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)
“Play it again,” someone called from gathered crowd, but Delia shook her head, attention still focused on Bastien with intensity that tightened his chest with emotion.
“Some things are more beautiful when they only happen once,” she’d said, and he knew she wasn’t talking about music but about moments that gained meaning precisely because they couldn’t be repeated or preserved.
That touch of her fingers against piano keys, the way she made the ordinary transcendent through creative attention, the absolute presence she brought to everything she did—it echoed in him still, more than century later. Every time Delphine hummed without thinking, every time her hands moved with unconscious grace, he felt that same resonance reverberating through connection that had survived death and reincarnation.
Echo of her touch had become a permanent part of who he was, woven into his essence so thoroughly that separation would require fundamental alteration of his nature. Charlotte had designed their connection to ensure it always would be, creating magical frameworks that made forgetting impossible and remembering inevitable. She gifted him the ability to live this life.
The blade flared with sudden heat, jolting him back to the present crisis with force that left him gasping. Corrupted sigils were responding more aggressively to his proximity, Lacroix crests spinning faster and glowing brighter as tether energy built toward critical threshold. Gabriel Jr.’s howling from the cabin took on desperate quality that spoke of consciousness trapped between human reason and wolf instinct, and he could feel the feral glyph trace starting to spread beyond pack territory toward surrounding communities.
“Stand back,” he warned Tib and Roxy, then began delicate work of using the blade’s reflective surface to trace protective circle around corrupted stones.
Reflected wardwork was a technique Charlotte had taught him during their brief time together—a method of using a weapon’s properties to create barriers existing partially in physical world, partially in realm of spiritual energy. While he had acquired this blade long after Charlotte and Delia had passed, the magic worked the same with intention. The process required absolute precision, since errors in symbolic geometry could destabilize protective matrix and release contained forces in ways that would make current crisis seem trivial by comparison.
The Votum Aeternum was never forged for beauty. It was built for finality—designed to sever bonds that should never have been made, from blood oaths and soul tethers to the ancient bindings between realms. Its edge carried no enchantment to compel obedience, only the cold certainty that once it cut a connection, there was no going back. He’d begun carrying it in case he needed to sever the bond between himself and Delphine, but it would do now to create new wards and barriers for Gabriel Jr. All he needed to perform the magic was a strong instrument of magic like the blade to channel energy from.
The blade’s polished steel caught traces of moonlight even under phosphorescent sky, allowing him to draw protective patterns that glowed with inner light as they formed geometric configurations around corrupted sigil stones. Each symbol he traced created anchor points for a barrier designed to contain tether energy while preventing its spread to unprotected areas.
Pack resonance corruption fought against his efforts with intelligence that suggested conscious opposition rather than random magical discharge. Tether energy infecting the sigil stones didn’t want containment—it wanted to spread, to grow, to awaken every sleeping connection between past and present until boundaries between lives dissolved entirely and individual consciousness became part of larger pattern spanning centuries.
This was Charlotte’s will manifested through carefully prepared magical frameworks, her desperate desire to be remembered and reclaimed given form and power by Delphine’s potential awakening. Every protective measure he took fed more energy into system designed to make separation impossible and reunion inevitable.
The reflected wardwork held, but barely. Each protective symbol he traced with the blade’s reflection pushed back against corruption, creating spiritual tug-of-war that left him exhausted and shaking as mystical forces contested for dominance over pack territory. His hands cramped from maintaining precise geometric patterns while opposing energies tried to disrupt barrier formation.
The Lacroix crests on sigil stones began fading as cleansing energy spread through network of carved stone, their parasitic grip on pack protections loosening under sustained pressure from purification ritual. The spiraling patterns that had wound around original protective symbols started unwinding, releasing territorial markers from contamination that had threatened to transform sanctuary into conduit for forces beyond pack control.
Gabriel Jr.’s howling stopped abruptly, replaced by human sobbing that was somehow more disturbing than feral sounds. The unnatural silence that had gripped bayou began lifting as spiritual pressure eased, insects and night birds gradually resuming chorus that marked return to normal ecological patterns.
“It’s working,” Roxy breathed, touching sigil stone with cautious fingers that no longer picked up corrupted patterns. “They’re cooling down. Additional marks are gone. The stones feel like themselves again.”