The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,109

she’s human, Brevity! She’s not your friend!”

“I can understand the doubt. All appearances seem to indicate otherwise,” a gravely amused voice came from behind her. A waft of paper parted, and a silhouette struggled through the darkness, taking care not to step on fractured books. “Yet here I am, for some reason.”

“Claire!” A tangle of contradictions flooded Brevity. Relief, worry, then abject horror that Claire was here, at the center of Probity’s ire.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Probity’s tone was streaked with ice.

“None of us should,” Claire said pointedly. “But I’m trying to atone for my mistakes.”

“Atone? Your sins are many, human. Valiant of you to try.” Gaiety and Verve lurched on their leads again, having shredded and consumed every book within reach. Probity tilted her head, considering for a moment. “How about I lend you a hand?”

The leashes fell from her grasp, and the cold that rushed Brevity’s veins seemed to slow time. Gaiety torpedoed in the direction he’d been pointed—straight at Claire. Verve, however, still had eyes and a hunting instinct. The feral muse darted away and quickly disappeared through the forest of dead books. Gaiety crashed into Claire, claws out. Claire barely managed to grapple at his wrists. Protect the books; protect the human. Brevity had a moment, just a moment, to decide what to do.

30

HERO

I’ll explain this once, and only once, because just writing this down gives me the willies, frankly. The Unwritten Wing is where stories exist before humans know them, but there’s a wing for after as well. A wing for after, when stories die. When the last copy of a book is burned or the last fond memory of a folktale fades from an old man’s mind. When pages are used for scrap and fodder. When gold embellishments are ripped off as bounty of war. When the light on all possible pages of a story goes dark, that’s when a book’s life ends.

But like humans, that’s not the end. The afterlife for a lost book is quiet, and final. An eternal sleep in the Dust Wing, never to be read again. No books wake up there; nothing stirs. It is perhaps the most final kind of death in all the afterlife realms.

The death of a forgotten book.

Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE

HERO HAD NEVER BEEN a reader. Not in his own story, not outside it. Naturally, he could read, but he saw it merely as a convenient conveyance of information, a transportation device for the skills necessary to operate in the world. This opinion had only been reinforced upon waking and realizing he could scan any book other than his own and acquire skills that would have required years of mastery otherwise. It was handy, sometimes, being a creature of creation.

But it meant he had never understood reading. Not in the way Claire and Brevity seemed to revere it. He revered being read as a character of an unwritten book. Quite a lot. Though evicted from his book, he knew the singular awareness of life he felt being seen, being experienced. But he’d never been quite sure what the reader got out of it.

He came to an understanding in the Dust Wing. He was lost in a sea of dust and decay. Staying here would surely mean drowning, but stories reached out and offered him a life raft.

It was not like taking skills from a book, as he had before. Nor was it like as he remembered living his own story. It was not even reading, not with his eyes. Stories filled him like water into a sponge—first he absorbed; then he overflowed. As he listened—as he received—story after story. Each one passed through him, yet left something behind. A suspicious voice, a desiring ache, a fierce demand, a lungful of bittersweet victory.

It was like recalling well-loved music; it was like training swordplay into your bones. It was like the meditative wistfulness of hunting. It was like the euphoric agony of running. It was like everything and like nothing, and it seeped deep into Hero’s bones. He was the first reader the Dust Wing had had in—well, perhaps ever, and every book that hadn’t yet withered to the point of madness stretched out to him, eager to be known.

It overwhelmed him. Hero had always made a point to avoid other books—he would never be caught in the damsel suite. He’d always held the uneasy fear that the presence of other characters, from unwritten books like him, would only remind him of what he could