The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,25

long lives come with long memory, and so he remembered every pointless struggle, every doomed fight. Even with the ones he won he felt the pieces of what he lost. Every survivor wore scars and weariness. Ramiel was an angel, a first creation of his Creator, but he knew he was not finely or gloriously made.

Not like Hero.

But Rami was practical. And even if this plan was entirely nonsense, the reasoning behind it was not. The existence of the ink threatened to drive a wedge between the wings of Hell’s Library, and the Library had only just become Rami’s new sanctuary. His purpose. It even dared to become a home, given enough time, but Rami wasn’t foolish enough to hold out hope for that. Still.

It was something worth protecting. And the people in it. Rami had come to that conclusion six months ago, adrift after saving Leto’s human soul—then losing him to Heaven. Rami had watched Uriel, the archangel driven vengeful and mad over her own fear, be unmade right in front of him. She’d been unmade, by a single word from Claire’s lips. Even as a fallen Watcher, he should have sought justice, exacted vengeance. Instead, he’d told Claire he’d protect the Library, serve the Library. There might indeed be answers elsewhere. But Claire couldn’t leave Hell, not without a ghostlight and especially not injured and stained with malicious magic. But Rami had no such challenges placed upon him.

He supposed it was a way to serve.

“Supposing . . . we investigate,” Rami said slowly. He abruptly remembered the fleece in his hands. He turned away from Hero’s intense gaze to place the artifact on a shelf in the vault. He took his time smoothing down the wool and shooing Hero out to lock the vault behind him. It gave him time to think. Rami needed time to think. He finally faced Hero again. “Supposing we investigate. You will swear to return to the Unwritten Wing, with answers?”

“Villain’s honor.” Hero held out a hand, grinning as Rami’s scowl deepened. “I’ll come back, promise. What’s the use of running? Brevity can summon my book back anytime. I’ll have you to keep an eye on me, and a mystery to unravel. What more could I want?”

“A mystery, you call it. To find out what the other realms know that we don’t. To find out what books are.”

Hero’s smile faltered, but he rallied as Rami reluctantly shook his hand. “To find out what I am.”

Hero’s hand was surprisingly warm, and as Rami closed his hand around it, the book’s long fingers fluttered over the skin of his wrist.

An investigation. Just an investigation. Rami rooted the thought in his mind, hoping it would drive away the uncertain turn in his stomach.

7

BREVITY

You’ll have constant encounters with the Muses Corps in your tenure as librarian of the Unwritten Wing. Don’t be alarmed by their strange habits or their ever-changing, ever-colorful faces. Muses are born of desire. They wear dreams like plumage.

When muses mature, they take aspects, not names. There have been a hundred muses of joy and there will be a hundred more. There will only ever be one Library.

Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1803 CE

THE LIBRARIAN’S LOG WAS a thorough bit of magic. To the plain eye it was a thick book with a battered cover, thick pages inside filled with entries from librarians over the ages of the Unwritten Wing’s existence. Brevity could tell the difference in the handwriting. Each script in wildly different yet legible scrawl, no matter the librarian’s origin, literacy, or native language. Brevity was glad that whatever magics fueled the logbook didn’t smooth away those differences, at least. It gave a delightful bit of insight and personality to the logbook. You could tell a lot about a librarian by their handwriting. There were Yoon Ji Han’s utilitarian notes in blocky lines, straight and unforgiving as his instructions. And here were Ibukun’s warnings, letters like spears. And Fleur’s looping lush scribble, always taking over the lines above and below it. Uncontainable, full of life. Brevity always thought she would have liked Fleur.

She liked sitting there, studying the earliest entries by librarians long gone. Occasionally she got carried away and flipped toward the front. Her fingers skimmed over Claire’s entries, each loop and dot carefully placed. Not rigid, but narrower and more precise as the years went on. As if her hands had forgotten how to flow. It made Brevity’s heart clench, but not nearly as much as when the official entries