The Library of the Unwritten - A. J_ Hackwith Page 0,147

shelf full of books, but Rami didn’t have the heart to force him to stand. His neck was still frostbitten, but slowly it warmed under his fingers. Claire’s eyes swept over the boy, a hundred unspoken words in her worried eyes. She said nothing.

Rami found himself glancing about the room, alone in Hell and uncertain of the weight of his conscience. An unmaking of an archangel shouldn’t even have been possible. Claire had just murdered one of the highest of the Host, his commander, in front of him. That would be a declaration of war for any angel, fallen or no.

He could draw his sword, right now, and smite all of them. He’d be in the right. They’d all be dead in the coming war between the realms, but he’d be right.

But somewhere in Ramiel’s long and winding existence, right had stopped feeling like the best place to be.

His gaze wandered until it came to Leto. The teenager smiled, tentative, encouraging, at Rami. The boy would never know why he’d ended up in Hell’s Library. A muscle in his jaw worked, and Rami took a slow, shuddering breath. He lowered his eyes to the scorch mark where Uriel had stood. His hand fell from his sword hilt.

“Do you need to go file a report or something?” Claire kept her question neutral, though the cant of her shoulders telegraphed that she was expecting a poor response.

Rami nodded stiffly. “Eventually. Heaven will need to know the archangel is . . . delayed.”

Claire blinked, and of all the impossibility of her acts, this was what surprised her. “Delayed.”

“It’s accurate,” Rami insisted.

“Delayed.” Claire nodded to herself and turned, as if surveying the damage for the first time. She sucked a sharp breath of air in through her teeth.

“We won.” Brevity had found her voice, though it sounded thin as spun sugar. She had a kind of hollow-eyed look when Rami considered her. Claire shrugged her arm free of her assistant.

“This,” the librarian said, with a particularly ruthless kind of self-loathing that Rami knew well, “this is not winning.”

Brevity didn’t appear to have a single denial for that, but she straightened. There was in her sharp features a resolve that Rami hadn’t noticed before. The kind left after a fire. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

Claire met that gaze for a long moment. Rami couldn’t claim he knew either woman well enough to know what was being transmitted without words, but he knew the look of survivors when survival was not expected.

“Right. To business.” Claire nodded, and Brevity began organizing the few remaining damsels into groups to gather the books that were yet salvageable from the battlefield around them.

Rami saw Claire’s eyes stray toward the couch where Hero lay, but she resolutely turned to face the raven captain instead. Arlid and her flock had finished greeting the ravens from the search party and held themselves near the door, obviously preparing to leave.

“Arlid,” Claire said levelly. “I see you were helpful as ever.”

“Glowy things, burning things, not our fight.” Arlid grasped Claire’s forearm in a grudging shake. “You freed our kin and asked for help fighting demons, not angels.”

“Just so. You did hold up your end there.”

“A good fight.” Arlid’s kohled eyes glittered with amusement. She nodded at the chaos. “Your place looks almost as bad as the storyteller’s now.”

A ghost of a smile hit Claire’s lips. “Just missing a few drunken Norsemen.”

“We could spare them.”

Claire glanced to the gathered raven folk. “Any losses?”

“Two. A hurt for the flock. But your saga women fared worse.”

“The damsels, yes.” Claire’s eyes slid to Brevity, and the muse looked down, eyes carefully turned away from the pyre. “They were characters, not warriors, but they defended their home.”

“They fought bravely. It was a good death.”

“Good deaths exist only in stories.” Claire’s voice was grim with loss, a sound Rami knew well. “In any case, thank you again. This wasn’t Valhalla’s fight.”

“It wasn’t. Consider yourself indebted, feather and bone,” Arlid said before her smile grew sharp. “But the chance to strike against the demon who had imprisoned and experimented on my flock for so long and abused the raven roads? Anytime, Librarian.”

They shook once again, and the ravens departed, maintaining their human forms until the sound of wings filled the hallway.

Claire sank down on a chair with a deflated sound. She stared at nothing for a moment before turning her look to Rami.

“You’ll be taking him again.”

The hurt in her words made it obvious she was speaking of Leto. Whatever had happened in