40

HERO

My apprentice calls me heartless. He is incorrect. I had a heart, once. I don’t remember why I chose to lose it. Perhaps my heart was better off without me.

Librarian Yoon Ji-Han, 1803 CE

Hero came to his senses amid a hurricane. The nothing-void of the pathways between realms roared with not-quite-wind, and the static cyclone drowned out the ghosts in his head long enough to realize his surroundings. To realize his rescue.

Arms vised around his chest impossibly tight and trembling, as if Rami wasn’t certain that Hero’s body was still there. The force of the angel’s will kept the worst of the howling darkness at bay, and Hero made a precise decision not to look too closely at the dark beyond Rami’s flickering translucence. Instead, he looked up.

Realmfire wreathed the curve of Rami’s close-cropped hair, creating a jagged, broken halo that spilled wispy light across his cheekbones and down the broad curve of his shoulders. His eyes were two points of light, focused on navigating them safely in the void between stars.

The voices of the Dust Wing rolled back in on him like a tide. The pull was too strong. The stories had swamped him, rushing in all at once and trying to make a home of the new, human place where his story used to be. He’d been pulled under, and Rami had pulled him out.

Resolve settled in Hero’s bones. Maybe it was the effect of the stories. Maybe it was the changes he’d undergone. The loss of his book, the acceptance of the Library, the love of Rami and, in her own way, Claire. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the ridiculous idea that this was only the end if he told the story that way. This couldn’t be the way the story went.

“. . . go,” Hero croaked, unable to hear his own voice in the airless space.

Rami’s starlight eyes dimmed, focusing abruptly on Hero’s face. His voice was low and clear over the static haunting of the between places. “Hold on, love, we’re almost home, don’t—”

“Let go,” he repeated.

“What?”

Hero licked his lips. His head was ringing. And the ghosts were singing. And the words he didn’t want to say slipped through his cracked lips anyway. “I have to go. The Dust Wing. I have to go back.”

There was no perceptible change, no velocity to slacken, but Hero felt like their progress slowed as Rami blinked at him. “The Dust Wing isn’t safe. It tried to—”

“Nothing in this world is safe, not for us.” Hero squeezed a clutch of Rami’s feathered coat in his fist. “I have to go back. Right now.”

“You’re . . . injured,” Rami said with a gentleness that made Hero’s heart ache.

“I’m not. Or if I am, it doesn’t matter. Rami—” He put all the forbidden, nameless things he was feeling into his voice, and it cracked. “I have to do this. I think I am the only one who can.” He glanced down at the dizzying dark. “You have to let me go.”

“Here? Hero, you can’t—” Rami’s arm around his waist gripped tighter. “I will never let you go. I promised that.” His voice turned choppy with fear. “We promised that.”

Hero tried to pry Rami’s fingers from his ribs; he might as well have been plucking at granite. He felt the Dust Wing getting farther away, the ghosts quieter, the pull of the story less true. He knew if he lost it, he wouldn’t find his way back. A different story would play out for the Library, for all of them. He would not let that happen. “I’m the only one who can do this. I have to go back there, right now.”

Rami’s frown deepened. “If that’s the case, I’ll go with you.”

“No—no, that’s not . . .” Hero struggled to find a way to explain it, the undeniable certainty the ghosts had left behind. “That’s not how the story goes. I can do this; I have to do this. You believe I’m more than a villain, right? I need you to believe in me—I know I don’t deserve it, but please.” The air in the nowhere place was thinning. Hero found it hard to breathe. “I need you to have faith in me.”

“Faith . . .” Rami repeated like a wound. His frown broke into something so much more raw, desperate. “You held on to me when I was falling. Please let me hold on to you. Please don’t ask me to do this.”

“You don’t have to do anything.” He gave up fighting Rami’s grip and reached out fingers to touch the plane of his cheek. Soft; Hero was always so surprised by how soft it was, when Rami looked like something eternal carved out of craggy stone. He cupped his jaw and memorized the zephyr light in Rami’s eyes. “You just have to believe. And let me go.”

Rami took a stabbing breath. “Hero . . .”

“Believe in me. You gave me something to believe in. Let me return the favor.” Hero’s vision blurred as he felt Rami’s arms slowly begin to relax. “Thank you.”

Rami’s throat worked. One of his arms shifted from holding on to him to wind in the loose curls of his hair. “Hero, you should know, I—”

“I love you,” Hero said quickly—and, gods below, he’d expected the words would bring a new swoop of terror, but it was as if he’d found an anchor. A gentle certainty bloomed in him, so he pressed his palm to Rami’s mouth and said it again. “I said it in court, but I didn’t get a chance to actually say it to you. I love you. You save anything else for when I get back.”

Rami’s eyes widened, and god, the desire to kiss him rose fierce in Hero’s chest. But there was no time and, besides, his hand was already covering Rami’s mouth. Instead, Hero smiled, took a breath, and leaned back out of his arms.

And Hero fell away.