Bastien kept his eyes forward and didn’t look back.
Chapter
Eight
Bastien sat in his car outside the Archive, fingers resting loosely on the wheel, though the engine had gone cold ten minutes ago. The street outside was quiet—the kind of quiet New Orleans only offered in short bursts, between the echo of footsteps and the inevitable saxophone that would start up two blocks away.
He hadn’t answered Delphine’s texts, not out of malice, but because he hadn’t known how. What did you say to someone who looked at you with wonder while you remembered the weight of her body in your arms—lifetimes ago? How did you explain that the girl she used to be had traced constellations on his shoulder with fingertips dipped in candlelight?
The truth, Bastien thought, was often too heavy for words.
The folder on the passenger seat held sketches of the glyphs from the pentagonal pattern—simplified versions that wouldn’t trigger recognition in someone without training but detailed enough that an archivist might identify their origins. He’d spent the morning copying Charlotte’s original notations, removing the power signatures, reducing her complex mirror-binding theory to something that looked like historical curiosity rather than active magic.
A cover story. Research into decorative metalwork from colonial New Orleans. Trademarks used by artisan guilds. Nothing threatening. Nothing that would reveal how the same symbols now appeared in corrupted mirrors across the Quarter, or that someone was using them to rebuild Charlotte’s network for purposes she’d never intended.
He stepped out into the warm dusk and climbed the stairs.
Inside, the Archive buzzed with the low hum of ancient wiring and air conditioning working too hard. Delphine was behind the front desk, framed by shelves and the soft lamplight that seemed to follow her. She looked up, eyes wide, mouth pressed into a line that said she wasn’t sure whether to hug him or hit him.
“You finally decided to come,” she said.
“I never stopped intending to.”
Her gaze didn’t soften, but she stepped aside. “I found more journals. Charlotte’s. Some of the pages are encrypted, but the rest . . .” She pulled a small stack from a drawer and laid them out like offerings. “I think she started the mirror network with full belief in what it could be. But then something changed. She wrote this.”
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. Howhe’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.”
