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)
Her letter wasn’t romantic confession to an imaginary being. It was a memorial echo of every truth he’d been too protective to share, every moment when her intuition had come close enough to reality to make him wonder if love truly could transcend the boundaries between mortal and divine.
She’d died knowing she was loved by both man and guardian angel, never understanding they were the same soul wearing different aspects.
His phone rang, cutting through emotional chaos with Maman Brigitte’s familiar voice.
“Boy, you sound like someone whose world just got turned inside out. What happened?”
“She found a letter. Written by Delia in 1906, addressed to her guardian angel. Never sent.” His voice cracked on the last words. “She knew, Maman. Not consciously, but her soul knew. She felt my protection, recognized the connection between earthly love and divine guardianship.”
“Ah.” Maman’s voice carried understanding born of experience with love complicated by supernatural circumstances. “She was writing to you without knowing it. Addressing letters to the being who walked beside her every day.”
“She described feeling watched over, protected, guided by forces she couldn’t name. She connected that protection to our romantic relationship, wondered if they might spring from the same source.” The revelation threatened to drive him to his knees. “Her intuition came so close to truth that she was practically seeing through my human facade.”
“And now?”
“Now her reincarnation reads her own words aloud, hums the same melody, carries the same soul through a different lifetime. And I still don’t know whether revealing the truth would liberate her or destroy any chance we might have.”
Maman was quiet for long minutes, the kind of contemplative silence that preceded wisdom earned through decades of watching supernatural relationships navigate impossible circumstances.
“Let me ask you something, Bastien. What weighs heavier—her memory of intuitive recognition from that lifetime, or her ignorance of what you meant to each other?”
He’d been so focused on protecting Delphine from revelations about reincarnation and soul-binding magic that he’d never considered whether knowledge might be liberation rather than burden.
“I don’t know.”
“Then maybe it’s time to find out. Some secrets eat the keeper alive, leaving nothing but regret and missed opportunities. Others preserve what needs preserving until the right moment for revelation arrives.” Her voice carried absolute certainty. “But reading her own words, hearing her voice through different lips, watching her unconsciously repeat gestures that connected you across lifetimes—that’s the universe telling you the moment has come.”
“What if the truth destroys everything?”
“What if hiding it destroys the everything you already have?”
The line went dead, Maman never stating why she’d called in the first place, leaving him on Ursulines Street with choices that would determine whether love could survive revelation or whether protection would prove to be just another form of separation.
Inside the Archive, Delphine was probably still studying Delia’s letter, trying to understand historical spiritual practices that represented her own soul’s deepest intuitions. She deserved to know that the woman who’d written those words was herself, that the guardian angel she’d addressed was him, that the connection she’d sensed was real and had survived more than a century of separation.
Bastien straightened his shoulders and turned back toward the Archive entrance. Whatever the risk, whatever the consequences, Delphine would make her choices with full knowledge of what they meant.
He’d failed to trust Delia with revelations that could have validated her deepest intuitions. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
The Archive door opened to the scent of old paper and accumulated wisdom, to Delphine’s voice asking if he felt better, to the weight of secrets that had been kept too long.
“There’s something else you need to know about that letter,” he said, settling back into his chair with resolve that felt like armor against cosmic forces. “About who wrote it, and who it was meant for.”
Her gaze—Delia’s gaze, Charlotte’s gaze, the same soul looking at him across lifetimes—met his with curiosity that would soon become recognition.
“Tell me,” she said, and her voice carried the same determined courage that had once intuited divine protection without understanding its source.
Outside, afternoon light slanted through Spanish moss in patterns that reminded him of fog on a rooftop where truths had been spoken that still echoed across more than a century of loss and hope.
This time, perhaps, intuition would be validated rather than dismissed.
Nine
The scent trail led Bastien through the Quarter’s back streets like a thread of malice woven through humid night air. Burned copper and jasmine—the signature left by whoever was crafting the corrupted glyphs spreading through the city. Each breath carried traces of ancient magic twisted beyond recognition.
It had been hardly a day since he’d left Camille Landry convulsing in her hospital bed. Barely any time at all following residue that clung to surfaces and lingered in shadows, growing stronger as darkness deepened around him.
The signature ended at a narrow alley between Dauphine and Bourbon, where wrought iron balconies created shadows overhead. No street signs marked the passage. But Bastien’s senses detected commerce conducted outside legal boundaries.