ence that would stay with me for years. “Last night didn’t make Claire leave. It only allowed you to realize she had already gone.”

Claire collapsed onto the snow-dusted brick alley, gasping for breath, soot staining her face and sweater.

"The 1840 edition..." she choked out, trying to scramble back toward the burning doorway. "The parish records—they're inside—"

"Stay here!" I shouted.

I pulled my wool coat over my head and plunged into the smoke-filled workroom. The heat was blistering. Through the stinging gray haze, I spotted the fireproof lockbox on the low shelf beneath the burning beam. I seized the hot metal handle, the heat scorching through my leather gloves, dragged it out, grabbed two stacks of unbound folio leaves wrapped in oilcloth from the counter, and stumbled back out into the alleyway just as the distant sirens began to wail.

I dropped the heavy box into the snow and fell to my knees, coughing violently, my lungs burning, my right arm soaked in dark blood from the window glass.

Claire stared at me from across the alley, her eyes wide with shock. She looked at the singed lockbox, then down at my bleeding arm and burned coat.

"Why?" she whispered, her voice trembling in the freezing wind as the flashing red lights of the volunteer fire engine reflected across the snow. "Why did you do that?"

"Because those books aren't paper to you," I coughed, clutching my chest, the cold air searing my throat. "They're people's memories. They're what you care about."

She sat in the snow, trembling, as paramedics rushed into the alley. A blanket was thrown around her shoulders; another around mine. As a medic pressed gauze against the deep gash on my forearm, Claire never broke eye contact.

For the first time since she had walked out of the penthouse, the polite, indifferent mask had shattered. In its place were tears—angry, confused, agonized tears.

"I don't want you to die for me, Daniel," she said, her voice shaking violently against the chill. "That’s easy for a man like you. Being grand and tragic is easy. What I needed was for you to simply live with me."