The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,119
again? Nothing good seemed to come of it, but would he be stained like a human, or bleached like a muse? What was the wick of a story, when you’ve already burned your book?
Brevity had the feral muse by the shoulders and was struggling valiantly to pin his arms back, but the creature outweighed Brevity by at least a stone, and it almost lurched free as Claire stopped in front of it.
Claire appeared to study it, its bleak, expressionless face like a statue carved out of ebony. “Listen,” the many voices whispered. A black fingertip pressed to the middle of the pale creature’s forehead. The ink-bleached muse began to shriek.
“You’re hurting him!” Brevity attempted to pull the muse she’d just been wrestling back, but Rami lurched forward and stopped her.
“No, she’s not. Look.”
The point where Claire’s finger brushed the muse’s forehead had begun to darken, as if bruised. Hero followed the shadow beneath the muse’s bone white skin and drew a breath. Like ink dropping through water, the muse’s natural coloring was returning. Orange skin, sunrise red hair. Slowly the color seeped in, pushing the white and black ahead of it like a wave. Ink pooled at the point of contact and hesitated at the surface of the muse’s forehead for just a moment before the surface tension seemed to break. The ink flew up Claire’s finger in a veiny line, black on black, and the muse fell backward.
“Gaiety?” Brevity startled as she grabbed him, as if he was lighter, less weighed down with snarling muscle and hunger. A perplexed look crossed her face as she hesitantly lowered the muse to the ground, but he didn’t rouse.
“What did she do?” Probity dropped to the other side, checking over the unconscious muse with an urgency that bordered on mothering. Brevity let her take Gaiety out of her arms, and for a moment Probity clasped her hands. It struck Hero as almost like an embrace, or a good-bye.
“Dear god . . .” Rami breathed the words like a curse, or a prayer. It took a moment in the dim spectral twilight to see what he meant. Ink wept from Claire’s eyes, skidding down her cheeks briefly before being absorbed again by her skin. Her lips parted, and liquid, viscous and darker than blood, tumbled over her lips.
She’d taken in Gaiety’s ink, but this was even more than that. Ink had stained, then soaked Claire, and now she was suffused with it. She didn’t blur and turn pale like the muses. She didn’t absorb and rot into nothing like a book. She was human—the paper of her soul was primed for stories. But she was trying to hold on to too much of it.
“Claire.” Brevity shoved to her feet but was stopped by Probity’s grip on her arm.
“Don’t,” Probity said firmly. There was sympathy there, but at a remove. The kind of look you gave when someone lost their goldfish. “You can’t help her.”
Brevity twisted her arm free. “I have to do something.”
“She’s a lost cause!” Probity struggled, not able to keep hold of Gaiety’s body and Brev both. Her voice threaded with pleading. “But you’re not.”
Brevity stopped, and the moment held its breath around her. Hero’s voice felt stopped up in his throat. Claire was dying, or worse, behind them. But Brevity’s sibling muses were here, alive, not drowning in shadow. He had a deep, wounded familiarity with being a heart caught in two places. He couldn’t bring himself to pull anymore. There was a coin-flip moment of doubt as he watched Brevity’s eyes, but the coin landed true.
“If I don’t help her, I am.” Brevity shoved to her feet. She didn’t look back, despite the twist in her expression. Hero began to breathe again, but tides of ink writhed and sank like eddies across Claire’s frozen form. Brevity ran and threw open her arms.
Her fingertips slid into Claire’s palm, and their hands closed as if on instinct. For a moment Brevity glanced to Rami and Hero, wide-eyed, until ink began to invade across her knuckles, beading across her skin and leaving colorless flesh behind. She stifled a gasp.
“Sis! Stop!”
“I’m not letting go.” Brevity’s lips moved around the whisper, words falling slightly out of sync with the sound. Propane blue began to wither and dry to cornflower on her cheeks.
“We have to do something,” Hero whispered, and the helplessness that raged up in him threatened to burn him up whole. “Anything.”
Rami’s head came up, a thoughtful expression on it. “Okay.”