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)
“I need sleep for about twelve hours,” she agreed. Her voice came out rougher than normal, throat raw from speaking through the broken circle mirror. “And food. And to not think about magic for at least twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll walk you home.”
She nodded, too tired to argue.
They walked in silence through the Quarter. Not uncomfortable silence—just the quiet of two people who’d survived something significant and needed time to process it separately before trying to understand it together. Bastien noticed details without commenting on them. The way Delphine favored her right leg slightly, muscles protesting from standing in one position for forty-five minutes. The way she kept her hands loose at her sides, avoiding clenching them into fists that would aggravate whatever strain she’d developed from gripping the altar glyphs.
When they reached her apartment building, she paused with her hand on the door. Turned to look at him. “Thank you. For tonight. For holding the anchor. I know that cost you.”
He glanced at his bandaged palms. “It was worth it.”
“Still.” She studied his face, her expression unreadable in the streetlight. “We should talk. Soon. About what happens next. But not tonight. Tonight I just need to sleep.”
“Tomorrow,” Bastien said. “Or the day after. Whenever you’re ready.”
She smiled, tired but genuine. “Goodnight, Bastien.”
“Goodnight.”
The door closed behind her. Bastien stayed on the stoop for a moment, breathing the heavy night air. The Quarter hummed around him—music, voices, the perpetual energy of a city that never quite slept. But underneath it all, the mirror network pulsed quietly. Stable. Functional. Charlotte’s design operating as intended.
They’d done it. Stabilized the network. Purged Gideon’s corruption. Preserved what Charlotte had built.
And Delphine had made her choice in front of the entire magical community. Had seen Gideon’s worst interpretation of their relationship and chosen to stay anyway. To try.
What that meant—what they would build from here—remained uncertain. But tonight, exhausted and sore and depleted, Bastien felt something he hadn’t felt in decades.
Hope.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Bastien walked home alone through streets that had emptied somewhat. Past midnight now, even Bourbon Street’s energy had dimmed to a manageable hum. Street cleaners worked their way down the sidewalks with industrial-sized push brooms, clearing the debris of another night. The smell of garbage and spilled alcohol mixed with night-blooming jasmine from someone’s courtyard garden.
His burned palms throbbed with each pulse of his heartbeat. Burns that would blister by morning. His throat felt raw. His muscles ached from maintaining position at the altar. The celestial resonance that let him interface with magical systems felt depleted—would probably take a week to fully recover. He’d pushed himself harder tonight than he had in decades.
But the network was stable. He could feel it beneath the city as he walked—the steady rhythm of Charlotte’s design functioning properly. Gold and silver frequencies woven together, no more purple corruption. Preserved for whoever needed it next.
And Delphine had stood at that altar and spoken truth through a mirror that amplified honest choice. Had broadcast her decision to honor the bond, not because it forced her but because she wanted to understand what they had. Because she was choosing to try.
Bastien stopped at the corner of Royal and St. Philip, looking up at the iron lacework on a second-story balcony. The metalwork cast intricate shadows in the streetlight. Beautiful in its complexity, each curve and spiral deliberate.
Charlotte had approached magic the same way—with precision and care, building systems that were elegant in their function. She’d been right about everything. Connection could exist without compulsion. Choice could be preserved even in the presence of a bond that transcended lifetimes.
And Delphine had proven it. Had chosen clearly, with full awareness, while confronting the worst possible interpretation of what that choice meant.
He started walking again. A cat darted across the street ahead of him, disappearing into an alley. Someone played piano in an upstairs apartment, the notes carrying through an open window. Chopin, melancholy and beautiful.
But before he could go home, before he could rest, there was something he needed to verify. Someone he needed to confirm had truly left.
Bastien extended his awareness through the mirror network, searching for the frequency that had been fighting against Charlotte’s design for weeks. He let his consciousness sink into the glass veins beneath the street, following the paths of gold and silver light, looking for any trace of purple corruption that might still be hiding in the system.
Nothing.
Gideon’s signature was gone from the city completely. Not dead—Bastien would have felt that, the way you felt a string snap under tension. Not severed either, which left a specific kind of ragged edge in the network. Just absent.
But absence wasn’t the same as resolution. Bastien needed to see what remained. Needed to understand what happened to a man who’d built his entire identity around a philosophy that had just been publicly, devastatingly disproven.
He changed direction, heading toward the Marigny. The address had been in the doppelgänger’s fractured reflection—a glimpse of Gideon’s workspace that Bastien had filed away for later investigation. Esplanade Avenue, a renovated shotgun house divided into rental units, the kind of place that attracted artists and academics who needed affordable space in the Quarter’s orbit.