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 know where to get everything,” Delphine interrupted, then looked startled by her own certainty. “I mean, my research has covered historical procurement methods for ritual components. There are suppliers who maintain the old traditions.”
Maman Brigitte's eyebrows rose. “Child, you just listed sources that most practitioners take decades to discover.”
“Lucky guess?” Delphine's smile was uncertain, but Bastien caught the flash of something else in her expression. Knowledge trying to surface through layers of forgetting.
The alliance meeting continued for another hour, covering tactical details and contingency plans with military thoroughness. Each faction would handle specific aspects of the assault, using their unique abilities to maximum advantage. The coordination was impressive, professional, and completely dependent on strategic intelligence that Delphine provided with unnatural accuracy.
When the meeting finally adjourned, representatives filed out with the quiet confidence of people who had done this before. Only Maman Brigitte lingered, her dark eyes studying Delphine with speculation that made Bastien's protective instincts flare.
“Walk with me, child,” she said to Delphine. “There are things we should discuss.”
Delphine gathered her research materials, moving with efficiency that spoke to organizational habits developed over lifetimes. “What kind of things?”
“The kind that might save your life when reality starts bending around you.”
They left together, Maman's voice drifting back as they descended the stairs toward the street. Bastien remained in the empty conference room, staring at the maps and photographs that showed exactly how to destroy the Maestro's defenses.
His phone buzzed with a text from Marcus:
The mortal impresses even old blood. Where did you find her?
Another message followed immediately from Evangeline:
She tastes of older magic than her years should allow. Curious.
Father Miguel's text was more direct:
That woman has been touched by forces that predate the Church. Watch her carefully.
Bastien deleted all three messages without responding. They were seeing what he had tried to deny for weeks—Delphine was remembering. Not consciously, not completely, but enough to access knowledge that belonged to previous lifetimes. Her strategic insights came from Charlotte's experience with supernatural warfare. Her intuitive understanding of binding magic reflected skills developed across centuries.
The awakening was accelerating, triggered by proximity to the very conflicts that had defined her past lives. Tomorrow's battle would push her even further toward full awareness, possibly beyond the point where he could protect her from the consequences of remembering everything she had lost.
He gathered the tactical materials, noting how Delphine's handwriting had grown progressively more confident throughout the meeting. Her notes were precise, organized, written in a style that reminded him of Charlotte's academic documentation. Even her penmanship was changing, subtle shifts that spoke to personality traits reasserting themselves after decades of dormancy.
Outside the windows, afternoon light painted the French Quarter in shades of gold and amber. Somewhere in those narrow streets, vampires and fae were beginning their preparations for dawn. Weapons blessed and sharpened, spells prepared and tested, alliances confirmed through bonds that went deeper than mere convenience.
And in the center of it all, Delphine was discovering abilities that should have been impossible while walking steadily toward revelations that might destroy the careful balance he had spent twenty years maintaining.
Bastien locked the conference room and made his way upstairs, where the normal sounds of tourist activity created a comforting illusion of mundane reality. But he could feel the supernatural tension building like pressure before a storm. Tomorrow would bring confrontation, violence, and revelations that would change everything.
The only question was whether Delphine would survive the awakening that seemed increasingly inevitable.
His phone buzzed one more time. A text from an unknown number.
She remembers more than she admits. Even to herself. Be ready.
The message deleted itself before he could respond, leaving no trace except the cold certainty that tomorrow would force choices he had been avoiding for too long.
Dawn was twelve hours away. Twelve hours to prepare for a battle that would determine not just the Maestro's fate, but Delphine's future as well.
Bastien stepped into the afternoon crowd and began making his own preparations for tomorrow's storm.
Twenty-Three
Dawn bled crimson across the Garden District as Bastien's alliance closed on Maestro's stronghold. The converted opera house squatted between antebellum mansions like a tumor, its Victorian facade warped by decades of fae glamour. Iron shutters that had once protected against hurricanes now pulsed with protective wards.
“Positions,” Bastien whispered into his radio. Roxy’s wolf pack emerged from the morning mist, thirty shapes moving with predatory grace through the mansion's gardens. Vincent's vampire coven materialized on rooftops, their pale forms stark against terra cotta tiles. Maman Brigitte's practitioners held the perimeter, salt circles and protective arrays glowing faintly in the pre-dawn light.
The plan was surgical. Compartmentalized. Each group knew their role.
Bastien checked his watch. Six-fifteen. In exactly three minutes, they would discover if three centuries of supernatural politics could unite against a common threat.
“Vincent,” he murmured. “Status?”
“East and west approaches secured. Eight blood-drinkers on overwatch, four ready for breach entry.” Vincent's voice carried through the comm with aristocratic precision. “Maestro's inner circle is still sleeping. Fae don't expect pre-dawn assault.”