Page 97 of Curse in the Quarter
"I won't try to control her choices," he said. "But I will make sure she has accurate information to base those choices on."
"That's all any of us can do." Maman stood, beginning to clear the tea service. "Now get on home and figure out what you wearing to this art exhibition. First impressions matter, even when the girl already knows you."
As Bastien walked back through the Quarter toward his apartment, the ward network hummed softly around him, a constant reminder that Charlotte's work was complete and his own future was finally beginning. The protective grid would keep New Orleans safe for generations to come, allowing him to focus entirely on the delicate, thrillingwork of making Delphine fall in love with him all over again.
He thought about Saturday's exhibition, about the dinner they'd share afterward, about the gradual process of courtship that lay ahead. No magical shortcuts, no soul bond compelling affection, no mystical recognition forcing intimacy. Just two people getting to know each other, discovering compatibility, choosing each other freely.
It was exactly what Charlotte had wanted. Exactly what Delia had responded to most strongly. And exactly what he hoped would win Delphine's heart in the end.
Charlotte's completed legacy sang with protective power. His duty was done. His obligation fulfilled. His future stretched ahead like an unwritten story, waiting for him to take the first step toward the love he'd been preparing for across three centuries.
Saturday couldn't come soon enough.
In his apartment, he pulled out his phone and read Delphine's text messages again, noting the casual warmth in her tone, the way she'd phrased the invitation to suggest she genuinely wanted his company. She was reaching out to him, actively seeking opportunities to spend time together, showing signs of the same natural attraction that had drawn Charlotte and Delia to him in previous lifetimes.
The difference was that this time, he was ready for it. Ready to court her properly, without the burden of incomplete magical obligations or the fear that divided attention would sabotage their developing connection. Ready to let her see exactly who he was—angel-born but choosing mortality, immortal but committed to human love, powerful but devoted to protecting rather than controlling.
Ready to fall in love all over again, naturally and honestly, the way Charlotte had always intended.
The ward network hummed its approval around him, three hundred years of preparation finally bearing fruit. His real work was just beginning.
Another memory of he and Charlotte took over his thoughts.
Charlotte stood by windows that overlooked gardens she would never see bloom again, back in 1762 when the ritual circle had been drawn in silver dust and candles arranged according to patterns that would either preserve her soul across death or destroy everything she had been in the attempt. Rain drummed against glass with the rhythm of a funeral march.
“Promise me something,” she said without turning from the window. “If this works, if I manage to return in another form, don't follow me into the next life.”
Bastien looked up from the grimoire he had been studying, pages filled with warnings about consciousness preservation that made his blood run cold. “What do you mean?”
“I mean don't search for me. Don't wait. Don't try to make me remember what we were.” She finally turned to face him, and her eyes held depths of sadness that seemed older than her twenty-six years. “If I come back, let me live whatever life I find. Let me be whoever I become.”
“Charlotte—”
“Promise me.” She crossed the room to kneel beside his chair, taking his hands in hers with fingers that trembled despite her steady voice. “Some love is too strong to survive. Some connections are too deep to allow for growth. If you try to wake me up, you might destroy whatever peace I find, and you deserve some peace as well.”
He wanted to argue, to explain that living without her would be torture designed by devils who understood the specific architecture of his heart. But hereyes held something he had never seen before: fear. Not of death, not of the ritual that might scatter her consciousness like leaves in wind, but of him. Of the intensity of his love and what it might drive him to do in lifetimes where she couldn't remember choosing to be loved so completely.
“Promise me,” she whispered again.
“I promise,” he lied, already knowing he would break that vow before her body was cold.
She smiled then, relieved, and kissed him with lips that tasted like wine and goodbye. Twenty minutes later, she was gone. Not dead—the spell had worked exactly as intended—but translated into something else, somewhere else, somewhen else.
He had broken his promise within a week, beginning the search that would consume the next two and a half centuries. He had found her twice, loved her completely, lost her tragically, and finally learned what she had been trying to tell him on that rain-soaked night when magic was young and his heart was still breakable.
Some promises were meant to be broken. Others were meant to be kept, even when keeping them felt like dying. This time, he chose to honor her wishes. This time, he loved her enough to let their love unfold in whatever way that meant for them.
Thirty-One
The new equilibrium felt solid, permanent. Crisis had forced cooperation where diplomacy had failed. But with external threats resolved, internal reckonings awaited.
They had been walking along the Mississippi levee in the spring of 1905, Delia's hand warm in his as they watched paddle wheelers navigate the muddy current. She had been quiet that afternoon, pensive in the way that meant her mind was wrestling with questions she wasn't ready to voice.
“Do you think,” she had said finally, her voice carrying the weight of someone testing dangerous ideas, “that some kinds of love are strong enough to survive anything? Not just distance or time, but . . . bigger things. Changes we can't imagine.”
Bastien had stopped walking, turning to study her profile as she watched the river. “What kind of changes?”
“Death,” she had said simply. “Different lives. Becoming different people entirely. Do you think love could survive that? Could we choose the same person again and again, across versions of time we don't understand?”
