Chapter 21 #2
“Erik has been giving me lessons for months,” I confessed. “Coaching and teaching and—I can’t explain it, Raoul, but he knows how to draw the music from me. It’s like he can reach in and pull out pieces of my soul.”
He froze, and when he next spoke, his voice was cold and clipped. “He reaches into you?”
I flushed. I wasn’t explaining it correctly. I wasn’t explaining it at all. “Not…not like that. Just…” I sighed. “I truly believed him to be an angel. But tonight, with Carlotta…I don’t think an angel would do that.”
Raoul’s expression was dark and unreadable. “Tonight was the least of his offenses. He’s been threatening the managers since their arrival. He’s even sent me letters, saying I must forget you, saying I must never see you again.”
My eyebrows rose in horror. It was one thing for him to tell me I had to devote myself wholly to music—and, by extension, to him. But it was an entirely different matter for him to command it of others, keeping me isolated and alone. “He did?”
Raoul nodded.
“But…you didn’t,” I observed.
He hadn’t. He’d sent tokens of his affection for weeks. He’d taken me out to dinner and sent me notes with hearts drawn around my name. He’d said I was his forever favorite. And he’d come tonight, to the opera, to the very place he knew dangers awaited, just for me.
He’d stood up to Erik, daring to defy him, for me.
Raoul crossed to a stone parapet and leaned upon it, looking pensive and grim. “I’d never let anyone tell me how to live my life,” he said, staring at the lights of Paris glowing in the distance. “I’d never let anyone—angel or madman—keep me from seeing you.”
It was as if his words unlocked a secret cache of emotion within me.
“Oh, Raoul,” I said, and rushed over. Without hesitation, I threw my arms around him, and I wanted to cry as I felt him embrace me in return.
I couldn’t explain the peace his presence filled me with.
I felt comforted and cared for. There was not a single doubt in my mind that Raoul de Chagny would do anything in his power to keep me safe. He was here now, proving that he would.
I wanted to stay in his arms forever.
I could have too, if not for a clatter which sounded along the roof, a muffled scrape, a scuffing against stone.
I broke away from Raoul, abandoning the sanctuary he offered, and felt my panic immediately return. My heart raced high in my throat. Uneasy dread stretched through my limbs as I turned from my source of comfort to search the shadows. “What was that?”
Had Erik made his way to the roof? Was he here now, watching us, watching my complete and utter betrayal?
I didn’t want to believe it.
The roof of the Opéra Populaire had always been a place of joy for me.
There was a door in the ballet’s rehearsal room which led directly out onto it.
Ostensibly, the architects had included it for easy access or to create airflow during the hottest Parisian summers, but Meg and I would often sneak through it after rehearsals and perform silly versions of the choreography we’d just learned, pirouetting and grand-jeté-ing before the whole of the city.
Massive statues dotted its perimeter. Some were carved of stone, others cast of bronze. After years of exposure to the elements, many of the works had softened to a pale mint green.
Meg and I would wander through them, peering up to admire the giants and guess at what myth or heroic military moment they’d been made to commemorate.
My favorite was the statue of the winged Pegasus. The enormous horse reared upright, its front hooves kicking mightily over the city. Grabbing its bridle and barely restraining the magnificent creature was an impossibly beautiful figure: Renown.
The pair towered over us now, looking both unfamiliar and threatening in the dim light.
Raoul performed a quick sweep of the area and returned to me. He looked so concerned, so utterly guileless. I fell back into his arms as he murmured whispered assurances into my hair. “Christine, there’s no one here. It’s just us. We’re safe. You’re safe. You’ll always be safe with me.”
I nodded, marveling at the way I fit into his embrace, as if we were two statues ourselves, carved from the same piece of marble and meant to forever entwine.
His chin rested on the top of my head, and his arms folded round me, a bulwark against raging storms, a harbor made to shelter and protect.
I clutched at his lapels, wanting to draw him even closer still.
“Christine.”
I tilted up my face, and the sight of him, looking down with such care, nearly undid me. Every fear, every panicked wondering, vanished, evaporating like dewdrops against the heat of a rising sun.
I’d never before seen such a look, such a tender expression of utter adoration. I wanted to lose myself in it, wanted to bottle it so that I’d never forget what it felt like to be so cherished and…
My breath caught, my mind shy to even think the word.
Loved.
It was there in each of his gestures. It was there with every word he spoke, consoling me, comforting me. And it was here, in my heart, as bright and beaming as sunlight, as pure as summertime.
Love.
I loved Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny. I loved the boy he’d been. I loved the man he’d become. I’d love every iteration of him. The past, the present, the future. The now and always. I loved him all.
“Let’s just go,” he asked, stirring me from my revelation. “I know the managers said you’d sing, but if you’re really this scared, if you really don’t want to, Christine, I have my carriage. We only need to order the horses, and we can go…anywhere. Wherever you want. Wherever you’ll feel safe.”
I took his hands, letting our fingers twine into an unbreakable knot. “I feel safe anywhere you are. Anywhere you go.”
His smile was colored with relief, a beacon of light among the shadows of the opera roof.
I don’t know who instigated the kiss. Him, or me, or perhaps us both, working in tandem with a simple ease I hoped would last forever. It didn’t matter who began it, because our lips found each other and joined in the sweetest, most dizzying miracle.
I felt transported back to the beach where we’d shared our first kiss.
I’d been so giddy then. So nervous and excited, and wholly stunned that this beautiful boy, this handsome wonder of a human, wanted me as much as I did him.
It was a singular ecstasy, like bubbles in champagne, or bursting fireworks, or confetti sparkling midair.
“Oh, Christine, my forever favorite,” he said, exhaling in a rush of breath and delight. “I love you.”
His words stole my breath away. If it was possible to die from happiness, I was in grave and mortal peril. There was so much joy within me I thought my heart might burst, oversaturated and as sparkling as a kaleidoscope. “I love you too.”
Raoul let out a happy whoop and lifted me off the ground. We twirled in a giggling circle, my satin skirts fluttering around us like a candy-pink cloud. The moment felt perfect. The world felt perfect. The most extraordinary man within it loved me. Nothing else mattered. We had each other.
My fears were gone. My worries had ceased.
What did I have to be afraid of with Raoul at my side?
Nothing. No one. Not even Erik.
“I…I have to get back,” I said, trying to guess at how long we’d been away. “They’ll wonder where I am.”
He looked surprised. “You’re going to sing?”