The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,105

think whether it would even work. She was part of the Library, but not the Unwritten Wing’s librarian anymore, and this was the Librarian’s Log. But she wanted—needed—to take a step toward bridging that gap and fixing what she’d been too self-pitying to notice had been broken in the first place. She pressed the nib to the paper and experienced a watercolor of relief and bitterness as the letters streamed out behind it.

I have made many mistakes, but I will try to right them before it costs the Library any more. Ramiel believes he can track our lost character and his book. The Arcane Wing will dedicate every resource to this attempt, in assistance to the Unwritten Wing. We will find him.

“Claire?” Rami hesitated at the threshold, as if realizing she was in a conversation that was both crucial and silent.

Claire hesitated, then signed the log.

I’m sorry. I will do better. You deserve better.

Arcanist Claire Juniper Hadley

She straightened more slowly after she set down the pen. Her gaze trailed along the desk to land on a familiar scalpel that Brevity had been using in repairs.

Claire shoved it in her skirt pocket on impulse. “You are certain you have a trace?” She raised her chin, as if Ramiel’s mysterious certainty wasn’t all that was keeping her together at the moment.

“I am.” Rami held up a puff of silver clutched in one fist. The feather looked less substantial plucked from his coat, but it was imbued with a kind of light that wafted it in a decisive direction.

She didn’t have permission. She was injured and stained by malicious ink. She didn’t believe it could work. She had responsibilities. She had fears. There was an abundance of reasons why she should sit this one out. But it had been her hands that had caused this. Her hands that had cut down a man, stamped a wrist, woken the Library, held a sword, wiped away pages turned to ash.

Color whirled like a wet smear every time she turned her head. The tourniquet of inspiration on her arm was a mere bead of blue now. The ink did not feather or thin beyond it, but glistened. She was carrying the stain of what her hands had done in her skin. It was time to see it through. She owed Hero that much at least.

She tucked her clean hand in Rami’s elbow. “Let’s be off, then, before the damned fool gets the idea to run away.”

Rami nodded softly, giving her a look that said her defensive calm was as thin as rice paper. He made sure Claire had a tight grip on his arm, then held up the feather and blew on it as if it were a dandelion. He closed his eyes, and an undeniably soft look came over his face, one that made an echoing ache in Claire’s chest. It was a familiar look to read. He was thinking of Hero, and she’d never stopped.

The feather trembled, and light muddled off it like smoke, swirling briefly around them both before appearing to catch a breeze. Claire had focused on the feather so much, she barely registered the shuffle and shift of movement behind her until a familiar downy touch brushed her outside shoulder. Rami’s trench coat had parted to reveal—or perhaps become—an impossible fractal of gray wings that Rami certainly had not exhibited before. They arched over her head protectively, and Claire had just enough time to give one gasp of wonder before they flexed, and the solidity of the Library spiraled into smoke and light.

* * *

* * *

TRAVELING BY ANGEL WAS a quite different experience than traveling by mist, raven, or ghostlight. The roads between realms that Claire was familiar with were meandering, as all deaths were. Dying bodily was fast, fast as a snapped neck, a stopped heart, but death was a ponderous logistic of the soul. Claire had assumed all travel in the afterlife was the same.

Claire had assumed wrong.

The Library did not so much fade from around her as shatter. There was a pulling sensation, and the world—multiple worlds—appeared in fractals around her, as if she were trapped inside a giant prism, each glimpse of reality only a shard, and sharp enough to cut. Metal spires of buildings, burnished shields of longhouses, reedy beaches and sun-bleached stone, pearl whites and dried blood and silver and brass and gold. Claire didn’t have time to fear, because she was being pulled along, dragged by Rami’s presence at her