The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,3

a scandal, even in Hell, and prompted even demons to stay away. Somehow the ghost of Claire’s failure had musted the air like mothballs, no matter how much Brevity wiped down the shelves.

“Look alive, you brute. Your favorite is back,” Hero said, insults rubbed thin with affection as they passed the giant gargoyle that kept guard outside the wing. It was dozing in a span of false sunbeam in its alcove and barely roused with their passing. Claire caught a flash of flower petals on its brow before the familiar dimensional vertigo set in. Probably one of the damsels had done that, though who knew where they’d have gotten flowers.

“Hello,” Claire just remembered to say before the pause became awkward. The gargoyle’s arm was gritty and reassuringly solid under her fingertips despite his non-euclidean angles. At least not everything had changed. The gargoyle gave an eldritch hum that made everyone wince, but it was a fond kind of abomination. Not everything had forgotten her.

Hero quickened his step to jump ahead and pull the doors open, keeping up lazy commentary that sounded more artificial than normal.

Claire stepped through the entry and stopped. The doors had merely been a prelude to change. The stacks remained in their same general configuration—branching canyons of tall shelves, spoking out from the lobby space in the middle. There was still the librarian’s desk, as large and anchored as ever. The desk was the eternal sun around which the celestial array of the Unwritten Wing turned. But everything felt shifted out of alignment. The woods were stained a cherry color, and the brass workings of Claire’s preference were gone. Instead, tiny little faerie lights raced up and down the vertical surfaces of the cavernous wing, lighting everything in a diffuse kind of cheer. Instead of brass rails keeping books from falling off their shelves like jailers, delicate wood carvings hemmed each row, almost like picket fences making a garden of the books rather than a confinement. The Unwritten Wing was still as large and echoing as ever, but Brevity’s influence on the Library left it feeling almost soft around the edges.

The emptiness in Claire seemed to have taken up residence in her chest. She had thought the complicated dull ache she felt couldn’t be dislodged, but when she focused back on the librarian’s desk, her heart did a painful lurch up her throat.

The chair behind the desk was occupied, back to the doors. Perched at the opposite end of the desk was a spritely figure, head bent in conversation. For a moment, it was a specter of the past to Claire. How many countless days had they spent in that arrangement? She worrying away at her busywork, Brevity keeping her company with a steady patter of reports and idle chatter intended to draw Claire into something approaching human conversation.

She blinked hard, twice, and returned to her senses. The figure perched at the end of the desk looked like a muse but was not Brevity. This muse had a pin-straight fall of lavender hair, not a teal explosion. Wore ruffles instead of neon straps and pockets. Hero cleared his throat, and the chair behind the desk turned, disgorging Brevity as she leapt to her feet at the sight of the new arrivals. “Claire! Oh, brilliant, you found them.”

This last comment was directed at Hero, who sketched a sardonic bow that Claire would have grumbled at him for. But this was not her Library; Hero was not her assistant. Instead, Claire bit her tongue and drafted a smile onto her face. “Brev.”

Brevity approached at her usual speed, and if she paused, hesitating on one foot long enough to flinch uncertainly before squeezing Claire in a hug, neither of them was willing to acknowledge it. It was a one-armed hug, the other stiff at her side. Claire tried not to miss it.

“Thank you for coming,” Brevity whispered, and this, at least, seemed heartfelt. Claire smiled around the lump in her throat, and Brevity nudged her back toward the librarian’s desk. “There are introductions to make. We have a guest! Probity is visiting the wing as an envoy from the Muses Corps,” Brevity said, introducing the lavender-haired woman at the desk.

“And as a sibling muse,” the other muse corrected with a fond tone. She looked like a porcelain shard. Her hair softened the effect, hanging around her pointed chin in sheets of silk. It contrasted with her too-smooth mint-tinged skin and silver eyes set above precise cheekbones. Muses were the couriers