“Is it?” He met her eyes. “You’ve spent weeks helping me track a supernatural threat you couldn’t see. You’ve trusted me with information that sounds insane. You’ve put yourself in danger for an investigation that logically shouldn’t matter to you. Gideon would say that’s not choice—that’s the soul bond directing your actions beneath conscious awareness.”
Delphine’s jaw set. “And what would you say?”
“I’d say you made informed decisions with the information available. That you chose to get involved because you’re brave and curious and you don’t accept ignorance as protection.” He paused. “But I’m not unbiased. I want to believe your choices are your own because the alternative means I’ve been controlling you without meaning to.”
She was quiet for a long moment. The reading room’s lamp flickered once, the green shade casting shadows that moved wrong across the examination table.
“When?” she asked finally.
“When what?”
“When is Gideon planning this sermon? When does he try to force me to reject you publicly?”
Bastien pulled out his phone, opening the notes he’d been compiling over the past thirty-six hours. “The mirror anomalies have been escalating on a predictable curve. Based on the pattern, he’s building toward a convergence point—maximum network activation, every reflective surface in the Quarter synchronized to broadcast the same message.”
“Which is?”
“That love is the cage we build ourselves. That devotion is just another word for control. That what Charlotte and I thought was sacred was actually pathological.” He showed her the graphhe’d been tracking. “The convergence happens in thirty-six hours. Thursday night, when the network reaches critical mass.”
“Thirty-six hours.” Delphine looked at Charlotte’s notes again, at the broken circle that represented choice. “What happens if I don’t reject you? If I just . . . refuse to play his game?”
“He’ll force it.” Bastien had been working through the scenarios since yesterday. “He’s been building psychological pressure, using the mirrors to show distorted versions of our interactions. Making every moment of trust look like manipulation. Every protective instinct I have look like control. By Thursday night, he’ll have assembled enough evidence—taken out of context, distorted by presentation—that you’ll be confronted with a version of our partnership that looks like exactly what he claims.”
“And if I still don’t reject you?”
“Then he proves that soul bonds override rational judgment. That you’re choosing to stay despite clear evidence that you shouldn’t. Either way, he wins.”
Delphine set down her coffee. Folded her arms. “No.”
“No?”
“No, he doesn’t win either way.” She tapped Charlotte’s schematic, the broken circle that represented the exit point. “Because Charlotte didn’t build a cage. She built a network that preserves connection while honoring autonomy. And Gideon’s whole theory falls apart if we can prove the bond exists and I’m choosing to honor it with full awareness.”
Bastien felt something shift in his chest. “You’re choosing to honor it.”
“I’m choosing to understand it first.” She pulled the folder closer. “We have about thirty-six hours. So we use them. We find Charlotte’s primary documents—the ones she said she hid where only you would think to look. We document her actualdesign philosophy. And we prepare a counter-broadcast that shows what this network really is—preservation of choice across lifetimes, not enforcement of compliance.”
“You want to fight philosophy with philosophy.”
“I want to fight lies with truth.” She met his eyes. “Gideon’s been building his case using manipulated evidence. We respond with Charlotte’s actual intentions, documented in her own hand, witnessed by people who have no stake in our relationship.”
“The craftsmen’s testimonies,” Bastien realized. “The ones you showed me yesterday. Multiple independent witnesses saying Charlotte built this network to preserve autonomy.”
“Exactly.” Delphine was already pulling another ledger. “We find everything we can. We compile it. And when Gideon tries to broadcast his sermon Thursday night, we interrupt it with the truth.”
“That’s incredibly dangerous. If we hijack the network?—”
“Whenyou hijack the network,” she corrected. “Because I can’t do magic, remember? I’m just the researcher who found the documentation.” She smiled slightly. “You’re the one who’ll have to figure out the technical implementation.”
He wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her this was exactly the kind of plan that would get her hurt. But looking at her face—determined, focused, refusing to accept the role of victim—he recognized that arguing would just prove Gideon’s point. That trying to protect her from her own informed decisions was exactly the kind of control Gideon claimed soul bonds created.
“All right,” he said. “Show me what else Charlotte hid.”
They worked through the morning in focused silence. Delphine pulled documents while Bastien photographed pages, cross-referenced dates, built a timeline of Charlotte’s network construction. By noon, they’d assembled a clear picture:
Charlotte had designed the network over six years, from 1757 to 1763. Every component included safeguards. Everynode required active confirmation. The confession chambers were meant to preserve vulnerable truths—but only truths spoken willingly, with understanding of how the network would preserve them.
And in 1762, someone had begun corrupting the system. Intercepting confessions. Storing them in ways Charlotte hadn’t intended. Building a counter-narrative that would activate decades later, when enough time had passed that no one remembered her actual intentions.
