Later that day, after the library had closed and they were alone, he brought out a special pen. He opened the manuscript to the dedication page, which had been left blank.
“I couldn’t write it until you’d read it,” he explained.“I needed to know it was worthy of you.”
And there, in the quiet heart of the library that had brought them together, he inscribed the words in his sharp, slanted script:
For Élise,
Who is the silence and the song.
Without you, these pages would have remained forever buried.
Chapter 26:
The Agent
The manuscript, now bearing its dedication, became a tangible presence in the library. It sat on Luc’s table, a silent testament to his triumph. But a new kind of restlessness took hold of him. The creative battle was won; now came the professional one.
“I can’t send this into the void of a publisher’s slush pile,” he confessed to Élise one afternoon, his hand resting protectively on the stack of paper.“It needs an advocate. It needs… an agent.”
The world of agents was as foreign to Élise as the intricacies of architectural law. But she was a researcher at heart. While Luc fretted, she began to work. She spent her evenings scouring databases, reading industry reports, and cross-referencing authors she admired with their representatives. She compiled a list—not of the biggest, most powerful agents, but of those known for their literary taste, for championing difficult, beautiful books.
She presented him with a neatly typed list of five names.“This one,” she said, pointing to the third name,“Sophie Mercier. She represented Jean-Baptiste Lemaire’s The Glass City. It has a similar… architectural sensibility to your work.”
Luc looked from the list to her, his expression a mixture of amazement and affection.“You are a marvel.”
He spent a week crafting the perfect query letter. Élise acted as his first editor, her librarian’s eye catching clumsy phrasing andsharpening his metaphors. Finally, the emails were sent. The waiting began.
It was a different kind of silence now, fraught with hope and a new, specific anxiety. Days passed. Then a week. Rejections trickled in—polite, form-letter dismissals. With each one, Luc’s shoulders slumped a little more. The towering confidence he’d had after finishing the book began to erode.
“Perhaps it’s too quiet,” he muttered after the fourth rejection.“Perhaps Camille was right. The market wants thrills, not ghosts.”
“The right person will see it,” Élise insisted, her own faith unwavering.“They have to.”
Two days later, as Luc was listlessly sketching in the margins of his notebook, his phone vibrated on the table. He glanced at it, then froze. The screen showed an unknown Paris number.
He answered, his voice cautious.“Allô?”
Élise watched, her breath held, as his expression shifted from wariness to stunned disbelief.
“Yes… yes, this is he,” he said, standing up from his chair.“Sophie Mercier? Yes, I… of course.”
Élise’s hand flew to her mouth.
He listened for a long time, his eyes wide, occasionally meeting Élise’s across the room and conveying a dawning euphoria.
“You… you felt that?” he finally managed, his voice thick with emotion.“That’s… that’s exactly what I was trying to do.” He listened again.“Tomorrow? Yes. Two o’clock is perfect. I’ll be there. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
He ended the call and simply stood there, the phone still clutched in his hand, looking utterly shell-shocked.
“Luc?” Élise whispered, coming around the counter.
He turned to her, a slow, radiant smile spreading across his face, so bright it seemed to illuminate the entire dim library.
“She loved it,” he said, his voice cracking.“She said it was‘a stunning, meditative masterpiece.’She wants to represent me. I have a meeting with her tomorrow.”
The joy that erupted in Élise’s chest was so fierce it was almost painful. She let out a small, choked cry of happiness and threw her arms around him. He lifted her off the ground, spinning her once in a circle, his laughter a rich, joyful sound that echoed off the bookshelves.
In that moment, surrounded by the stories of centuries, their own story took a monumental leap forward. The manuscript was no longer just a stack of papers; it was a key. And Sophie Mercier was about to help them unlock the door to the next chapter.
