Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
He pulled away. The feeling lingered on his palm, warm and bright.
“That’s an Echo Imprint,” Maman said. “Harmless, most times. Beautiful, even. But the ones in that vault you found—those weren’t made from hope. They were made from confession. From secrets and grief and guilt spoken directly into glass that was designed to hold them forever.”
“Charlotte stood in front of those mirrors and told them everything.” Bastien set the hand mirror down, but he could still feel his grandmother’s hope against his skin. An echo of an echo. “More than confessing. She was building something.”
“She was sealing pieces of herself inside them. Memories, yes. But also will. Intent. The part of consciousness that makes decisions.” Maman set the hand mirror down carefully, reverently. “Someone is teaching the mirrors to remember differently now. Not just emotion, but intent. Will. Active thought instead of passive impression.”
“The mirrors in that vault were storing everything.”
“Not just storing. Holding it active.” She looked at him over her reading glasses. “Who did Charlotte love most?”
The question hit harder than it should have. Bastien didn’t answer aloud. Didn’t need to.
“Then that’s who this is aimed at,” Maman said. “You. And through you . . .”
“Delphine.”
The name hung in the air between them. They both understood the stakes now.
“Among others.” Maman pulled the vault diagram. closer. “The Lacroix craftsmen knew how to forge glass that would accept confession. People stood in front of these mirrors and spoke their truths—sins, secrets, grief. The glass trapped it. Kept it safe from time.”
Bastien gathered the sketches into order. Vault entrance to altar, progression laid out clear. “Gideon isn’t trying to recreate the rituals.”
Maman waited.
“He’s trying to prove they were never divine.” Bastien had been assembling the pieces since the auction house. “Every letter, every message, every mirror he’s corrupted—it all points to one conclusion. That love isn’t sacred. That connection is control. That what Charlotte and I built was compulsion wearing devotion’s mask.”
“And if he proves it?”
“Then two centuries of choosing her across lifetimes becomes nothing but reflex. Magic playing at free will.” Bastien set down his pen. “A trick of glass.”
Maman’s expression didn’t change. “You believe that?”
“I believe Gideon does. Which means he’ll try to demonstrate it.”
“How?”
“By dismantling the bond. Showing it was illusion from the start.” Charlotte’s work, Charlotte’s blood, Charlotte’s certainty rendered in stone and glass—all of it pointing toward one conclusion. “If he’s right, she never chose me. I never chose her. We’ve been following a script written in mirror-forged ink.”
Maman was quiet for a long moment. Then: “You need to ward the addresses where the network connects. Ground it at the strongest points. Keep it from spreading faster than it already is.”
Bastien nodded. Tactical advice he could use.
“And you need to tell Delphine what’s happening.”
His hand stopped halfway to gathering the next sketch.
“You can’t protect her from everything by keeping her in the dark,” Maman said, her voice gentle but firm. “She’s already involved whether you want her to be or not.”
“If she knows too much—”
“If she knows too little, she won’t see danger until it’s already got her.” Maman leaned forward. “You think you protecting her by not telling her. But you just making sure she walks blind into whatever Gideon got planned.”
Bastien wanted to argue. Found he couldn’t. She was right, and they both knew it.
“You opened that locket yet?” Maman asked.
His hesitation told her everything.
She sighed. “Love that stays locked up stays safe. It also stays useless.”
The shop’s hand mirror cracked.
Not the one Maman had been holding—that remained safely on the table between them. A different mirror, sitting on a shelf across the room. Small and oval, silver frame tarnished with age.
The crack appeared without sound. Just a fracture line running through the glass, precise as if drawn with a ruler.
Both of them went still.
Maman stood and crossed to the shelf, moving carefully. She lifted the mirror down, held it up to the light. “This belonged to my grandmother. Her mother before that. Three generations in my family, never so much as a chip.”
Bastien joined her, examining the crack. Too precise to be accidental. Too deliberate in its placement—running straight through the center, dividing the surface into perfect halves.
He felt the presence behind it. Not Gideon directly. But attention. Will. Someone using the mirror network to observe, to listen, to learn.
“He knows you’re here,” Maman said quietly. “Knows you’re learning.”
Bastien met his own eyes in the fractured glass. Two reflections now, slightly offset, watching him from either side of the crack. “Good. Let him watch me come for him.”
But internally, the calculation had already shifted. If Gideon could observe through random mirrors—mirrors in Maman’s shop, mirrors that predated this entire conflict—then the network’s reach was wider than he’d estimated. Nowhere was safe. Not here, not his apartment, not the Archive where Delphine worked.
Maman wrapped the mirror in dark cloth and set it aside. “He knows you found the vault. Knows what you know now. He’ll move faster.”