desk for a bit—in case Brevity comes back? I would hate to miss her in the hallways.”
Rami frowned. “I thought you were to rest—”
“And I shall. But first, I just have one small errand.” And Hero forced his aching feet to walk straight and true, out of the Library.
23
CLAIRE
The story and the storyteller are never far apart, in my experience. Authors and their books maintain a relationship that is the best and the worst of us.
Once a book is out in the world, the author pretends to let go. Stories, after all, are for the people who need to hear them. We have to let go of a story, give up the reins, when we ask it to be read. We pretend it’s like making any other product, bread for the hungry or coats for the cold. But what no author admits is that it’s not like that at all. Stories are not made of flour or wool. Stories, real stories, are made with a sliver of yourself.
The purpose for stories is what readers will make of them. But the reason, the desperate need, is a splinter in the author alone. A good story gets under your skin, because that’s where all good stories start.
Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1313 CE
IT WAS A HABIT of the Library to keep count of days in a mortal fashion. Hell had nothing so simple or precious as sunrises and sunsets, but it felt late when Claire finally looked up from her reading. She’d found a dusty historical in the back of Andras’s cluttered shelves. Some sixteenth-century creation that appeared to confuse demonic summonses and keys of Solomon and faerie poppets, of all things, into one volume of nonsense. However, it must have had a grain of truth, powerful truth, to end up down in the Arcane Wing. Claire had set herself about finding it, on the off chance it related to the ink.
Reading garbled conspiracy theories by long-dead Scotsmen; this was how far Claire had fallen. But the ink held no answers, Walter had no answers, and the Library shunned her. As tragic as it was, this was the best lead she had in the time left.
The shimmer of blue itched above the curve of her arm. It had thinned to no more than a width of fine yarn, and frayed to scratchy, twitching threads. Claire rubbed an idle hand over it, but it did nothing to quell the itch or the hourglass running empty in her mind. The border on her skin was growing more distinct, ink-stained skin south of the line chill, with a dry clamminess that its northern counterpart didn’t have.
The wing was quiet, and grit had worked its way behind her eyeballs. She rubbed over her face furiously before startling as the door gave a labored groan. Hero appeared hesitantly in the gap, looking slyer—or perhaps shyer—than usual.
“Warden? Are you about?”
“Where else would I be?” Claire called, and glanced once at the page to mentally mark the place she’d left off. Hero was nothing if not a reliable distraction.
Hero closed the door behind him, pulling another creak from the hinges, which made every one of Bird’s feathers puff as she cracked open one beady eye. Claire fluttered her hand, forcing Bird off the table and clearing a space as Hero approached at a slower pace than normal. He favored the instep of his right leg and tried to hide it with a lazy stroll.
He paused to trade one sour look for another with Bird, then precisely pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table from the raven. “Another book? I would have thought you’d read everything in here three times over already.”
“Some books give up more on closer read,” Claire said, not bothering to explain her desperation as she carefully closed the old book on her lap. “How’s the foot?”
“Handsomely turned, as always,” Hero scoffed, and wiggled his ankle, mostly hiding his grimace. “It did no lasting harm.”
Meaning, Claire read with familiarity, he was injured and in pain but willing to ignore such problems until they went away. She nodded, having no room to speak on the denial of injuries. She allowed a streak of her usual reserve back into her voice. “I hope Brevity talked some sense into you.”
“Brevity . . . yes . . .” Hero paused, fishing his gaze around the room before shrugging off a not-quite-response. “Surely you know that would be a lost cause.”
“Entirely.” Claire put her book down and crossed