of an expert at falling, being a Watcher. “I am sorry for deceiving you. I should have tried to tell you Claire’s plan, but you joined the boat and there wasn’t time—” He stopped as Hero’s face darkened and thought carefully about his next words. They felt impossible when he found them. “The idea caused you pain. I’m sorry . . . for scaring you. I will never do it again, on my oath.”
“Oh, you terrify me regularly. You and Claire. So determined to throw away your lives for a ridiculous cause.” Hero’s frown softened by degrees. “But that’s what I get for loving hero types, I suppose. Even Brevity is exhaustingly altruistic and she should know better.”
“You’re a hero too,” Rami said, because he wanted Hero to admit it.
“Shut your pretty mouth.” Hero drew closer. He was smiling now, and it had a fizzy effect on Rami’s stomach that he hadn’t thought he could feel. “Unless that’s an invitation to show you just how wicked I can be in priv—”
Hero was abruptly on the other side of the aisle. He looked surprised and frowned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I didn’t move.” Rami frowned at the expanse of wood floor that hadn’t been there between them a moment before. He opened his mouth to say something else but was drowned out by a groaning sound that had both of them looking up to the shadows of the ceiling. The Library shuddered.
“There you are!” Claire wheeled around the corner, out of breath. She flashed a vexed look between the two men. “Are we finished here?”
“Claire, what—” Hero sputtered as she grabbed both of their hands and yanked them into motion.
“Andras didn’t buy us as much time as he promised he would.” The floor lurched and a small flock of books tumbled over their rails and onto the floor. Hero bent to gather them but Claire dragged him into a run. “Our trick is up.”
“Malphas has defaulted on her word?” Rami asked.
Hero let out a yelp as the wood floor beneath his feet appeared to turn to putty and caught his heel. Rami struggled to pull him out until Claire bent down and undid the buckles around his ankle. The leather boot remained half-submerged in a birch-colored puddle as Hero yanked his foot free.
“Oh no, Malphas is honoring her side of the agreement, with the precise amount of technicality as we did,” Claire corrected grimly. “Hell’s releasing its claim on the Library, all right. But they’re not waiting for us to pack our bags—the realm is ejecting us.”
Rami felt his heart stop.
“What does that mean, for us mere books?” Hero snapped.
“Nothing survives adrift outside a realm. There’s nothing— Existence doesn’t, well—” Rami managed, and was deeply grateful when Claire found a metaphor that summarized the disaster unfurling before them.
“It means the Library is unmoored.” Claire winced as a bookcase to their right appeared to shatter, then reverse in midair to put itself back together again. “And trying to hold together will tear this place apart.”
38
CLAIRE
Maybe what makes a library isn’t what it has, but what it does.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1433 CE
I won’t surrender to Malphas, but I will surrender to the Library. Walter says this will work—technically, he doesn’t say it will not work, which is all I have to go on. I’m sorry, Revka, there’s no time to tell you why I have to do this. But if it works—if there’s the narrowest chance it works—I’ll never have really left you. The Library will belong to itself.
A demon can’t conquer what isn’t there. When Malphas breaks that door, she will find the librarian’s desk empty.
Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE
“Oh.” Hero somehow managed to hobble next to her, shoeless on one foot, and make it look like a casual stroll in the midst of chaos. “Is that all? I thought it was something bad.”
“It is bad! Stop being cheeky.” The beams in the ceiling of the Unwritten Wing abruptly decided to sweep down, and Claire had to duck to miss getting beaned as they lurched their way through the stacks. It was urgent that they get back to the others in the damsel suite. The
Library was tearing itself apart trying to contort to fit the space where Hell had once been. “If we don’t anchor the Library to a new realm or something solid in short order, we’ll . . .” Claire stopped as she realized she wasn’t sure what happened to spirits and souls that fell into the void of pathways between afterlife realms. Judging from what she’d seen on the raven roads and elsewhere in the afterlife, it couldn’t be anything good. “How long do we have?” She directed the question to Rami.
He startled, as if just realizing that he was likely the closest thing to an expert they would have. The effect was to turn his craggy features even more troubled. “It would be difficult to say. The Library—anything in the afterlife—is a construct fueled by divine—”
“Guess faster, dear,” Hero murmured as he stepped around an armchair that had sprouted something that appeared to be cosmic tentacles. Books had scattered everywhere across the floor and it was hard not to cringe. Claire knew they were presented with bigger problems, but books were lying with pressed spines, for gods’ sakes.
“An hour, maybe,” Rami admitted grimly.
“We need more time than that.” Claire was relieved when the front pier of the damsel suite came into view. With the water gone, the wing had regained some of its proportions, which made the path to the door scalable. Figures were clustered at the edge, and Claire recognized Brevity’s blue and tattoo-scarred arm as she pulled her up.
“Inside, quick!” Brevity dragged Claire into the damsel suite and Claire did not waste time arguing. The suite was packed, and it appeared every awake book and guest librarian had crowded into the sitting room to avoid the chaos outside.
Claire’s mind raced, trying to tally who was here and who wasn’t, but the sense that a final countdown had inevitably begun to tick drove other logical thoughts out of her head. She looked to Brevity. “When did it start?”
“Not long before we spotted you. Is it Malphas . . . ?”
