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)
The main salon opened like a jewel box lined in midnight blue fabric. Here, the sigils were elaborate, worked in threads that caught and held light impossibly. As Bastien moved through the room, certain panels pulsed with faint luminescence whenever he passed.
“Fascinating work, isn’t it?” Valentin Rousseau materialized at his elbow, wine glass in hand. The scholar vampire had documented occult practices longer than most countries existed. “I’ve studied these pieces all evening. The glyphs behave like bloodline resonance mapping—they respond to genetic markers in ways that shouldn’t be possible.”
Bastien paused, his attention sharpening. “Genetic markers?”
“Precisely. Watch.” Valentin gestured toward an ornate panel near the fireplace. As they approached, embroidered sigils began glowing with soft amber light, pulsing in rhythm with something that felt like a heartbeat. “They respond to you, not me. Suggests attunement to specific bloodlines.”
“The Lacroix line,” Bastien murmured, realization dawning.
“Among others, I suspect. I’ve seen similar responses from three vampires tonight—all with documented connections to Charlotte’s descendants.” Valentin’s eyes glinted with scholarly excitement. “Someone has been tracking family trees across centuries.”
Bastien moved closer and the glow intensified. The sigils seemed to writhe within the fabric, forming patterns that blurred his vision if stared at directly. But beneath the resonance, he caught something else—a familiar scent, faint but unmistakable.
Delphine.
Not her physical presence, but her essence woven into the threads. Impossible. Delphine Leclair had never set foot here, probably never heard of Marcelline Renault. Yet her signature lingered like an echo of something not yet happened.
“You sense it too,” Valentin observed quietly. “The modern connection. These pieces were created generations ago, yet they respond to contemporary bloodlines as if designed with specific individuals in mind.”
A chill crept down Bastien’s spine. Charlotte’s preparations had been more extensive than imagined—reaching through time and reality itself.
The evening wore on with usual salon entertainments. Poetry readings by vampires who’d known Byron personally. Musical performances on instruments not played by living hands in decades. But Bastien found himself drawn repeatedly to the walls, studying patterns that shifted when he wasn’t looking directly.
Near midnight, he discovered the ribbon.
He’d wandered into a smaller chamber to examine medieval manuscripts but actually seeking space to think. The room was quieter, lit only by candles throwing dancing shadows across more fabric drapery. These were older, burgundy faded to deep wine red.
The ribbon was woven into a tapestry depicting a moonlit garden—so subtly integrated it appeared part of the original design. When Bastien’s fingers brushed it, the silk hummed with power. He looked closer, his enhanced sight picking out details invisible to mortal eyes.
A ritual-stitched glyph, worked into the weave with silver thread that gleamed in candlelight. The symbol was from Charlotte’s grimoire—a binding sigil designed to connect objects. But this wasn’t just any ribbon. The scent clinging to it told a story spanning generations.
He could trace it like a map. Charlotte’s hands first, her blood mixed with silver thread during creation. Through generations it had passed, from mother to daughter, each adding their essence to the weave until it became something more than fabric.
An ancestral beacon, designed to call across time to whoever would need it most.
The memory struck without warning. Suddenly he stood in another garden under another moon, watching Delia move through waltz steps with ethereal grace. She wore a ribbon like this in her dark hair, silver threads catching starlight as she spun in his arms.
“Do you think we’ll remember this?” she asked, face turned up to catch moonlight. “When we’re ancient and tired and the world has changed beyond recognition?”
“I’ll remember,” he promised, meaning it completely. “The way you look right now, the way stars reflect in your eyes, the way this ribbon shimmers in your hair.”
She laughed, sound like music made manifest. “Then I’ll leave it to my daughter, and she to hers, so even if we forget, something of this moment will remain.”
The vision faded, leaving him alone in the dim chamber with fingers still touching ancient silk. Now he understood. This wasn’t just a family heirloom—it was a promise kept across time, a thread connecting past to present to future in ways mortal minds couldn’t grasp.
Charlotte had embedded more than tracking magic in these artifacts. She’d woven intention itself into their structure, creating a network that would guide her bloodline toward reunion across any distance, any span of time. Every daughter who wore this ribbon, every generation that passed it down, had unknowingly contributed to a spell that transcended life and death boundaries.
“Found something interesting?”
Bastien turned to find Marcelline in the doorway, expression unreadable. “A family memento,” he said carefully.
“Ah, yes. The Leclair ribbon. I wondered when you’d notice.” She moved into the room with fluid grace, gaze fixed on the tapestry. “It came through circuitous routes—an estate sale in the 1960s. The family had no idea what they were selling.”
“But you did.”