Fumbled Book Novels & Stories

It was the one I had embroidered for him when I was obsessed with embroidery as a teenager. Eyeing Carl coolly, I declared, "It's over between us, Carl." I smacked his hand, knocking the handkerchief out of his grasp. It fell onto the candle on the table. Instantly, the flames devoured it. Carl fearlessly reached out to grab the handkerchief, but most of it had been reduced to ashes already. With a dazed expression, he looked at me and asked, "You won't even let me keep something to remember you by?"

As I placed it on top of my bed, my heart began racing with determination. I stretched out my hands towards the book and said as calmly as I could, "Quince!" One, two, five seconds ticked by, but there was no response, no clicking sound, not even a sign of the book unlocking. "What just happened?" I asked, my brows furrowed as I stared at it. After a while, I decided to try again. "Quince!" I spoke into the book, but there was still no response from the twin book. At that moment, the determination that had earlier settled in my heart began to unravel, giving way to desperation, and with every passing second, it intensified and threatened to overwhelm me.

Dust rose into the air, making me cough. Nothing about the shadows. Nothing about Milandra. Nothing at all. Just endless words about trade, laws, treaties, and royal births. I slammed another book shut. “This is pointless,” I muttered under my breath. My temper snapped. I turned and kicked the lower part of one of the shelves. Hard. The sound echoed like thunder through the empty study. And then—something moved. A soft thud broke the silence. I looked up just in time to see a book fall from the very top shelf. It hit my shoulder before dropping to the floor.

It was just that she couldn't find a bookmark earlier, and grabbing around. "No... no, it's not like that." She stammered an explanation, her fingers nervously twisting the hem of her shirt. "It's because... because this book is too thick, and I couldn't find a bookmark, and it just happened... happened that this card is quite stiff..." The more she explained, the messier it got, practically digging herself a deeper hole. William chuckled softly, a low, pleased sound resonating in his chest. He didn't continue to tease her. Instead, he slipped the card back into the book, but the position had changed—it was now marking the most brilliant page of her notes.

I'm so distracted by my thoughts that I don't notice that there's something just under my bed until I accidentally kick it. What was that? It was hard. I get on my knees and look. My eyes find a book, leather-bound and thick, yet small compared to the others. I know this book. It's the one that got me suspended for two weeks. The book about the Emberborns. I stare at the book in my hand, growing angrier with each passing second. Who the hell came into my room to put it here? These people are really trying to get me in trouble. If this is found here...

My fingers scrambled through corners, searching for the nameless, leather book on enchantments where I had hidden it days ago. Nothing. The space was entirely empty. I began pulling books from the surrounding shelves, my hands shaking as I tore through scroll after scroll, but the book was officially gone. Someone had deliberately removed it from the archives. I dropped my head against the wooden table, trying to mentally retrace the exact paragraph I had read, but to my own horror, the text was completely blank in my memory. I couldn't remember the exact page. I couldn't even recall the words I had read. Unable to find the book, I refused to yield to the numbness. I carried a tray of old pa

I was up in my bedroom, kneeling on the floor in front of my low bookshelf, trying to organize the last stack of financial manuals I hadn't finished sorting the night before. The door was propped open to let the cool breeze from the hallway come in. I lifted a heavy, thick volume on corporate risk models, but as I tried to slide it onto the cramped bottom shelf, the book twisted in my grip. It slipped out of my hands, sliding with a sharp thwack completely behind the heavy wooden desk against the wall. "Dammit," I muttered under my breath, leaning forward and straining my arm down into the narrow, dark gap between the desk and the wall. My fingers brushed the edge of the cover, but I couldn'

felt less like a role and more like a sentence. I climbed the rolling ladder to reach the higher shelves near the back corner. This area was thick with dust. It seemed like no one had touched these books in decades. As I shifted a heavy volume of Greek history, a thin, leather-bound book tipped over and slid behind the shelf. "Great," I whispered to myself.

"Hello. Would you like to bind with a life-swapping system and be my master? I can serve you well and help you swap out or exchange anything you want." "Get lost!" These systems only did a world of harm and no good!

No one ever did. As I reached to pick it up, Fidelia stomped her foot down on the spine of the book. My heart thundered in my chest. "Oops," she grinned. "So clumsy of me." My wolf stirred uncomfortably inside me, not with rage,but shame. Humiliation washed over me in a hot wave as I slowly stood, leaving the book under her foot. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me beg for it. Fidelia eventually kicked it toward me, as if tossing scraps to a mutt.