Page 44 of Angel's Mask

“Don’t worry little one, it always is,” Adèle said. “Just listen to me and don’t be like that other fool, don’t fall in love. If you find a man or a patron or a lover, whoever it is: fuck them, use them, enjoy them. Butneverlove them.”

Christine stared at Adèle, shocked in a different way now. She’d heard similar words before.Never love what you can lose, my dear, her father’s voice whispered from the past, thick with despair. And despite herself, she thought of Raoul de Chagny. She had loved him so much as a girl and remembering him today had warmed her heart...but then her angel had sent her way. Was it because of love?

“You’ve never been in love?” Christine asked timidly, following Adèle back into the drawing room.

“Oh, no, I have been, far too many times, which is why I don’t recommend it,” Adèle said with a certain heaviness and a glance to the photograph on the mantle. “It’s good for your art but bad for your career if you know what I mean.”

Christine nodded.

“May I look at these?” Christine asked, indicating the scores piled on the piano. The one open on the stand showed an aria Christine didn’t recognize, but the lyrics intrigued her. “My heart opens to your voice?”

“It’sSaint-Saëns,” Adèle explained. “Samson and Delilah. I keep hoping that if I can get Bosarge or Gabriel to let me perform an somewhere, the patrons will like it enough to demand a staging. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

Christine sat at the piano, gently testing the keys as she read the music. “May I?” she asked. Adèle nodded and Christine began to play. The music was gorgeous, and when Adèle began to sing with such longing and depth that it nearly took her breath away, Christine knew with certainty that Adèle had been in love. Listening to her made Christine wonder if her feelings of long ago could even compare to what Adèle and Delilah sang of.

Hours later, the melody and words resonated in Christine’s head as she tried to sleep. She’d read and reread it, playing long after Adèle had shuffled off to bed. Now, her own bed made strange noises. The sheets were cold against her skin, and she was empty and agitated. She missed the Opera, but more than that she missedhim.She ached. She thought back again to what she’d told Julianne, of how she could have sworn she felt her angel’s disappointment with her foolish mortal heart and desires the moment she stepped into the hall. She fell asleep at last, trying not to weep.

––––––––

Erik had not sleptuntil he returned to the mirror. He had wandered all night, to all the places that belonged to her and were so empty. Their practice room, the costume workshop, the storeroom where she’s spoken of loving that nameless boy and where Erik had first begun to love her, so many weeks ago.

Somehow it was better to be in her absence, to linger in her memory than to be anywhere else, especially across the lake with the whispers of ghosts in his ear. He’d haunted her makeshift room, caressing her beloved books of fairy tales and myths, and for the first time, he’d dared to touch her bed. The blankets had been coarse and cold under his fingertips. Perhaps he had dreamed it, but he had thought he could smell her in the dark air, like rain.

He had come to the mirror in the murky hours before dawn and sunk to the ground, then finally slept with the unyielding stone against his back. Now, he woke again in darkness, empty and cold, a terrible contrast to the warmth of her smile in his dreams.

He didn’t move, just stared at the blank glass. This was hell, it had to be. To want her was one thing. He knew lust and understood it. Lust was an animal instinct; one he had always (until lately) been able to deal with like any other inconvenient need of his mortal flesh. But love...that was different. Love had only ever hurt him, in his terrible and limited experience. Love had left a trail of corpses and broken dreams through his horrible life. And those infatuations were distant and dim compared to what he felt now.

The door of the dressing room burst open without warning, and Erik jumped, concerned immediately by the pale cast of Christine’s face and her worried expression as she rushed in. Gods, he’d sent her way to save them both and it had failed so completely.

“Angel? Are you—?

“I’m here, Christine,” he replied immediately, instinctively. “Are you alright?”

She fell to her knees before the mirror in reply, tears filling her eyes as she shook her head. “No. I’ve been so worried. I missed you so much last night and I-I’m afraid I displeased you or upset you for you to tell me to leave.”

“Oh, Christine, no...” He wasn’t talking like an angel. He sounded as desperate and dejected as she did, but her face still brightened at the words. “It was not anger. It was...regret. To know your heart might be elsewhere, either now or some other day.”

“Because I talked about my...” Christine looked down in shame. “My first love?”

Something terrible coiled inside him at the reminder. He hated the boy, without even knowing his name or face. Hated him and anyone that would ever take Christine from him. Even if she could never truly be his, he would die before he let her be someone else’s.

“I hated hearing you speak of another. I hate the thought of you with one who can give you things I cannot,” he confessed, his voice soft and sincere. He moved carefully towards the mirror, on his knees like her, and traced the outline of her beautiful face with his fingertip against the glass. A shadow on a perfect rose. Her eyes closed for a moment, as if she could feel the phantom touch. “I don’t wish to share you, even with a memory. I love you too dearly.”

Christine’s eyes opened, brimming with fresh tears, but they were not tears of sadness. Her face was a mosaic of joy and devotion as she pressed her hand to the mirror, inches from Erik and yet a world away. Had she not already guessed how he loved her? It didn’t matter, she knew now.

“My Angel, what we had was nothing. It was a candle, but you...you are the dawn,” she breathed as Erik pressed his hand against hers, dreaming he could feel her warmth through the glass. “That fancy was nothing compared to my love for you.”

Erik froze, unable to comprehend what she meant. How could she? But after all that he had given her and all she had shown him...how could she not? “You love me?” he still asked, amazed.

“Do you not know?” she asked, breathing deep. “As you are mine, I am yours.” And then, to his further amazement, she began to sing.

“My heart opens to your voice,as ever do the flowers to the kisses of the dawn,” she sang to the mirror. It was Saint-Saëns, a melody so passionate, seductive, and modern that it would scandalize the patrons of the Opera. It was perfect. “But oh, my beloved, to quench my tears, let your voice speak again. Tell me, to Dalila, you will return forever. To my open heart, speak oaths; respond to my tender love and fill me with ecstasy!”

He had never heard her sing with such unbridled passion. It echoed through the dark, surrounding him with the love and desire in each note. It was sublime, and his soul sang back to her in return. To think, he had awoken in hell and now...her voice lifted him to heaven.

“My heart trembles like wheat in the wind, awaiting the consolation of your voice, which is so dear to me. The arrow is not as fast as the death I find in your arms,” she sang on, and Erik’s blood sang with desire in turn. Her face was as full of adoration and yearning as he had ever seen, and somehow this song was as intimate as any moment they had yet shared.

“Ah, respond to my tender longing, fill me with ecstasy,” she called out to him, and he let himself imagine it. He imagined taking her into his arms, sinking into her warm, welcoming body. Feeling her kiss. “My angel,” she sang, shocking him from the reverie by replacing “Samson” with his title in the final, rapturous call and untold ecstasy engulfed him. “My angel, I love you.”

---