Page 67 of Angel's Kiss
“Six and a half years,” he whispered.
“When you came to the Opera?”
Erik nodded. “I came here at night, but that day...was the last time I saw sunlight.” The scars of that disaster prickled on his skin. “Please don’t ask about that day. Not now.”
“Do you miss the sun?” Christine asked instead.
“I don’t know,” Erik replied, thinking back to brightness and open air. “I never belonged in the light, and I try not to think about it.”
“Does that work? Not thinking about the living world.”
Erik turned to her, noting how the gaslighting and stars illuminated her face, so like the first night he had spied upon her. “I told myself it did. Until I met you.”
Christine smiled shyly and looked away. It was strange to see her be coy, after all they had shared. But perhaps words of love were different. He didn’t ever dare to speak his heart, knowing his feelings could never be returned. They did not deserve to be.
“Can we stay here a while, before we go home?” It did make his heart surge, to hear her call his house home.
“Whatever you wish,” he whispered. She tightened her grip on his hand and leaned her head against his shoulder, looking towards the heavens again.
“Papa used to sing to the stars, when he thought I was asleep,” she murmured. “Old Swedish songs that he saved for himself, the ones he pretended not to know during the day. I think he was singing to my mother, somewhere up there. I hope she heard.”
“In the old days, in churches, you couldn’t speak prayers. They had to be sung for God to listen,” Erik mused in return. “Perhaps it is the same with ghosts in the stars.”
“And angels.”
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Vincenzo’s tobaccowas cheap and damp, Raoul noted as he stared out the window and took a long inhale from the cigarette his friend had rolled for him. Vincenzo himself remained in the rumpled bed, carefully crafting his own.
“Are you just going to stand there brooding?” Vincenzo asked before he licked the delicate paper. Raoul scowled and took another drag. He had given up the habit of smoking for the most part on his return to Paris, save for cigars with brandy in the evening at Philippe’s insistence. Apparently tonight was for giving into all sorts of vices he had left at sea.
“I should get home. Philippe will think I’ve gone off to the Opera again,” Raoul sighed.
“Oh yes, you wouldn’t want him to think you were up to something so below your station,” Vincenzo laughed. “I do keep meaning to ask if you’ve given up your songbird for good.”
“I don’t know,” Raoul answered, honest for once. “She turns me about. One moment she’s the good, kind girl I remember, and the next she’s an elusive vixen whose words I cannot trust.”
“Sounds like every woman.”
Raoul glared at Vincenzo over his shoulder, still sprawled like the picture of indulgence in the bed. “What would you know,” he grumbled. “I do think it would be better for my soul and my heart to be rid of her. But I just can’t stop loving her. Not after how she kissed me.”
“So only you get to corrupt her then?” Vincenzo laughed. “You have so many plans for a woman you hardly know.”
Raoul bristled. Everyone liked to remind him of that, but none of them understood how long he had nursed his love for Christine Daaé and how much he was prepared to defend it. Especially after their last encounter.
“I want to save her from all of it,” Raoul sighed. “The Opera and its backstabbing and scandals. Whoever this man is who has forced her into such lies and deceit.”
“You want to save her soulandfuck her?” Vincenzo chuckled. “You’ll have better luck finding the North Pole with us. Have you made your decision on that yet?”
Raoul shook his head, grinding the butt of the cigarette into the windowsill. “I still have hope that she’ll be mine. And if she does want me, we could marry and start a new life.”
“She has a career. So do you.”
It was Raoul’s turn to scoff at that. “I told you; she has morals. She surely wouldn’t want to stay in the theater.”
“Then propose to her, hear her rejection, and be done with it,” Vincenzo said before taking a long inhale and blowing the smoke back into the musty room. “And move on. Don’t you have seats forRigolettotomorrow?”
“How do you know about that?” Raoul demanded, advancing on his friend and snatching the remaining cigarette from him to finish.
