He climbed the exterior stairs two at a time. The reading room door was unlocked, lamplight visible through the frosted glass panel. She’d beaten him here.
Delphine looked up when he entered, and her smile carried relief mixed with something that might have been nervousness. “You came.”
“I said I would.” He set both coffees on the table between the stacks of documents she’d already pulled. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I thought you might decide it was safer to work alone.” She reached for the coffee, fingers wrapping around the cup with the kind of gratitude that suggested she’d been here longer than the Archive’s official opening time. “Thanks for this. And for not doing that.”
“Working alone?”
“Deciding I’m better off ignorant.” She took a long drink, then gestured at the materials spread across the examination table. “I pulled everything dated between 1760 and 1763. Property records, correspondence, expense ledgers. There’s also a folder of loose papers the Archive acquired in the 1960s—personal notes, sketches, what looks like experimental documentation.”
Bastien moved to stand beside her, close enough to see the same pages. The proximity felt natural now, after yesterday. After the vault. After walking her back to the Archive and making a promise they’d both known mattered more than simple research collaboration.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked.
She opened the folder of loose papers first. “Here. Because these aren’t official documents. These are Charlotte’s actual working notes—the things she wrote for herself, not for anyone else to see.”
The first page showed a diagram. A pentagonal shape with nodes marked at each point and lines connecting them in patterns that looked almost like circuitry. Bastien recognized it immediately—the mirror network’s basic structure. But around the margins, Charlotte had written notes in her precise handwriting.
Consent must be continuous. Each node requires active confirmation.
No bond without choice. No preservation without permission.
The network responds to will, not compulsion. Design must reflect this.
Delphine read over his shoulder. “She was building choice into the structure itself. Not as an afterthought—as the foundation.”
“That’s Charlotte.” Bastien felt something tight in his chest loosen slightly. “She understood that love without autonomy wasn’t love. It was possession.”
The next page showed more technical specifications. Mirror placement, resonance frequencies, the specific angles required for proper energy flow. But interspersed with the measurements were more philosophical notes.
B. worries this will trap us. Must prove it liberates instead.
Each lifetime offers exit. Network holds connection but never forces it.
Truth: the bond exists. Honesty: either soul can sever it. That’s what makes it sacred.
“She knew you were worried,” Delphine said quietly. “About the network becoming a cage.”
“We argued about it for months.” The memory was clear despite two centuries of separation. “I told her that building permanence into something as changeable as human connection was asking for disaster. She said I was confusing stability with stagnation.”
“Who was right?”
“Both of us.” He turned to the next page. “She built something that could survive death. I was right that it would outlast us. But she was right that it wouldn’t trap us—look at this.”
He pointed to a schematic showing the network’s central node. A mirror embedded at the convergence point, surrounded by smaller mirrors in a specific arrangement. But Charlotte haddrawn a symbol over the central position—a circle broken by a deliberate gap.
Exit point. Either participant can activate. Severs bond permanently if chosen with full awareness.
Delphine leaned closer. “She built in an escape route.”
“She built in choice.” Bastien traced the broken circle with his finger. “The network preserves connection, but it doesn’t enforce it. Either of us could have walked away—in any lifetime—by activating this sequence.”
“Did you ever consider it?”
The question was asked lightly, but it mattered. He could feel the weight behind it.
“No,” he said honestly. “Not once. Because she was right—what we had wasn’t a cage. It was anchor. Something steady in a world that kept changing.”
