The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,101

but each library needs secrets. Books are a secret hidden in plain sight. Read me, they say. Look at me. Turn my pages. Touch my spine. Read my words, and content yourself.

Every book is a secret that only readers know.

Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 904 CE

HIS TONGUE TASTED LIKE wicked death itself.

Hero’s first awareness was that he was gagging. He coughed, and his lips felt slippery. His body recoiled with the force of his next cough, and he smacked his cheek into the gritty, solid surface beneath him. Everything was black. Everything was black and melting and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear for the screaming in his head. He couldn’t see. It took him several long moments to consider opening his eyes. It took him several long moments to remember he had eyes.

When he opened them, it wasn’t much of an improvement.

It was dark, dark enough that it took a minute until Hero’s eyes began to adjust and pick out the vagaries of his surroundings. Long panels of flat ground stretched out in front of where he lay prone. His arm protested as he reached out, but the surface felt smooth beneath his fingertips, with a dry grain. Wood, perhaps. It had to mean he was at least somewhere civilized. He rolled to his knees, feeling a slick, oily ache both inside and out.

Civilized, Hero amended, but abandoned. The light was practically nonexistent, but a diffuse glow came off the dust that sifted through the stale air. It painted the space in twilight that was one step above midnight. The light-tainted dust was everywhere, drifting around Hero in spectral blooms. It cast weirdly soft shadows on the dark crags and unidentified shapes that surrounded him. Hero might have thought he was trapped in some deep, stalagmite-strewn cave, if it weren’t for the paneled floor beneath him that reminded him of the Library.

The Library.

Hero’s hand went to his coat. He ferreted over the pockets with rising panic until he located a familiar rectangular lump in an inside pocket. He had his book, safe and sound. But a barb of memory trailed the relief. The pen nib hovering over a blank page, a clot of black on his lips and a rotting feeling behind his eyes, hundreds of voices almost but not quite drowning out Claire’s scream.

The ink. Remembering felt like falling. He could recall it now, the drowning sensation as his throat filled with ink, the eerie warmth as it swept over his skin like a whisper, the whispers, like an ocean surf, washing over him until the question rotted through him inside out.

Who are you? Who are you?

Bile scaled his throat, centering him enough to slow his breathing. The ink hadn’t accepted him at all; it had rejected him and done something to him and his book. Sent him somewhere, wherever here was.

He got unsteadily to his feet and breathed in another luminous cloud that made him cough. The soles of his boots scraped invisible grit against the floor, and it echoed across the space like a growl that was quickly snuffed out. Silence, silence so complete that Hero’s own breath was a bleat in his head.

Unease curdled in his stomach, but Hero shoved it aside with the rest of his aches. His book was part of the Unwritten Wing’s Special Collections. He would find his way out, or at the absolute worst, he would be recalled when Claire reported he was missing.

The scream echoed in his head again and Hero winced. He could only guess what the others might think, what Claire and Rami might think. That he’d planned it, that he’d run away. Claire’s disapproval would be insufferable, but he could make it right. He could make it all right as soon as he made his way back to the Library.

The resolve forced his foot across the floor, feeling for a path. It caught on what might have been a rock, and Hero stumbled directly into the crag to his left with an audible groan. Even braced for impact, it was not the hard collision with rock that Hero had been expecting. Hero righted himself and tentatively ran his fingertips over the surface.

A thick layer of the barely glowing dust was on everything, but beneath it his fingers found a pliant leather. He followed a seam until his fingertips hit a ruffle of pressed fibers, leaves that fluttered under his fingertips. It was a feeling he’d had opportunity to familiarize himself with lately, and such a shock that he