Burned Books Novels & Stories

Like really hot. And I could feel the hotness on my skin. I could smell something burning. Skin. It was that same smell that filled the air on ileya day. The smell of cow skin burning. Except this time, I was feeling the pain instead of a cow. I was feeling severe pain. When you mistakenly scald your hand with a hot iron or when the heat from a boil in water lapped at a part of your skin. It was that same exact feeling except it was my whole body being scalded with a hot iron this time around.

I cut her off before she could say a word after she took my words as offense. “Touche,” she replied, her voice steady but laced with a hint of defensiveness. “What kind of help will you offer?” she questioned. “A help that you won’t be able to resist,” I muttered smugly as I brought out an old and worn-out book from my coat pocket and showed it to her. It is the book that I acquired from Beta Alek, the one that he entrusted me to burn. However, after reading its contents, how could I bring myself to burn a valuable book such as this?

That's the last thing he would expect from his fellows who have bestowed their lives to protect the land. "I don't believe it!" "Oh! Don't be silly! Not that it has to be a traitor in every case! There were some forbidden books in the old library where you could get this information easily!"Alan exclaims in annoyance, "You people make scenes too dramatic." "Were! Those books were burnt long ago since they possessed a threat!"Ario interrupts. But that doesn't shake up Ailann even a bit. Rather, he smiles and says, "What if it was just a show to cover our eyes?"

Quickly, I find myself kneeling close to the warmth of the fireplace. I see torn pages lying around, their edges scorched and black. I stretch out my hand and feel the smooth texture of the parchment with my fingertips. Bran squats down beside me, getting close to the ground. "Is that-?" I inhale deeply and struggle to swallow. "Pages from the cookbook." But they're not just lost. They were burned. There's this crushing sense of dread in my chest that I can't seem to shake off. Looks like someone was here before, and they knew about the cookbook.

Scroll cases of ivory and ebony lined the upper shelves, while below, leather-bound tomes stood sentinel in perfect rows, their gilded spines catching the dim light. The destruction was methodical. Not the work of a thief in haste, but someone searching for something specific. Books had been torn from their places, their pages splayed open like wounded birds. Ancient codices lay spine-broken on the floor, their delicate vellum pages crumpled underfoot. A first edition of Meridian's Bestiary, one of only three known copies, lay in the fireplace, its charred edges still smoking faintly.

The bookshelves were thrown away from the walls and the desk was carved in half as though someone had taken out his anger on the innocent furniture. The scene shifted and again she was standing naked on a street. Again she heard the whispering and again she found a burning building. Walking through the door she found herself in a library, just as destroyed as the office had been. The scene shifted again and again. Always she was taken to a burning building and always she found herself in a room of books.

"Blaze, huh? That's a nice name. But… do you think I'm just a useless phoenix?" Before I could answer, he kept going. "Raven used to say I was worthless, and all I did was make her hotter and more miserable, unlike Snowviper. "She said I ruined her life. She plucked out my feathers one by one. She stabbed me with needles, snapped my beak with pliers, and broke my wings. Then she threw me outside to die. Am I really nothing compared to Snowviper? Why did you choose me? Why would you want a useless phoenix like me?"

I could see the exhaustion sitting heavy behind her eyes, the accumulated weight of months fighting a war that kept shifting shape every time we thought we understood its edges. "What happens to Darian in all this?" she asked eventually. "If Selena's charged. If Alessia's exposed for burying it. He's the one who actually suffered because of all this, and he's the one who just handed us the evidence that ends both of their advantages at once."

Half the first day was gone, swallowed by emergency triage, bucket brigades, and the bitter reek of scorched timbers still drifting from the smoking ruin of the east wing. Rhys moved with deliberate, painful slowness, spreading what tiny fragments remained of the burned archive across the scarred surface of the mahogany table. Every single leaf of vellum was blackened at the margins, curled and brittle from the alchemical heat that had consumed centuries of our shared history in a matter of minutes.

She did not have the courage to bring a box of erotica to the mansion. Even against her will, she agreed to burn all the books. She didn't have any container for them. There was no place for erotica in her dad's mansion nor in Gideon's house. And it hurt a lot. Her babies were rejected and she felt like being rejected also by both parties. She really loves those books and yet she is now outside Gideon's house, watching a box of erotica being eaten by fire.