The Archive of the Forgotten (Hell's Library #2) - A. J. Hackwith Page 0,95

last lines from its text forgotten. Humanity had buried almost as many books as it had never written. The Unwritten Wing was the largest annex of the Library, but a close second, its shadow twin, was the Dust Wing.

Brevity’s heart stuttered, but Probity was waving a hand, grasping clots of light from the lamps she passed by as a nonsense scent of cardamom binaries and ripe hope rose in the air. She whipped it around her and the leashed muses like a cloak, once, twice. She glanced to Brevity, and a kind of vulnerability flickered in her eyes. “Will you come with me?”

Brevity sucked in a breath, unnerved by the sudden silence only punctuated by her own pulse in her ears. She was trembling, unable to process the horror chasing relief in her veins. The Dust Wing. Probity’s desperation to hope. The horror of the desiccated muses behind her. The threat to the books. Her past and her present collided in front of her, spiraling out into a dozen different directions and taking a different piece of Brevity’s heart with them. It all came down to one question, in the end. Was she a muse, or was she a librarian?

“Please,” Probity whispered to the floor. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

Brevity stumbled forward, pulling on her own puddle of light with one hand while taking Probity’s with the other. Her sister muse smiled, shy and soft. Probity stepped into a false sunbeam, dragging Gaiety and Verve with her, and they were gone.

25

CLAIRE

The Library is a misnomer. Think of the wings: yes, there is the Unwritten Wing of books, but then there’s a wing of sagas, unsaid words, poems, songs—and the cursed Arcane Wing on top of that! It makes no sense. What is the mission of a library? We’re not a lending library, so it must be a mission of archiving and preservation. What, then, is the common quality shared through out the entire catalog? What makes books, scrolls, letters, songs, worth the attentions of eternity?

What, precisely, are we preserving?

Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 900 CE

THE ARCANE WING CURATED books. Not nearly as many or as varied as the Unwritten Wing, but a few leather-bound manuscripts from the world of humans managed to find their way there. Letters poisoned with crude curses, folios with victims pressed between the pages, and a handful of bleak spell books that had somehow stumbled on actual power between the folklore and nonsense. If the Unwritten Wing was humanity’s potential, the Arcane Wing was humanity’s shadow. Anything that grew dark enough, weighty enough, eventually succumbed to the gravity that the Arcane Wing held at its core.

It made for dreadfully dull reading material, but it also meant the Arcanist was kept supplied with a steady selection of bookbinding materials. Claire selected a dip nib and blotter but also gathered extra pages, paste, and thread out of an abundance of caution. The ink hadn’t damaged the logbook during their first experiment, but she wasn’t willing to take any further chances with Hero’s book.

Hero was ready by the time she returned, arms full of supplies. He’d laid his book precisely under Claire’s work light, and an oiled shine rolled off the edges of the emerald cover. Claire had a memory of rebinding with that color. She’d simply chosen green to match his irritatingly bright eyes. And then Malphas had interrupted. That book had been her last official act as librarian.

And now she was going to tamper with it again.

The cover had taken on a well-loved burnish, worn at the edges where it rode around in Hero’s breast pocket daily. There were discolored segments in the leading edges of the parchment, just the width of a thumb, where Hero had obviously paged through his own book more than once. Claire could imagine him, brows furrowed, trying to make sense of the writhing text. Trying to force it into familiarity. Trying to read his way home.

Claire knew that ache.

Hero hovered to her right, shifting from one foot to the other with an uncharacteristic restlessness. Lining up the supplies within reach was a simple task, but Claire made it a methodical process in order to take her time. “You’re certain?”

Hero grimaced, then nodded. “Yes, and please don’t ask me again.”

“As you wish,” Claire said. She found the first blank page and slipped the corners under the page rests. A small pot of the unwritten ink was secured in the inkwell, and she unstoppered it carefully. Her gloved hand trembled as