Page 67 of Curse in the Quarter
“She loved someone she wasn’t supposed to love. Andwhen the world tried to tear them apart, she chose to trust in something stronger than death itself.”
Delphine’s breath caught. “The echoes.”
“The echoes,” he confirmed.
They sat in silence for several minutes, the weight of unspoken truths heavy between them. Charlotte’s journal lay open on the desk, its pages filled with the careful documentation of a love that had transcended every obstacle fate could devise.
Finally, Delphine reached for the journal again, turning to a page near the back. “There’s one more entry I want to read to you,” she said. “It’s dated just a few days before . . .” She paused, consulting her notes. “Before Charlotte disappeared.”
Bastien’s chest tightened. He knew which entry she’d found without needing to see it. Charlotte’s final message, written the night before she’d attempted the ritual that would bind their souls across time.
“'Tonight I begin the working that will either save us or destroy us both,'” Delphine read, her voice steady despite the slight shake in her hands. “'B begged me not to attempt it, but he doesn’t understand—some loves are worth any risk, any price. If this succeeds, we will find each other again and again, lifetime after lifetime, until the stars themselves burn out. If it fails . . .'”
She paused, squinting at the faded ink. “'If it fails, at least I will have tried. At least I will have proven that some connections are stronger than death, stronger than time, stronger than any force that seeks to divide hearts that recognize each other across eternity.'”
The words stilled his heart in his chest. He remembered Charlotte writing that entry, her hand steady despite the magnitude of what she was about to attempt. She’d been socertain, so convinced that love alone would be enough to overcome any obstacle.
“'I have prepared everything,'” Delphine continued reading. “'The locket that will carry our connection forward, the words that will bind my soul to his across every incarnation, the hope that love, once true, can never truly die. Tomorrow night, beneath the dark moon, I will speak the words that will echo across centuries. And if the universe has any justice, he will hear them and remember.'”
Delphine looked up from the journal, her eyes wide with something approaching understanding. “She was planning something dangerous, wasn’t she? Something that would change everything.”
“Yes,” Bastien said quietly. “She was planning to love so fiercely that not even death could silence it.”
“And did it work?”
The question hung in the air between them, loaded with implications that made Bastien’s soul ache. How could he tell her that yes, it had worked beyond Charlotte’s wildest dreams? That the woman sitting across from him was proof of magic so powerful it had rewritten the laws of death itself?
“Sometimes,” he said finally, “the most powerful magic is the kind that doesn’t announce itself. The kind that works so quietly, so perfectly, that it seems like coincidence.”
Delphine closed the journal and set it carefully on the desk between them. The late afternoon sun had shifted again, casting the room in golden light that reminded Bastien painfully of candlelit evenings in Charlotte’s chambers.
“I keep thinking about what you said earlier,” she murmured. “About some echoes being dangerous. Do you think Charlotte’s echo could be one of those? Could lovingsomeone that intensely, across that much time, become something harmful?”
The question revealed an intuition that made Bastien’s chest tighten with both hope and fear. She was beginning to understand the weight of what Charlotte had set in motion, the responsibility that came with a love designed to transcend natural law.
“Any power can become dangerous if it grows beyond what can be controlled,” he said carefully. “Love that refuses to accept loss, that demands to persist beyond all reason . . . it can become obsession. It can trap souls in cycles they were never meant to repeat.”
“Is that what you think happened to Charlotte? That her love became a trap?”
Bastien met her eyes, seeing Charlotte’s fierce determination reflected in Delphine’s features. “I think Charlotte believed some connections are worth any risk. But I also think she may not have fully understood what she was asking of the universe.”
Delphine reached across the desk again, her fingers brushing against the journal’s leather cover. “This feels personal to you. Not just academic interest.”
The observation was too perceptive, cutting too close to truths he wasn’t ready to reveal. “Historical mysteries have a way of becoming personal when you study them long enough. You start to feel connected to the people involved, invested in understanding their choices.”
“Even when those choices led to tragedy?”
“Especially then.” The honesty in his voice surprised him. “The tragic stories are the ones that matter most, because they show us the price of reaching for something beyond our grasp.”
Delphine was quiet for a long moment, her expressionthoughtful. When she spoke again, her voice carried a sadness that seemed too deep for someone who had lived only twenty-eight years.
“Do you think she regretted it? In the end, do you think Charlotte wished she had chosen differently?”
The question pierced him. How many times had he wondered the same thing? How many nights had he lain awake, tormented by the possibility that Charlotte’s final moments had been filled with regret for the magic that bound them?
“I think,” he said slowly, “that Charlotte loved with the kind of intensity that doesn’t leave room for regret. I think she would rather have tried and failed than never tried at all.”
“Even if it meant condemning someone else to centuries of searching?”
