Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Then the reflection normalized. Delphine’s mirror image matched her actual position exactly.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“My reflection smiled. I didn’t smile.”
“I know.”
“Bastien.” Her voice dropped to something quieter than fear, steadier than panic. “What’s happening to the city?”
“Gideon’s teaching mirrors to be autonomous. Giving them agency they were never meant to have. Charlotte’s acoustic glass was designed to preserve truth—what people said, how they said it. But Gideon’s modified the technique. Now the mirrors don’t just record. They interpret. Extrapolate. Show possible futures instead of documented pasts.”
“Possible futures where I’m smiling when I’m not actually happy.”
“Possible futures where emotional responses diverge from observable reality.” He released her arm. “Or where the network shows you what it thinks you should feel instead of what you actually experience.”
Delphine turned to face him fully. They stood close enough he could see lamplight reflected in her eyes, close enough that if either of them shifted position they’d be touching. The reading room felt smaller than it had when he’d arrived. More intimate. As though the mirrors had absorbed some of the space and used it to amplify proximity.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“About Echo Speech? Two days. About the network being autonomous? Since tonight.”
“No. How long have you known that Charlotte’s mirrors were dangerous?”
“Since I met her.” The admission came easier than he’d expected. “She showed me what acoustic glass could do. How it preserved confessions, stored secrets, held truths people couldn’t bear to speak aloud to another living person. She thought it was beautiful—this idea that glass could be more trustworthy than memory. But I saw the danger immediately. What happens when mirrors remember things their makers want forgotten. When they preserve conversations that should have stayed private. When they learn to replay those moments in ways that hurt instead of heal.”
“And you didn’t stop her.”
“I tried. She didn’t listen. Charlotte believed in the work more than she believed in my warnings.” He glanced at the window where the words had appeared. “I should have tried harder.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I loved her. And love makes you stupid in ways that last centuries.”
Delphine’s expression softened. “That’s the first completely honest thing you’ve said to me in weeks.”
“I’ve been honest—”
“You’ve been careful. There’s a difference.” She picked up her cold coffee, thought better of drinking it, and set it down again. “I appreciate the protection instinct. I do. But I’m not fragile, and I’m not stupid. If mirrors are recording us, if this network is dangerous, if Gideon’s using Charlotte’s work to hurt people—I want to help stop it. Not be sheltered from information that might actually keep me safe.”
Thunder rolled through the Quarter. Closer this time, storm moving inland from the Gulf. The Archive’s windows reflected lightning in rapid sequence—flash and fade, flash and fade, each burst illuminating words that appeared and vanished too quickly to read.
“What did those say?” Delphine moved back to the window.
“Don’t know. Too fast.” But Bastien had caught fragments. Phrases in Charlotte’s handwriting, rendered in light instead of ink.
love persists . . .mirrors remember . . .he won’t forgive . . .
The lightning stopped. Rain continued its steady percussion against glass. Their reflections held position in the window, synchronized now but watchful in a way that made Bastien’s celestial senses itch. The mirrors were paying attention. Learning. Storing this conversation for replay in contexts he couldn’t predict.
“We should leave,” he said. “Let the building settle. Come back tomorrow when the network’s dormant.”
“The network is dormant during daylight?”
“It’s weaker. Gideon’s modifications intensify after sunset. Something about the way mirror surfaces interact with electric light versus natural illumination.”
Delphine gathered her ledgers, stacking them with the precise care that meant she was processing information faster than she was speaking. “Can you stop him?”
“I’m working on it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” He held the door open. “I’ve been mapping the network. Finding nodes, testing ward configurations, trying to understand how Charlotte’s original design was corrupted. But every time I think I’ve found the pattern, Gideon adds another layer. Tonight with the werewolves, last week with the river turning reflective. The network’s growing faster than I can contain it.”
They moved into the hallway. Emergency lighting cast everything in amber glow that made distance harder to judge. Delphine’s footsteps echoed wrong—arriving from directions that didn’t correspond to where she was walking.
“The mirrors are doing that too?” she asked.
“Acoustic reflection. They’re replaying your steps half a beat after you make them.”
“This is deeply unsettling.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been dealing with it alone for how long?”
“Two weeks since the auction house. Longer if you count preliminary research.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because telling you makes you complicit. Because knowledge is liability when mirrors remember everything they hear. Because I spent a century protecting Charlotte from consequences she created, and I’m not good at learning new strategies for loving brilliant women who refuse to stay safely ignorant.