Page 37 of Angel's Kiss
“Christine,” he choked out, the sensation of her hand on his skin sending waves of feeling through him that were not unlike an electric shock. “Christine, I—”
“Breathe,” she commanded, and what could he do but obey? He breathed deep as her hand remained still and steady against his chest, the sensation so alien and overwhelming he could barely comprehend it. Could she feel his heart pounding in panic behind his ribs? “Tell me how that feels.”
“Warm. Burning,” he gasped out. She turned her hand, letting her cool knuckles graze his collarbone.
“Better?”
How could he possibly answer? Simply being touched by her was everything. It was torture and exquisite pleasure all at once, and his addled mind could not make sense of it. He nodded instead and it looked like she smiled. But that was a dream because no one smiled as they looked at him. No one was so gentle as they touched him.
His breaths shuddered along with his body as her palm and fingertips found his skin once again, and this time it did not burn. Her delicate hand slid slowly towards his shoulder, pushing his shirt back as she did. He had never felt more exposed in his miserable life than he did in this moment, as she drew his garments away from his body along with all his defenses.
He kept breathing, kept watching her as she attended to the other arm, her gentle hands so incredibly soft and warm against his skin. And suddenly he was totally exposed. Her eyes and fingertips explored the map of pain and captivity etched over his chest, arms, and face.
“And this? How does this feel?” she asked as she touched the burns over his left shoulder, following to where they extended to his back. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to share the story behind every mark and tell her that this was hell and heaven all at once. But he was too overwhelmed to speak as she continued to touch him as no one ever had. All he could do was nod and close his eyes on the tears that had blossomed there.
He had to be dreaming, he told himself, as her hands swept slowly over him and up his neck. He had lost too much blood and had too much brandy. Or maybe he’d simply died and this was a cruel trick making him think he’d found heaven before he was cast into the inferno he deserved. But it was so real. Her hands were brands against his skin, but they were not there to hurt him. They were kind. She was so much kinder than him.
“I promise, I’ll never hurt you,” Christine whispered. He opened his eyes at the impossible words to find her incredibly close. “I promise.”
“I do not deserve such a promise nor such a lesson,” he breathed back. The world swirled around them, her eyes the only steady point in the tempest. Her eyes. They were so beautiful.
“I will be the one to decide that,” Christine replied, and with infinite delicacy, she touched his face as she leaned closer. She traced the scar his own mother had given him, traced his sunken cheek to the edge of the stub of his skeleton’s nose. She pushed back his hair from his forehead, and Erik could see the tears in her eyes as she drew closer still, rising like the angel she was.
And without more warning than that, Christine kissed his forehead.
It was too much. The feel of her tears on his bare skin, on his brow, like a new sacrament. The velvet pressure of her lips. The heat of her breath. It was everything and too much. Erik heard himself make a sound, as if from far away, a piteous sort of sob sure to repel her with its lack of dignity. But she did not recoil. She did not retreat. She did not die.
Christine Daaé twined her fingers in his hair and kissed him again, and Erik was sure this was heaven, even as the world twisted and thundered around him. She kissed him. Then there was nothing but black and silence.
Nothing...but her.
––––––––
Shaya had learned thata man such as himself was one of two things in a city like Paris: obvious or invisible. There was no shortage of foreigners in the great metropolis, and people with skins of every color walked the streets. But where you were in the city mattered in terms of if a Parisian saw someone like him as a nuisance, a threat, or nothing at all. Tonight he was close to the posh flats of theRue du Faubourg Saint Honoréwhere the fine residents looked askance at him. It would be much the same near his flat on theRue Rivoli, he thought to himself, as he came to the crossroads with theRue Royalewhere a simple right turn would set him on the course towards home.
He was happy to leave if he was being honest, even if his spying had yielded nothing. He had been so sure some agent of La Carlotta would report back to her after the events of the day, but hours across from her door had produced nothing but boredom and sore feet. He was glad to be done, and yet still unsatisfied. Shaya turned left, back towards the Opera. Perhaps there would be something to be gleaned there.
The route came automatically to him after so many years and allowed him time to think and stew. What might Carlotta have done to Christine Daaé? What revenge lay in store for her if Erik truly valued his Swedish songbird more than his own discretion? Soon enough Shaya found himself turning off theBoulevard des Italiensand into the grandPlace de L’Opéra.In all truth, he found the massive building – with its excessive colonnades, grand copper dome, and endless filigree – ostentatious and overbearing. The Prophet had been right to prohibit depictions of living things in art, for it would have spared him this palace to excess, adorned in nudes and pagan gods.
There was no one coming in or out of the Opera since there was no performance tonight. The whole plaza would be full of life tomorrow, but now it was quiet. Shaya rarely went in through the front, anyway. He always had better luck at the back entrance. Or through the stables on theRue Scribewhen Lachenal, the head groom, was dozing at his post as he tended to. However, the raised voices coming from beyond the stable door indicated tonight Lachenal wasveryawake.
“It’s a curse, I tell you!” Lachenal was yelling.
“It’s probably just paint, you fool,” an impatient woman’s voice replied. Shaya peered warily around the corner. Lachenal was red-faced and sweating, standing next to the white horse fromLe Prophète, speaking to a woman with tightly curled black hair whose face Shaya could not see.
“It’s blood!” Lachenal cried, pointing at the horse. “I tell you, César disappeared again and I knew the fiend had taken him – without a note or a ‘by-your-leave, Jean-Paul!’ And I’d had enough, so I went to alert the new managers to complain and demandlocksfor the paddocks. And everyone in the office was up in arms about how the Ghost has placed a curse on us all!”
“I think you’re exaggerating,” the woman sighed.
“Course the clods had no time for me. So I came back and César was here: marked in blood!” It finally occurred to Shaya that the César of which Lachenal was speaking with such concern was the white horse. The horse himself was uninterested in anything but the sack of oats he was enjoying.
“Maybe you missed him?” the woman attempted, and Lachenal threw up his hands. “Why would the ghost mark your horse? That makes no sense. Ghosts don’t bleed.”
“I never said it was his blood!” Lachenal exclaimed. The woman gave another powerful sigh, turning away from the groom enough that she caught sight of Shaya and her eyes went wide. Shaya’s interest leapt as well – he knew the girl. He had seen her several times in the company of Christine Daaé.
“You!” the woman gasped. Shaya knew that tone and what it meant. He turned immediately to retreat onto theRue Scribe. “Wait!” the woman called after him, grabbing his elbow. “Were you looking for Christine too?”
“What?” Shaya asked, turning back.
