she was capable of with the words twined so tight around her chest. “You have me at a loss, Bjorn. I must cede. Who’s the author?”
“Claire Juniper Hadley,” Bjorn said, and the crowd roared.
14
CLAIRE
Everything went wrong. Gregor is gone and I am still here. But I won’t apologize. Not to god or the devil, not when souls are trapped here, left to wither and dry like flowers pressed between the pages of the books we keep.
Andras says I’ll grow into the role. I suppose I will. It’s the only path you left me.
I won’t apologize, but I won’t forgive either.
Apprentice Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 1989 CE
“YOU CHEATED.”
The room, like everywhere else in the lodge, was uncomfortably warm, and Claire picked irritably at the bandage on her arm. She sat on a cushioned bench, grudgingly sipping tea Bjorn had brewed to restore her strength and “put hair on your chest.” She’d insisted on bandaging her arm herself, freeing the healers to tend to Hero, who had been quickly whisked to an adjoining room after the fight.
“Do explain, lass. I’m in the mood to laugh.” Bjorn rubbed his bruised knee from the opposite side of the small table. They were in his personal study. The walls were lined not with books but with rows of capsae, hatboxlike containers that held scrolls and wooden slates of every shape and size. A fire roared in the fireplace that took up the far wall, and the study was as cozy as it was chaotic.
Claire shuddered to think what the Valhalla library must look like, if this was a tidy personal collection.
She took another sip of the tea and made a bitter face. “You quoted an unwritten author. That’s specifically against the rules of the duel. Worse, you quoted me. That’s not just cheating—that’s dirty.”
Bjorn raised a brow. “Would that be more or less dirty than turning your words against a noncombatant?”
“Uther was about to kill my character. He most certainly was a combatant.”
“Not your combatant.”
“Close enough.” Claire smacked the mug on the tabletop with a peevish frown. “He may be disconnected from his book, and he’s most definitely a pain in the ass, but Hero is still mine.”
“Well, you and your boy certainly set Uther straight on that.”
Claire remembered the mule they’d had to bring in to haul Uther’s body out of the arena, and she diverted her eyes to the table. “Yes, well. Sorry about your champion.”
“Don’t be.” Bjorn gave an airy wave of his hand. “He’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We’re in an afterlife for warriors, Librarian.” Bjorn leaned back, and his chair let out a long creak as he grinned. “Any who fall in battle today wake up fresh as springtime tomorrow. He’ll never wield Widowbane again—he’s been proven unworthy. But he’ll continue on. We do love a good fight, and Valhalla sees to its own.”
“Well, that’s . . . convenient,” Claire said. “Tell me, would it have been the same for Hero if he’d fallen?”
Bjorn raised his brows, considering. “He didn’t die a warrior of the halls, so . . . ah, probably not.”
“Good thing I cheated, then.”
“Good thing,” Bjorn relented. “Up until then, you did comport yourself well enough to pass. The hall will have you.”
Claire was quiet a moment before saying, “The book you quoted. How did you . . . I mean, have you read—”
“I was the librarian of the Unwritten Wing before your grandfather was a twinkle in anyone’s eye.” Bjorn’s lip curled as he toyed with the edge of the table, running a rough thumb back and forth. “I had time enough in that place to get familiar with lots of books. Including yours.”
“My books were there before I was even born. . . .” A queer feeling flipped in Claire’s stomach, and her mind could not settle on a proper question to ask out of the hundred that bubbled up. She’d helmed the Library for thirty years, and it still felt like a mercurial kind of impossibility. A story was more immortal than its teller. Time had no play there, only potential. Claire had failed both. She looked up to find Bjorn studying her carefully. “They were readable?”
“I wouldn’t call them Shakespeare, but they were passable, yes,” Bjorn said. “You do have quite the collection.”
“Well . . . not that it matters now.” Claire’s eyes dropped, and she abruptly found an excuse to stand. The hearth needed poking; irresponsible to let the flames die down.
Bjorn followed her to the fireplace and