“I’ve tried to be a lot of good things for each of them, in every way they need to be loved. But if you threaten them, if you take one single step closer . . .” Hero’s breath broke. He slid his foot forward, relishing it as Probity jumped back a step at the end of his blade. “For you, for their sake, I will be the wickedest and worst monster. That’s a promise.”
Muses were always in motion, so when Probity held still it was an unnatural sensation. Her breathing was fast as she tried to get her emotions under control. “What happened to Verve?”
“Who?” Hero tilted his head. “The other monster you created? We encountered her in the stacks. I fed her my book, and she died.”
“You fed her . . . ?” Shock, horror, and a flash of grief cycled quickly through Probity’s expression before settling into a wary realization. “You really mean your book is gone. A character surviving past its book. That’s an abomination, if not impossible. You are a monster.”
“I could be. As I said, I am still discovering what I am.” Hero’s brittle smile cracked as he flicked the blade again. “Your experiment has failed, muse. Take your people and go. The Library isn’t your plaything.”
“My people.” Something of the anger withered and died in Probity’s eyes as she repeated the words. Her gaze went past Hero’s shoulder to Brevity again. She took her next breath like one would take a punch in the gut. “She . . . I’d hoped . . . But you’re right.”
The hostility deflated out of the air then, but Hero kept his sword leveled as Probity crouched down, slung the unconscious Gaiety in her arms. She started to turn, then stalled. When she looked down Hero’s blade, it was as if it wasn’t even there. “Do me a favor, monster.”
“Nah,” Hero said, but Probity didn’t miss a beat.
“Tell her . . .” Her lips worked a moment before she found the words. “. . . tell her . . . ideas never die. Just . . . tell her I said that. That I still say that.”
Then Probity appeared to fold the air around them like origami until they disappeared in a displacement of dust.
Hero hesitated, frozen in place a moment longer. His pulse thudded in his ears, and he half expected some new threat to emerge out of the deep shadows of the Dust Wing. But nothing moved except the fragile drift of tattered and tormented books. It was so still that Hero’s eyes stung. It must have been the dust.
A small grunt behind him reentered his thoughts. “Rami?” Hero lowered the sword, not quite entirely dropping his guard as he glanced behind him.
They were a trio of statues, Claire painted in an oblivion of blacks and Brevity’s blue skin as pale as a robin’s egg. Rami knelt between them, a hand on each of their faces. The concentration knit his face, as if he was doing personal battle with the ink. Hero felt a strangling feeling in his chest at the thought he was going to lose them, all three of them, right here and now. He couldn’t do that. He could bear to live without his story; he could bear to live as a servant of the Library; he could even bear to live as an abomination without a book. But if the Fates took these three maddening souls from him now, he would give himself over to the despair and eternity of the Dust Wing for good.
Then Rami drew a breath and whispered a single word: “Peace.”
The invading pallor in Brevity’s skin retreated and appeared to swirl, absorbing into the thread of inspiration twined on her arm. Dapples of brown caught Hero’s eye as the ink appeared to dry up and flake away from Claire. Both women fell like deadweight, Rami sagged, and Hero just managed to sweep forward to support him. It ended with the four of them entangled on the floor of the Dust Wing.
They were a tiny island of warm skin and wheezing breaths in the center of a tomb. Hero struggled to right Brevity against his shoulder. He distantly noted the tear of paper beneath his heel as another Dust Wing tragedy, but for a moment—just a moment—he didn’t care. He didn’t care because Rami’s chest was heaving and Claire was unconscious but drooling against his feathered trench coat.
When Rami managed to pull himself together and met Hero’s gaze, there was no way to hide the relief that burst onto Hero’s face with a grin. “You did it, old man.”
“I didn’t—I did, but . . .” Rami paused, bowing his head for a moment, and Hero realized he was late recognizing the tears on the Watcher’s cheeks. “So many souls, Hero.”
“Souls?”
Rami’s look was searching when he finally met Hero’s gaze. His brow still set with worry and streaked with dust and sweat. “That’s what the ink is, the fragment souls of books. Remember what the golem’s letter said? The written and the writer are the same. Books and authors are made of the same stuff.” Rami shook his head wonderingly. “I wondered, as an angel I can reach lost souls, and then it seemed too dire to not at least try . . .”
Rami trailed off, but the logical leap was too much for Hero’s mind to make. Books didn’t have souls. They had characters and pages and story, and good ones might seem soulful, but books were—Hero was . . .
Hero wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He looked away. Most of the jet-black ink had flaked away from Claire’s skin, even if a mythical kind of oil-slick shine clung to her tangled hair. She seemed merely napping against Rami’s chest, more peaceful than Hero had ever seen her. “Do you think they knew? All this time?”
Rami considered and shook his head. “I don’t know. But I do know we should get them out of here. Let’s go home.” He
