Page 57 of Curse in the Quarter (Bourbon Street Shadows #1)
He’d watched from the doorway, unwilling to interrupt but unable to leave, mesmerized by how she made ordinary transcendent through simple attention to beauty.
When she finished the piece—something by Chopin that she’d transformed into folk melody through creative interpretation—she looked up and caught his gaze across the room.
The smile she gave him radiated pure joy, untainted by shadows that would define their story or complications that would make their love both eternal and impossible. In that moment, surrounded by friends and music, she embodied everything he’d thought lost when he fell from grace.
“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.”
But Bastien knew victory was temporary at best, containment rather than cure.
He could feel energy retreating rather than dissipating, pulling back to source like a tide that would inevitably return with greater force once it gathered strength from other nodes in Charlotte’s network.
The blade in his hand had grown heavier, its properties strained by the effort of containing something that was fundamentally beyond permanent containment.
This wasn’t a problem that could be solved through ritual purification or protective barriers.
Charlotte had been too thorough in her preparations, too clever in magical frameworks she’d established across multiple lifetimes.
She’d created system designed to reunite them regardless of cost to anyone else, and now that system approached its intended culmination with mathematical inevitability.
Tib approached the cabin and called softly to Gabriel Jr., who responded with recognizable English for first time in hours.
The young wolf was himself again, confused and frightened by what had happened but no longer a conduit for ancient power seeking expression through werewolf consciousness.
His voice shook as he asked what had happened to him, why he remembered speaking words in languages he’d never learned.
Immediate crisis had passed, but all three of them knew it was just beginning.
“If Delphine’s energy continues escalating like this,” Tib said quietly, looking at corrupted sigil stones that had returned to normal appearance but remained vulnerable to future contamination, “our entire territorial boundary may collapse. Pack bonds protecting us from hostile magic won’t resist this level of spiritual interference indefinitely. ”
He looked at Bastien with mixture of respect and desperation that marked alpha recognizing threats beyond his ability to counter through traditional pack authority.
“Whatever’s happening between you and this woman, it’s going to destroy everything we’ve built here.
Every alliance, every treaty, every protection that’s kept peace between species for over century. ”
Bastien wanted to offer reassurance, to promise he could keep Delphine from falling into full awakening before they were both ready for consequences that would reshape their existence.
The words were there, familiar phrases he’d used before when making commitments to Maman Brigitte, to himself, to the memory of Charlotte’s trust in his ability to navigate complexities of their eternal connection after she was gone from her first human form.
But standing in the bayou with the Votum Blade heavy in his hand and taste of reflected wardwork sharp in his mouth, he found he no longer believed his own reassurances.
Truth was becoming impossible to deny, tether energy was growing stronger each day, and Delphine’s unconscious resistance to it was weakening under sustained pressure from forces designed to overwhelm any individual will.
Dreams that had started as gentle echoes were becoming vivid recollections.
Moments of recognition that should have remained buried were breaking through to conscious awareness with increasing frequency.
Her questions about echoes and memories, her unconscious humming of melodies from past lives, her growing certainty that something important was missing from her current existence—all signs that awakening approached whether he was ready or not.
“I’ll find a way to control it,” he said finally, but the promise felt hollow even as he spoke it. Charlotte had understood him too well, planned too carefully for him to find simple solution to complexity she’d spent centuries crafting.
The pack would survive this particular crisis, their bonds cleansed and territory temporarily secured through ritual intervention.
Gabriel Jr. would recover with nothing more than confused memories and healthy respect for forces beyond understanding.
Sigil stones would hold protective power for a while longer, though Bastien suspected they’d need regular maintenance as tether energy continued building toward inevitable climax.
None of that changed the fundamental problem; it was almost a certainty Delphine was awakening, and he was running out of ways to delay what Charlotte had designed to be inevitable.
Each time he used blade to contain or cleanse spreading influence, he drew her closer to full consciousness of their connection.
Each protective measure he took made her soul more aware that something vital was missing from current life, something that could only be restored through recognition of eternal bond.
Walking back through the bayou toward his car, blade secured at his side, Bastien felt the weight of Charlotte’s final gift and curse with perfect clarity.
She’d given him the tools to find her in every life, to recognize her soul regardless of what form it took.
But she’d also made certain recognition would be mutual, that connection between them would grow stronger until neither could ignore or deny it.
The echo of Delia’s touch on piano keys, a memory of Charlotte’s braided moon-thread hair, even the warmth of Delphine’s unconscious smile—all part of same eternal moment, same love story playing out across decades and identities.
Like the melody Delia had played that summer evening, some things became beautiful precisely because they couldn’t last, because their perfection existed in space between anticipation and memory.
As he drove back toward the city, Votum Aeternum hummed softly against his hip with rhythm that matched his heartbeat. In that sound he heard echo of ancient vows and eternal connections, promises made across lifetimes that bound souls together regardless of distance or time.
But he also heard something else—faint but unmistakable melody of song that had been played only once, on a summer evening when future still held infinite possibilities and love felt like most natural thing in world.
Some echoes, he was beginning to understand, were meant to bloom rather than fade.
The question now was whether he had courage to let them grow into whatever they were destined to become, or whether fear of consequences would drive him to keep trying to contain forces that were always meant to be set free.