“You’ve been eating restaurant food for almost two hundred years?” she asked, laughing.
“On and off. There were periods of intensive cooking. Usually after watching someone nearly die from food poisoning.”
“That’s the most Bastien reason to learn cooking I’ve ever heard.”
Around ten-thirty, Delphine glanced at the clock on his mantle and stood with visible reluctance. “I should get going. Early day tomorrow.”
“Walk you home?” he asked.
“Always.”
They left the apartment together, descending the narrow stairs into the Quarter’s evening embrace. The temperature had dropped to something almost comfortable—low eighties instead of the oppressive nineties. The humidity had lifted enough that breathing didn’t feel like drinking the air.
They walked at a leisurely pace, in no hurry to end the evening. Bastien found himself hyperaware of Delphine beside him—the rhythm of her steps matching his, the occasional brush of her arm against his when they had to navigate around tourists clustered on the sidewalk.
Street lamps cast warm pools of light across the cobblestones. Someone played saxophone three blocks away, the notes carrying sweet and melancholy—not performing for tips, just playing for the love of it. The Quarter had shifted into its evening personality: looser, louder, but with pockets of unexpected quiet in the residential blocks they traversed.
“I love this city at night,” Delphine said quietly. “The way it feels alive but not aggressive. Like it’s inviting you to participate but won’t be offended if you just want to watch.”
“That’s a good description.”
“Do you ever think about leaving? Going somewhere else?”
“Sometimes. But then I walk through the Quarter on a night like this and I remember why I stayed.” He glanced at her. “The city gets under your skin. Makes everywhere else feel flat by comparison.”
“I know what you mean. I thought about taking jobs in other cities after grad school. Boston, New York, even San Francisco. But every time I visited somewhere else, I just wanted to come home.”
They stopped briefly at Jackson Square. The fountain reflected streetlight and moonlight in shifting patterns, watercatching illumination and throwing it back in liquid gold. A few people sat on benches—locals probably, thinking rather than photographing, present in the moment rather than trying to capture it.
Delphine moved to the fountain’s edge, trailing her fingers through the water. The motion was unconscious, sensual in its simplicity. She looked up at the cathedral beyond, its spires dark against the night sky.
“I didn’t realize how scared I was until it was over,” she said quietly. “Standing in that vault, speaking into that mirror while Gideon’s editing played on every surface. Knowing that the entire magical community was watching. Knowing they’d see the worst possible interpretation unless I could communicate clearly through all that distortion.”
Bastien moved to stand beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. “You were brave. Braver than you should have had to be.”
“I wasn’t alone.” She looked at him. Not whispered, not dramatic. Just true. “That made the difference. Knowing you were there. That if I fell, you’d catch me. Or if the network rejected us both, at least we’d face it together.”
The words hung between them, honest and vulnerable in a way that made Bastien’s throat tight. He wanted to tell her how much that meant—that she’d trusted him enough to stand in that altar chamber, that she’d spoken truth even when doing so risked everything, that her choice had validated two centuries of Charlotte’s work and his protection of it.
But sometimes the most important things were too large for words. So he just said, “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Thank you for being worth it.”
They started walking again. Her arm brushed his more frequently, and neither of them pulled away. Just letting contacthappen naturally, testing the boundaries of proximity without forcing anything.
They walked down Decatur, past darkened shops and the occasional bar still open. Past street artists packing up for the night, past a couple arguing in French, past a group of tourists trying to figure out their map. The city continued its nightly routines around them, indifferent to the significance of what felt, to Bastien, like everything changing.
When they reached her building, she paused with her hand on the door. The streetlight above cast her face in warm gold. Her eyes were dark and serious.
“So. Normal dating. Starting when?”
“Tomorrow night?” he suggested. “Dinner. Somewhere with good food and not too much noise.”
“Perfect. It’s a date.”
They stood there for a moment, neither quite ready for the evening to end. The street around them was quiet—this residential block of the Quarter already settled for the night, the noise and energy concentrated blocks away where the bars stayed open until dawn.
Then Delphine stepped closer. Rested her hand on his chest briefly—ostensibly using him for balance while she unlocked the door, but the touch lasted longer than necessary. Brief warm contact that made his breath catch, her palm flat against his sternum where the locket rested beneath his shirt. For a heartbeat, he wondered if she could feel the ancient metal’s warmth. Feel the connection it preserved.
