The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,15

gilt tattoo had been. It looked almost as if it had been scrubbed away. Or stripped.

“It’s fine,” Brevity said too quickly into the silence. “Hurt like a cuss going off, but we both got a nap out of it and now we’re fine, see?”

Claire shook her head. “But how—?”

“Probity explained it to me. Later.” Brevity’s nervous hands skimmed over her bare forearm before she reverted to studying her fingernails. “We can’t get the ink out of you but because of what they’re made of, the inspiration gilt can hold it back. It works kinda like a—”

“Like a magical tourniquet,” Claire finished.

Brevity’s brows inched up. “Well, yes. But how—”

“Never mind that.” The damsels in the room were studiously ignoring them, but Claire could hear the whispers. The constant whorl of rumor around her was beginning to give her a headache. She tried to focus. “You said what it’s made of. You have a theory about the . . . the—”

“Ink,” Brevity supplied, when Claire couldn’t quite assign the word. “We know it’s ink now. More importantly, its unwritten ink—”

“We can’t know that,” Claire objected, but Brevity was already shaking her head.

“We do. I do. I can see—it looks the same way books do, to muses. Probity saw it too. It’s the ink of an unwritten book. Books. Maybe a lot of them.”

Claire was caught off guard by the bitterness that came with answers. Brevity had identified and handled the mystery with Probity. An outsider, and a muse who seemed to have even more history with Brevity than Claire did. She’d already felt as if she’d fallen out of sync, and there was nowhere for her to get a handhold. She studied Brevity. She knew her face well enough to see the hope starting to form. Many books. Brevity was thinking of the lost damsels. She had to nip that in the bud. “It could be many things.”

“No,” Brevity said, clipped and firm. “It can’t.” She gave a surprisingly dismissive gesture to Claire’s arm. “You can keep on ignoring the obvious or you can trust me. As a former muse. As . . . librarian.”

The whispers that drifted around the room really were nonstop. Claire had always been aware that damsels were talkative and—in her opinion—prone to too much gossip, but they could at least have the decency to wait until she’d left the room. Claire rubbed her temple. “Of course I trust you,” she said, wondering why it sounded like such a weak defense. “But the idea that the ink of a story can exist outside its book is . . .”

“A lot, I know.”

Brevity had lowered her voice, to be kind, to be patient. To be sympathetic of Claire, the poor human who just couldn’t keep up. The ache in her head ratcheted up along with her temper.

“I am perfectly capable—” The whispers intruded again. Gods. Claire’s patience snapped. “Could you all just shut up for one bloody minute?!”

She hadn’t meant to yell. She hadn’t meant many things. But Claire’s voice thudded into the silence. Every pair of eyes, discreetly turned away, focused on her. A teapot clinked, and someone dropped their crochet hook.

“Claire.” Brevity’s touch was featherlight to her shoulder, but Claire still startled. Brevity was looking at her with fresh concern and a new brush of caution. “No one’s said anything but us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I could hear them whispering perfectly—” Permitted to glare around the room straight on, Claire got a clear look. There were only a handful of damsels in the large lounge, scattered and not numerous enough for the voices she’d heard. There was a woman crocheting what appeared to be a star map by the fire, one sole girl napping in an armchair, and a young boy eating jam tarts by the tea table. No one was huddled, or even appeared engaged in conversation. Let alone clandestine whispers.

A foggy, distant sound she could hear, even now, as everyone stared at her mutely. She’d dreamed of Beatrice and imagined voices that weren’t there. Claire had always counted on her perceptions being reliable, and a sticky disgrace settled into her stomach. She tentatively touched her clean fingertips to her stained wrist. They came away dry. “My mistake.”

Brevity, of course, was the first to smooth things over. “No prob. It’s been a rough day for all of us,” she said simply, then appeared to hesitate. “I know the guys are probably plotting ways to make us rest, but I had an idea, if you’re up for an