9

RAMI

There’s a cleansing element to fire. It’s terrible—no one wants to see it lay waste to their lives—but it’s a purifying ritual, walking through fire. You come out the other side burned and scoured. You come out the other side, knowing what is needed to grow anew.

Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 608 CE

Contrary to popular imagination, angels were at home in fire. Indeed, Heaven was just as flame-filled as Hell, though Rami would grant it smelled better. Righteous fire burned clear and sharp, like good incense. It didn’t clot the throat with thick, anise-oily smoke that seemed to wrap around your eyes like a blind.

But Rami had no fear of fire. So that could not be the reason he was terrified. Could not be the reason his pulse sped up and his muscles cramped with adrenaline as he crashed between two tables that had already tumbled to glowing matchsticks. It couldn’t be what clenched around his throat like a fist, making it hard to yell over the crackling inferno for Claire.

“Here.” The reply was muddled, made distant by the roar and crack of burning wood. Rami unsheathed his sword and used it to impatiently lever back the wreckage of a fallen shelf. Things were snapping under his feet. Bones and crowns, seeds and skin, pearls and flutes. The dormant relics of the Arcane Wing snapped and charred around him. And what could not burn began to scream. It was a miracle he could still see, that he and Claire weren’t both immediately suffocated by the roil of smoke and heat. The Arcane Wing must have been venting the worst of it somehow. Trying to save itself and its charges even now.

It was losing the fight. But if a wing mirrored its caretaker, it would never stop trying.

He shoved and hacked his way down the far side of the wing and found Claire, wrestling with a hunk of burning shelving. The ripped skirts she used to protect her hands were already charred at the edges. Her hands were already seared and tender.

His impulse was to grab her by the arms, haul her away from the fragile realm turning to ash around them. But that was not the duty he had.

“Back!” Miraculously, Claire heard him and gave him enough room to cleave the wood with his blade. The smaller bits of the shelving crumbled, and Rami realized it had been blocking the opening to the cluttered little alcove Claire had claimed for her desk. She dashed forward before the debris had even settled. Rami lunged forward as part of the archway began to give. He shoved it up with his shoulder and winced as the heat began to eat through his feathered coat. “We have to leave!”

“Not yet.” Claire’s hands worked swiftly across the shelves crammed over the desk, deftly snatching the important books into a pile. Ash was in her braids and sweat cut hairline fractures through the soot on her face. She couldn’t stop coughing. “Grab a box and start pack—”

A fantastic crack like thunder cut off her words. Rami glanced behind him just in time to see an arched beam sag down from the ceiling, descending like some slain beast as it crashed into the far shelves. He felt the vibration through the floorboards.

Rami placed a hand on her shoulder. “Claire.” She didn’t look at him. “We can’t save them.”

A shudder ran through her collarbone and then was ruthlessly suppressed. Smoke clotted the alcove by now, and even Rami was finding it difficult to breathe. He sensed, more than saw, her straighten and sweep the odds and ends of baubles on the desk—whatever happened to have been up for inspection that morning—into her arms. “We—” She wheezed. “We can try.”

“Claire!” She was fighting with the bottom drawer of her desk. Her hair was in her face, one of the braids perilously close to the flames. Rami’s patience broke. He manhandled an arm around her waist in a way that he hoped she would forgive later. She worked the drawer free just as he hauled her back, and came away with one more bundle in her hand.

Rami didn’t wait to see what was worth burning over. The smoke was thick as night now, descending and stealing each breath they took. He dragged her back just as the framework of the alcove gave way. Claire’s desk disappeared in a bloom of embers and falling debris.

Claire didn’t fight him as he dragged her into the corridor. The world had turned to soot and rage around them. It was amazing how fire could turn from searing to impenetrable black at a critical point. Rami was forced to ignite his blade to keep them upright. Even the floorboards cracked and splintered beneath them now. The Arcane Wing had lost the fight and was folding up around the corpses of its artifacts. What it couldn’t protect it would entomb.

Just a little longer, please. Hold out just a minute more. Rami prayed, and he wasn’t sure exactly to whom. They clawed blindly back to the front tables by memory. The air was a vacuum of smoke in his lungs. With the last of his senses, Rami heaved them through the flames where the doors should have been.

There was a confusing moment that muddled into a watercolor of sensations. The roar of a void at his back, and a gust of cold, mercifully cold, air slamming him in the face, followed by cool floorboards as Rami’s legs gave out. Noise and touch whirled into an eddy before he was able to anchor himself on cool fingertips touching his cheek. He centered on stunning green eyes that were furious and a little wet and wobbly.

“I—” Rami gagged on the soot in his mouth. Hmm, he had never vomited before. Not in all his years. That would be a new experience—but he was able to swallow after a moment. “I was . . . careful.”

Hero made a broken sound, half laughter and half relief, that ended with an angry shove. “You absolute idiot. Idiots,” he corrected, looking over Rami’s head. It took effort to turn over.

Claire lay like a broken toy sprawled across the floor, a sight that made Rami’s throat clench worse than the smoke had. But her head was turning and she let out a violent cough that was strong enough to reassure him that the woman was too stubborn to die a second time. Around her, bits of rescued artifacts scattered the floor like stars, still smoking from their fall.

Clutched in her hand, nearly welded to her seared fingers, was a dagger. A dagger set with a tiger-stripe stone and a blade that seemed malicious. And awake.