Leon’s hands hovered over Daniel’s leg, coated in blood and salve. His eyes were glued to the wound—until they darted up to meet Daniel’s, then tore away again. “Uh. I mean, you...you were?”
Daniel grinned, nodding toward the still-open case and the bandages within. “H-How long?”
“What?” Leon said, reaching out numbly to grab at the roll. “What do you mean, how-”
“How long did you know? That you felt like this.”
He saw Leon swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing. And then Leon turned back to his leg, starting to unroll the bandage. “Since...I don’t know.” He sighed. “Since that day, I guess. When the Library collapsed. With those two guests. When you made that dome, and we hid under it, and-”
“I remember,” Daniel said. He bit back a yelp as Leon started to wrap the wound, squeezing the still-oozing limb tightly. “Ow,” he settled for, screwing up his face.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Daniel said, balling up his hands against another wave of pain. “Y-You’re not the bastard that shot me. You’re trying to help.”
Leon made a noise that sounded vaguely like an agreement. The study went quiet. Daniel raised his leg another inch, letting Leon wrap the bandages around again.
“Maybe it’s been longer,” Leon mumbled.
Longer, eh? Daniel leaned back against the wall, a smile playing at his lips. “I wondered,” he whispered. “Why you kept coming back. Why you-” He stopped, wincing again, as Leon pulled the wrap snug.
“I mean, you can’t really blame me,” Leon said. Daniel’s heart lifted. He still sounded tense, terrified, but a note of exasperation slipped into his voice. “Alexandria is...the coolest. It’s magic. A magic library with a magic Librarian, that no one else knew about.” His nose wrinkled. “It was just ours. A secret, just for the two of us. And then...The more I visited…”
His eyes lifted, holding Daniel’s gaze for the briefest of moments. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Come on. You can’t tell me you never felt the same way.”
“I’m the Librarian,” Daniel said. He reached across, sliding his fingers across the smooth clay of his mask—the mask he should be wearing. “I couldn’t…” His shoulders slumped. “Even if it was proper, which...it’s not…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t...it’d be impossible to have that sort of relationship. Like this. Like us. So I tried to just ignore it.”
Leon snorted. “Well, that plan worked out well long-term”
Daniel laughed, shaking his head, but his eyes dropped to the floor. “I...I don’t know how it all went so wrong. Maybe if I...If I’d listened to Indira, we could’ve-”
“Hey.” Leon tied one last knot, then sat back on his heels, his expression serious. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know. I know that. But, if I’d-”
“She wanted something you couldn’t give,” Leon said. “And if there’s bad blood between this guild of hers and the Librarians, it’s nothing you did.”
Daniel looked up. Leon smiled back at him, even if the smile was small and thin. “Right?”
“I guess,” Daniel mumbled.
“It sounds like this has all been coming for a long time.” Leon ran a hand through his hair, making a face. “A long time. And you never asked to be Librarian.”
“I suppose,” Daniel echoed. Something flashed through his mind—a park at dusk. An old woman, smiling down at him with exhaustion in every line and wrinkle on her face. A mask, black and feathered, with-
“So come on,” Leon said, cutting his thoughts off neatly. Again, Daniel looked up.
Leon held a hand out toward him, waiting patiently. “I’ve done all I can here, I think,” he said. “So how’s about we get some actual medical training?” His smile went crooked. “I think you’re still bleeding out there, so…”
“Time in Alex works differently,” Daniel mumbled. “We’re good for a while.” But he let Leon take his hand, hauling him unsteadily to his feet. His friend slung his arm over his shoulders, taking the brunt of Daniel’s weight.
“Okay,” Leon said. His voice was still pointedly cheerful, as though they weren’t in the middle of a blood-soaked shitstorm. “Where’s your Alex hiding the textbooks this time?”
“I think,” Daniel began, but paused.
Leon was right. He’d been patched up here, but out in the real world, he was still lying gunshot in the backseat of Maya’s car. There was no way to tell how long Alex would keep them here, considering this was about the most irregular visit he’d ever made.
But…
Hoisted against Leon like this, he could feel the pipe tucked into his jacket, pressing against both of their sides. If what he feared was correct….Daniel shook his head, sublimating the idea. He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he couldn’t afford to guess. Not when the stakes were this high.
But if he was right, then there might be something more important than Daniel’s gunshot leg.
“Actually,” Daniel rasped, pulling back as Leon started leading them deeper into the Library. “There’s...something I want to look into.”
Leon stopped— and twisted, craning his head around until they were nearly eye to eye. “What? What is it?”
Daniel smiled grimly.
“Come with me.”
- Chapter Eighteen -
With a hollow ache burning through his limbs and the winds shrieking overhead, the Library had never seemed so cold and foreign. Daniel stumbled onward, fighting for control of his ungainly, still-wounded leg.
Through it all, Leon’s arm stayed around his shoulders, steadying him. He wasn’t dragging Daniel around, not anymore, but...he wasn’t about to go far, either. Daniel smiled thinly.
At least something good might come out of this whole mess yet.
Silence filled the hallway around them as they picked their way back out of the wings toward Alexandria’s heart. But even if neither spoke, Daniel saw Leon glance over now and again, and sighed. Right back to sneaking looks, then.
“You can just look,” he said, swallowing a groan. “T-This is...It’s weird for me too.”
“Okay, thank you,” Leon said, breaking into a nervous grin. “I mean, it needed to be said. For you to be, like…without your…” He waved his free hand toward Daniel, his fingers splaying down to include his whole
