The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,58

damsels.”

“Oh, well done, Claire dear!” Lucille enthused over her tea.

Using a pet name with her name was just impertinence. Claire bit back a sour response behind a smile. “Yes, I’m collaborating with the . . . the librarian—” She stumbled through the half-truth, glad Brevity wasn’t here to see how difficult that title was for Claire to say. “But I’m reluctant to decide a choice of action until we understand the nature of it.”

“How nice of you to think of us,” Lucille said. She sounded sincere enough, though “nice” wasn’t the mood when Claire took the temperature of the room. None of the damsels met her gaze, but there was a prickle on the back of her neck. It was a paper-cut feeling of unwelcome, despite Lucille’s smile.

Claire was being handled, bugger it all. The realization came on her in a flush of irritation. She was being handled, by this old woman, and she was so tired of being handled. In the Unwritten Wing, Brevity trod around her like an abandoned puppy, and even in the Arcane Wing, supposedly her own domain, she had to deal with Rami’s stoic kind of fussing. Hero poked and prodded with a fraction of the venom he once had. Whether because they considered her dangerous or because they considered her fragile, Claire was always being handled.

And she was tired of it.

“I came here for answers.” Her voice was sharp and discordant over the hum of the room. Things quickly turned silent. Claire withdrew the vials of ink from her pocket and set them down—next to the ridiculous brownies—with a precise, cold clink. “About this.”

Ah yes, they couldn’t ignore her now. A dozen gazes drew to the table. The ink bobbled in each vial like a viscous raindrop, leaving an oil-sheen rainbow in its wake. Claire raised one sample above her head. “Tell me what it is.”

Lucille hadn’t moved. “Why would you think we know more than a librarian, child?”

“Because it’s part of you and your books, as far as I can deduce. I wouldn’t have found it without your meddling,” Claire answered. She paused, seeking but not finding a polite opening for what she needed to ask. “You are the instigators of this situation.”

“Instigator? You make it sound as if we were at fault.”

You were, a seething voice in the back of Claire’s mind raged. You fought, like you were mortal, like you were human. And worse, you were cruel enough to die, you foolish, foolish things. There were many things over the years that Claire had learned to soften on, to forgive. But breaking Brevity’s heart—giving her a foundation for hope and ripping it away—that was never going to be one of them.

It was an ugly, unthinking grudge. So Claire kept it bottled inside her, with other dark things. It leaked out to a razor in her voice now. “I reserve judgment. Fault will be decided, I suppose, by your cooperation with the facts.”

Lucille appeared to take a moment, as if weighing the taste of Claire’s anger on her tongue. She shook her head slightly and busied herself with the platter of ceramic ware beside them. “I have never been afraid of the truth, Claire. Though it has never done me a bit of good. Hiding from an unpleasant fact doesn’t make it go away, does it?” She paused, steel in her eyes as she met Claire’s gaze. “Tea?”

“No, thank you.” It was a testimony to Claire’s mental state that her stomach roiled at the thought of drinking tea with this woman—this character. She’d been a fool to think they might help her. She’d begun to think of them as damsels, as people, like Brevity insisted. But these women weren’t like Brevity, not even like Hero, who’d shed ink like blood to prove his humanness.

Was that what she required? That everyone must bleed for her before they mattered? The memory of black wounds made bile rise in Claire’s throat, but a thought came with it. “Ink,” she muttered.

Lucille’s placid gaze wavered until she sat the teapot back down with a sudden clink. “Ink over tea? You have odd tastes, child.”

“No, you bleed ink.” Claire remembered the way black liquid had seeped through Hero’s velvet coat, too thin and slow drying for blood. She remembered the aftermath, after the fires and ruination, peeling the smoke-ragged clothes off him to inspect his wounds, fingertips coming away smudged with familiar stains. Her lungs were squeezed by a hot, clenching kind of urgency. “Characters in your form