The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,111

only survived by not thinking. His head was full of other people’s stories; his own felt distant. “This is the Dust Wing,” he said instead.

“Yes, I had begun to suspect as much,” Ramiel said with that straight-faced calm that he used when he was amused. Then he asked again, “Are you injured, Hero?”

“Me? No. I—” Hero paused, considered the fragment of his thoughts, then tried for something more honest. “I would be very glad to get out of here.” His voice came out smaller than he’d intended.

“That’s the plan.” Rami shifted to a crouch, and Hero briefly lost track of him in the gloom. A day ago, he would have ridiculed the panic that spiked up in his gut simply by losing contact with someone he knew logically would not leave him, but that didn’t stop him from gripping the feathers of Rami’s trench coat and not letting go when he found them again. “Claire and I split up, but I should be able to find her.”

The questions stacked up behind Hero’s tongue. He sputtered. “Claire’s here?” No one should be here. No one came to this place. No one came for these books, least of all him. He shook his head, trying to order his thoughts into a way this made sense. “How did you find me?”

“I tracked you,” Ramiel said with a curious kind of tone that made no sense to Hero. He moved on before Hero could question it. “I don’t think we’re alone in here.”

“We’re not,” Hero said with a vague gesture to the broken tablets.

“No, I mean—” Rami gave a helpless shrug. “We should get moving.”

Hero wasn’t about to argue that point. Rami pulled him to his feet, and if he noticed how Hero clung a little too tightly to the back of his coat as they skirted their way down the embankment, he was circumspect enough to not say so.

They had nearly made their way out of the clay tablet canyons—Hero could see scrolls and wood panels encroaching, like sedimentary layers of an archaeological dig—when they heard a third pair of footsteps up ahead.

Rami held a hand up, though it was really unnecessary with Hero inelegantly clinging to his side. He took a tentative step into what seemed to impossibly be a darker puddle of darkness. “Claire?”

Rami kept his voice pitched low. There was no response, but the footsteps didn’t slow or increase. Hero felt a chill prickle over his neck. Rami tried again. “Claire? Brevity?”

Brevity’s here too? Impossible. This was an impossible place to be in the first place, let alone by choice, and certainly not for Hero’s sake. Hero wanted to ask, but he bit his lips instead to keep quiet. The footsteps were not heavy, but as they got closer Hero could make out a messy slurry with each step. As if something was scrabbling through paper and scrolls.

It grew closer, skittering around the corner. Hero felt Rami lean forward, squinting into the darkness. He jerked hard enough to throw Hero backward into a stumble. The sound of the sword clearing its sheath reached him, and the igniting of the blade threw light into the darkness like a grenade. Hero was momentarily blinded and paralyzed as he blinked away the stars.

Rami’s broad shoulders were silhouetted by a white fire. It set each feather on his coat in contrast and for just a moment, Hero swore he could have seen wings. “Rami?” His voice was dry as paper.

“Stay back, Hero.” Muscles twitched under Hero’s fingers and tension sung through Rami’s shoulders, translating down to the arm that held a sword pointed steady. Hero leaned around him and had to hold a hand up to block the light in order to see what threat had caused such a change.

He almost missed her. So pale she was almost drowned out by the light of Rami’s sword, the girl hunkered just outside the brightest radius. Her shoulders were clenched up to her ears, one strap of her bleached clothes hanging off. Hero recognized the scrappy, eclectic kind of fashion mayhem. Brevity wore clothes like that.

He jolted forward. “Rami, that’s a muse—”

“No, it’s not,” Rami said as Hero grabbed his forearm, and really, his blade didn’t even waver. It really was unfair, angels in general. Hero latched onto the trivial thought, because it was easier than what his eyes were trying to tell him was in front of him.

The girl did look like a muse of an indiscernible age. But muses were full of color—even serious,