Christelle Dabos

In the gripping third volume of Christelle Dabos’s best-selling saga, Ophelia, the mirror-travelling heroine, finds herself in the magical city of Babel, guarding a secret that may provide a key both to the past and the future. After two years and seven months biding her time on Anima, her home ark, it is finally time to act, to put what she has discovered in the Book of Faruk to good use. Under an assumed identity she travels to Babel, a cosmopolitan and thoroughly modern ark that is the jewel of the universe, and where automata have taken over the most humble jobs from humans. But under the surface of this pacific and orderly ark social unrest stirs, fed by the memories of a fateful purge long ago, and the inhabitants’ growing fear of being replaced altogether. Will Ophelia’s talent as a reader suffice to avoid her being lured into a deadly trap by her ever more fearful adversaries? Will she ever see Thorn, her betrothed, again?

The Memory of Babel

IM GOING TO TEAR KY HAIR OUT THIS IS BOOK THREE IF A SLOWBURN

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Leaning with both fists on the table, he inflicted his most intense stare on her. "Are you really certain you have nothing to say to me?" Caught off guard, Ophelia just kept clinging to the door handle. A spark then flashed deep in Thorn’s eyes. “You know where to find me,” he said, indicating her to leave. 

Ophelia knew that one move from her would just make things worse for her. And yet she couldn't stop her hand from shooting out to grab hold of Thorn, force himn to turn around, stop him from going any further. She never reached him. A violent pain shot through her arm like an electric shock. Winded, Ophelia only just held onto the statue of the soldier to stop herself from falling. She stared wide-eyed behind her crooked glasses, as Thorn disappeared into the night with a sinister grating of steel, and without a backward glance. He had used his claws against her. 

Timidly, she raised her hand toward the shoulder, its joint rolling under the shirt with every knob rotation. She wanted all of Thorn's attention as she finally released the words so long trapped inside her: "I love you, too."

Thorn hadn't deliberately used his claws against her that last time. He hadn't even been aware of it. 

“But why?” Ophelia asked, impatiently. "Why inflict that on yourself? Why force yourself to defy forces that are beyond you? And don't talk to me again of a sense of duty. You owe nothing to the world. What's the world ever done for you?" Thorn's constant frown suddenly relaxed; but not enough to remove the furrow down his forehead. "You think it's for the world that I'm doing this?"

"Well I never," he said, "that's darned interesting!" "I am not the Other," Ophelia protested. "She is not the Other," Thorn growled. "You are not the Other?" Ambrose asked, with astonishment. "She is not, en effet," Lazarus asserted, with total conviction.

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