Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“I—” She started to talk, then stopped abruptly, confusion replacing certainty as the moment passed and present reality reasserted its hold. Her eyes clouded over with the familiar uncertainty he'd grown accustomed to seeing, the deep awareness fading like dreams at dawn. “I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. I must have been dreaming.”
The ritual circle's energies were fully contained now, the breach sealed through their combined efforts and the Votum Aeternum's stabilizing influence. Around them, the night was slowly returning to more normal patterns—street lamps flickering back to steady illumination, the air clearing of temporal distortions, the oppressive weight of conflicting realities beginning to lift. In the distance, he could hear sirens approaching as human authorities finally responded to reports of the disturbance near the river, though they would find nothing more immediately threatening than an unconscious tourist and evidence of seriously misguided magical experimentation.
The final ward clicked into place with a sound like crystal settling into perfect harmony. Bastien pressed his palm against the cypress bark, feeling the ancient tree's approval as the sigil he'd just carved began to glow with soft silver light. Around him, the bayou held its breath as the ward network activated for the first time in three centuries, connections sparking to life across New Orleans like neurons firing in a vast neural web.
The protective grid Charlotte had designed was finally complete.
He could feel each individual ward pulsing with contained power—sigils hidden in cemetery gates, runes carved beneath church foundations, protective circles anchored in parks and gardens throughout the city. Every point of spiritual vulnerability she'd identified was now shielded, every weak spot in the Veil reinforced by magical workings that would endure for generations. The network hummed with contained energy, a living system that would adapt and strengthen over time.
Bastien helped Delphine to her feet, noting how she swayed slightly and looked around the ritual site with genuine bewilderment rather than the profound understanding she'd displayed mere moments earlier. Whatever she'd experienced during the recognition bleed was already being processed as a dream or hallucination, filed away with all the other fragments of memory that Charlotte's design kept safely below the threshold of conscious awareness.
“What happened?” she asked, accepting his steadying hand without the wariness she'd shown in recent weeks. “I was walking home from work, and then I felt like I needed to come here, but I can't remember why. Did someone get hurt?”
The truth could have been told then and there. He could have explained about soul tethers and reincarnation, about the breach that had called to her sleeping memories and the moment of recognition that had blazed between them when those memories briefly surfaced. She was already confused enough that additional strangeness might have seemed like a natural extension of whatever supernatural forces had drawn her to this place.
Instead, he said, “There was an accident. Someone got hurt trying to perform a ritual they didn't understand. You must have heard the disturbance and come to help.”
The lie came easily after decades of practice protecting mortals from truths they weren't ready to accept. Watching her nod gratefully at having a simple explanation for her presence in a place she couldn't remember choosing to visit, he knew he'd made the right choice. She needed time to process what had happened on a subconscious level before her conscious mind could safely handle the full implications.
But something fundamental had changed between them. The tether connecting their souls was stronger now, stabilized by the ritual but also more active than it had been since he approached her in New Orleans after watching from afar so long. He could feel her presence at the edge of his consciousness like warmth from a fire in the next room, constant and comforting in a way it hadn't been before. The recognition bleed had created new pathways between their souls, channels that would make future memories easier to access when the time was finally right for full revelation.
As they walked away from the river together, leaving the ritual site to be cleaned up by more conventional authorities, Bastien allowed himself to hope that perhaps Charlotte's elaborate design was working exactly as she'd intended. That love could indeed transcend death, that meaningful connections could survive the dissolution of individual identities, that some bonds were strong enough to endure across multiple lifetimes of separation and reunion.
The recognition bleed had shown him tantalizing glimpses of what was possible between them—moments when the barriers between past and present dissolved completely, revealing the eternal nature of their connection. Now he would have to trust in Charlotte's wisdom and wait for Delphine's memories to surface naturally, in their own time, without the kind of intense magical pressure that had triggered tonight's crisis.
The weight he'd carried since 1728 lifted from his shoulders like a physical burden being removed. For the first time in centuries, he had no outstanding magical obligations, no incomplete mystical duties demanding his attention. Charlotte's work was done. Her vision for New Orleans' protection was reality.