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)
Delphine opened a journal, spine cracking faintly. The ink was faded but clear.
“What begins as connection may become confinement. The mirrors echo. They distort. They demand.”
Bastien exhaled. He didn’t recognize the phrasing, but he knew the tone. Charlotte had been unraveling, afraid—not of Gideon, not yet. But of herself. Of what her magic could become.
“She wrote this two weeks before she stopped the project,” Delphine continued. “No more entries after that. Just silence.”
He took the journal, running a hand over the edge of the paper. He didn’t tell her how it mirrored his own fear now. How he’d watched a reflection smile with teeth too sharp or remain frozen when he moved away.
Delphine leaned on the desk. “The mirrors are connected to the tether, aren’t they?”
Bastien looked up. “Not directly.”
“But adjacent.”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“And you weren’t going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t going to lie. I just wasn’t ready to add another weight to your shoulders.”
She arched a brow. “You’ve seen what I can carry.”
He smiled. There it was—her fire.
“Actually,” he said, setting the folder on the desk between them. “I was hoping you could help me with something. Research.”
Delphine’s expression shifted from irritation to curiosity. She pulled the folder toward her, flipping it open to reveal the glyph sketches. For a moment she was silent, finger tracing the edge of one drawing without touching the paper itself.
“These are beautiful,” she said quietly. “Where did you find them?”
“Various locations in the Quarter. All from the 1700s, near as I can tell. I was hoping you might recognize the style. Maybe connect them to a specific artisan guild or family workshop.”
She pulled a magnifying glass from a drawer—not for the elderly or vision-impaired, but the kind serious archivists used when examining fine detail in historical documents. Held it over the first sketch, studying the line work with professional intensity.
“The curves here,” she said, tapping the glass above a spiral pattern. “That’s not standard decorative work. Too precise. Too intentional.” She moved to the next sketch. “And these symbols in the corners—they’re not maker’s marks. They’re . . . something else.”
Light caught the edge of the magnifying glass as she tilted it. For just a moment, refracted brilliance played across her face, and Bastien saw it—a shimmer around her eyes, gold-silver like sunrise on water, there and gone so quickly he might have imagined it.
But he hadn’t imagined it. The network recognized her. Even through second-hand documentation, even filtered through his deliberate simplification, Charlotte’s work called to Charlotte’s soul.
Delphine set the magnifying glass down, blinking. “That’s strange.”
“What is?”
“I just had the strangest feeling. Like déjà vu, but stronger. Like I’ve seen these before, or . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” Bastien’s voice was gentle. “The symbols do that sometimes. To people who are sensitive to . . . older things.”
“You mean magic.”
“I mean history with weight. The kind that leaves impressions.”
She studied him for a long moment, and he could see her deciding whether to push the question or let it rest. Finally, she returned to the sketches, but her expression had changed. More guarded. More aware that he was still keeping secrets.
“I’ve seen something similar,” she said. “In a collection of church records from St. Louis Cathedral. Decorative work commissioned for confessionals in 1765. Same style. Same attention to geometric precision.” She pulled out her phone, scrolling through reference photos she’d taken during previous research. “Here. Look.”
The image showed carved wood panels, each inset with small mirror fragments arranged in patterns that echoed the pentagonal structure Bastien had been mapping. Not identical, but close enough to confirm what he’d suspected—Charlotte’s network had extended beyond private property into public spaces, into places where the Church’s protection should have been absolute.
“These are from confessionals?” Bastien asked.
“Specifically from confessionals that were decommissioned in the 1840s. The records say they were removed because penitents reported . . . unusual experiences. Visions. Voices that weren’t their own.” Delphine’s finger hovered over one of the mirror fragments. “The Church blamed demonic influence, but the descriptions don’t match traditional possession accounts. It sounded more like people were experiencing memories that didn’t belong to them.”
“Echo bleed,” Bastien said quietly.
“What?”
“A phenomenon where reflective surfaces retain emotional or sensory impressions. Under the right conditions, those impressions can be experienced by others.” He met her eyes. “It’s rare. But when it happens in places designed for confession—for truth-telling and vulnerability—the effect can be particularly strong.”
Delphine was quiet, absorbing this. “You’re saying these mirrors were collecting confessions. Not just reflecting them. Storing them.”
“I’m saying someone designed them to do exactly that.”
“Charlotte Lacroix.”
“Most likely.”
“And now someone’s trying to reactivate that network.”
“Yes.”
He told her about the mirrors—some of it. How the reflections slipped, how memories lingered in glass, how nothing holy should bleed through that easily. He did not elaborate on the tether. Or about what Gideon might be trying to prove.