36

CLAIRE

Hell is not the place for matters of the heart, and the Library is no place for frivolity. Don’t let passing whims ruin a good index.

Apprentice Librarian Yoon Ji-Han, 1818 CE

Forgive my language, Librarian, but what the hell? The Library is made up of nothing but passion. What books have you been reading?

Librarian Gregor Henry, 1819 CE

It was a marvel that the boat did not sink under the simmering accusation Hero brought in with him. Claire hated herself when he would not meet her eyes, but when he finally did, the betrayal was a stab in the gut. It wasn’t that it wasn’t well deserved, Claire knew that. But it was that she’d gotten out of practice. Once, she’d deserved those looks. Once, the extent of Claire and Hero’s relationship was a perverse argument in the language of betrayal. Warden and book, human and idea. He must think that was what she had defaulted to now, for this. After all this.

Claire silently cursed herself again for allowing Hero to tag along. She should have seen that coming. She should have ensured he was occupied with work for the damsels when she, Rami, and Andras had departed. Sloppy. She used to be better at this.

The thought didn’t bring her any comfort.

The doors closed behind them; the dam broke. “We can’t leave him—” Hero started pleadingly.

Claire made a silencing motion that brooked no argument. Miraculously, it worked. She perched at the end of the hull and remained still and composed as Hero slunk in after Andras and silently took up one of the oars. She could still feel eyes on them as they pushed away from the flooded hallway. Malphas had spies all up and down this route, of course. She’d kept her silence on the way in, but the way out seemed to stretch interminably as Hero hunched his shoulders and rowed. Only a fictional character could successfully turn rowing into a study in angst. He attacked the task with mechanical ferocity, a mortally wounded beast ready to strike out at the nearest obstacle—in this case, the murky water.

The silence held for a time before Hero’s voice broke. “You abandoned him.”

Claire squeezed her eyes closed. “Hero—”

“You just traded him like he was nothing. He served you faithfully. We . . . He loved you—” Hero’s voice wobbled. He didn’t look up, didn’t stop rowing, but his hunched shoulders hitched higher. “We all knew how hard it was for Rami to face Hell again. It tore him up inside but he did it—for us, for you. And then you sold him to those jackals like a piece of meat.”

“That’s not what—”

“Don’t defend yourself!” The oar paused out of the water and Hero clenched it in his fists as he stood, throwing the boat into a precarious wobble even as they continued to drift. “Rami wasn’t—isn’t—like you and me, Claire. Rami is good. He could have destroyed us whenever he wanted—every other immortal creature we meet in this goddamn place is a bastard, you will recall. But not Rami. From the start Rami has been good. He is patient and kind and against all gods-damn odds he fell in love with you—with me, I . . .” Hero’s voice was beyond a crack. It threatened to dissolve, but he wasn’t ready to let Claire off without verbalizing her crimes. “Ramiel is the best of both of us. He would have died for us and you just . . . used him. You used all of us like we were nothing and—” Hero stopped short, flinching back with a shake of his head.

Only the slosh of thick water against the hull punctuated the silence. Hero sat frozen in the center of the boat as he stared at Claire as if he couldn’t recognize her. Neither spared a glance for Andras, sitting still as stone between them. It took Claire time to speak around the knot of self-loathing in her voice. “You are right. All of it. I am not good, never was.”

Hero’s expression crumbled into pain. “Claire, it’s Rami. Turn the boat around, we have to go back and—”

“Three more meters, Hero. Trust me for three more meters. That’s all I ask of you.” Claire studied her hands, then looked up to hold his gaze. It was a request—Claire had no illusion about her ability to steer the boat on her own. “Then I’ll be whatever monster you deem me.”

It was a cruel thing to ask. Hero’s lip curled as an interior war raged. His sword hand trembled before he twitched a nod. “Three. Damned. Meters.”

There was no more to be said. Hero’s eyes challenged her to look away, so Claire didn’t dare. The air had turned less briny as Hell waters gave over to the flooded stacks of the Library. Still, Claire didn’t move until the shadow of the Library’s great doors fell over the boat. “All right. Go ahead. That should be far enough.”

Hero tilted his head, confused, until a blur of shadow and feathers spun between them. The shadow moving across the boat passed over Andras and left behind Ramiel, whole and sitting in the boat between them, in his place as the illusion swept away. He looked nearly as pained as Hero had, but the stricken look was colored with an air of wonder as he looked between Hero and Claire.

A strangled sound clawed its way out of Hero’s throat. Claire hadn’t thought it possible to strike Hero speechless. But amusement quickly passed as she caught the expression on his face. His misery melted into shock, which then melted in the furnace of something much darker and harder. Claire backpedaled as he rose to his feet. She was too familiar with Hero to be scared of him, but the intensity of his gaze made her . . . well, nervous. “Hero, I’m sorry, but it was a tactical decision—”

Claire didn’t quite believe it when Hero reached out and, with a graceful push, tilted her over the side of the boat.

The water wasn’t cold, precisely, but Claire still got out a yelp as it folded over her head. Her feet hit the bottom after a short dive and she pushed off, bobbing to the surface and coughing up most of a wave’s worth of water. The water must have been clear of any harmful ink or residue, because she felt fine if sputtering furious.

“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.”