Hero’s hands were cupped, reaching. Always goddamned reaching, he was. For more, more, more. That should have been Rami’s first hint, shouldn’t it? That he was more than paper and ink and unreal dreams. The desire; the desire to know more, more, more. To be more. Hero had been screaming it, with every moment and every breath, but Rami hadn’t seen it. It’d been so much easier to pretend to judge him.
“You didn’t know, you didn’t even . . . get to know.” Rami wasn’t sure what he was confessing, to Hero’s forehead. There was a multitude of truths that Hero hadn’t known, and several Rami hadn’t had the time or the courage to say. And it wasn’t just. He could whisper them now, into a dead man’s hair, but what good would that do? Would it end anywhere that mattered? Would another letter appear in the Unsaid Wing to be forgotten, sniggered over by some later souls?
Souls. The word made Rami bleed inside. One thing, then; one thing he had left that he could do. The prayer for a soul’s rest was cracked on his lips, and each word tasted like ash. He folded Hero’s arms one over the other and crossed them gently over the wounds on his chest.
The prayer was all he had left to hang on to, and Rami was so lost in it that he almost missed the pained gasp. He nearly dropped Hero when cold arms flinched under his own, and a different prayer was answered.
“God’s tits, that hurts.” Hero’s voice was thin and broken. It appeared a momentous effort to curl his fingers away from the wound at his shoulder. He dragged in another lungful of air without opening his eyes.
“Hero.” Rami was dumbstruck with the obvious. He froze, wanting to reassure himself by touching Hero’s face but not certain the hallucination would hold up. “Are you—you can’t—your book—” Rami glanced over his shoulder in the bizarre impulse to confirm that the muse hadn’t died and kindly reassembled Hero’s book in the process. There was only ash swirling across the ledge.
When he returned his gaze, Hero’s eyes were open and he made a small groan. “My book again. Claire’s going to kill me. I—” Finally, the realization appeared to catch up with him. His eyes widened, glossy with shock, and his dry lips made a speechless moue.
“It’s okay.” Rami curled his fingers gently and prepared to reassure him. That his book was still gone and he was still here was a miracle, if an angel ever saw one, but it would be a shock and any normal man would reel to make sense—
“Oh gods, I kissed you,” Hero whispered.
“That’s what upsets you?” Rami struggled not to shove the man out of his lap, if only because he was afraid to let him go.
“Well, I didn’t even ask, and that’s really unacceptable. I’m a villain, not a coward.” Some of the color came back to Hero’s eyes as they ticked over Rami’s face. “Though I didn’t anticipate you’d be this upset, or that I’d be here to see it.”
“Hero . . .” Rami searched for what came next and came up empty. It took effort to leave a several-millennia-old immortal speechless, but damned if he didn’t manage it. Rami swallowed and finally allowed his fingertips to touch the familiar scars on Hero’s cheek. “Your book.”
“Oh,” Hero said, closing his eyes, then opening them again suddenly. “Oh.”
He struggled to sit up, so Rami braced his arm beneath the injured shoulder until Hero could turn himself around. He surveyed the ash-smeared clay with a lost expression. “She took it, ate the book—”
“I killed her.”
Hero balanced on that fact until it became too heavy for him. He sagged against Rami completely. His weight was welcome and grounding for Rami, honestly. Someone that heavy was not going to fade away on him, not yet. “It’s gone,” Hero said faintly.
“It seems that way.”
“And I am still . . . here.” Hero held up his hand and inspected it, though Rami knew he didn’t have the dark vision that Rami did. Hero’s fingertips squeezed over his eyes before hesitating at his own lips. “I’m still here.”
“You are,” Rami repeated firmly, and would repeat until they both believed the impossible fact. “How do you feel?”
“I feel . . .” Hero’s thoughtful expression did a complicated kind of acrobatics. “I feel it. There’s a . . . an empty space, but then there’s so much noise.” He risked a guilty glance at Rami. “She took the book and there was— I fell. And then I . . . I listened. To the books. It was so loud, and then everything turned black; I heard whispers and my bloody hand hurt. And I got mad.” He paused, running a thumb along the deep scratch that Alecto had given him, what seemed like several disasters ago to Rami. Hero looked rueful. “Mad enough to get lost in the stories. I may have gotten into a spot of haunting before you showed up.”
“That would figure.” Rami measured Hero with caution. There would be quiet, later, when losses came back to a man. Hero would need to be watched. But they could be there for him. Rami could be there. “Are you feeling able to move? Claire ran off to face another one of those things, I think.”
That brought Hero’s head up. He nodded quickly. “My shoulder hurts like murder, but I’ll manage.” He accepted the hand Rami held out and pulled to his feet lightly. He pretended to dust flecks of clay from his coat, but Rami caught the way his gaze slid uneasily back to where the muse had died. “Claire’s here? How? How did you even find me?”
Rami hesitated. It wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place, but damn if he was going to withhold truth from Hero again. “I tracked your soul,” he said simply.
“My—” Hero did a double take. It was really a wonder his head didn’t twist off. His confusion stirred a quiet fondness in Rami’s chest. “I have one of
