Chapter 42 #3
A horrified sob rose in my throat, choking me, and I shook my head, in response not to him but to the impossible scenario before us. Fleetingly, I remembered the day I’d first heard his voice, so beatific and beautiful I’d truly believed him an angel…
How had things unraveled so quickly? There had been such hopes, but they all lay shattered. He had never been an angel, only a fallen idol and false friend. I truly felt we were now trapped in hell.
“Forgive me, Christine,” Raoul managed to gasp. “Please forgive me. I should have never…” He squirmed, writhing like a worm skewered on a fisherman’s hook. “Never made you sing…I just wanted…to save you.”
“Raoul,” I cried, but Erik was before me, blocking my path to him, keeping me from pulling him to safety. “Erik, please! Don’t do this. This isn’t you. This isn’t—”
“Too late,” he shouted with a burst of wicked laughter. “Too late for turning back, too late for prayers and useless pity.”
“Don’t let him win,” Raoul groaned, his flailing wild. He let out a bellow of desolate misery. “Don’t say you love him! You can’t…you can’t throw your life away…for my sake!”
“Help! Someone help us!” I screamed, projecting my voice as loud and as far as I ever had. I recalled every music lesson Erik had given, remembered everything he’d taught. I straightened my spine, found my center, and let out a shriek at the loudest fortissimo I could. “Please!”
My voice rang off the stone walls, amplified and deafening.
“You’re past the point of cries for help,” Erik said, wholly unmoved. “There’s no point in fighting.”
“Don’t let him win,” Raoul begged again, openly weeping.
“His time is running out,” Erik threatened, taking a step toward me, which forced me to retreat deeper into the room, farther from Raoul. “You must choose.”
“No,” I said, grabbing a small end table, desperate for support. Tears ran down my cheeks, ruining the satin of the dress. “I can’t, I can’t.” My legs failed, collapsing underneath me, and I sank to the carpet, kneeling before Erik in abject misery. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Your indecision will send him to his grave,” he predicted.
“No!”
“Then you pick me?”
My whole body shook under the force of my sobs. “Erik, please…”
“There is no other choice. There is no other chance.” He knelt beside me and reached out, touching my chin in an echo of the gesture Don Juan was meant to give Aminta before she fell prey to his advances.
He almost looked sad, as if he felt sympathy for the impossible position he’d placed me in. “You’ve passed the point of no return.”
“Erik…” I pleaded, my throat pained and raw. “Angel…”
He only shook his head, and, in that moment, watching him playact at pity, something within me snapped.
“You deceived me!” I shouted, smacking the floor between us. Surprised at my outburst, he fell back, posed in an ungainly sprawl I’d never guess him capable of. “You never were the Angel of Music. I gave you my mind blindly!”
The instant the hate-filled words left my mouth, zipping from me like a barrage of bullets, I regretted them. Erik’s eyes widened, and he flinched as if he’d been struck.
“Blindly?” he repeated, his breath coming out in harsh rasps. His hand clawed at his chest, and I dimly worried he was suffering from a stroke or a heart attack. He looked like a man gravely ill, his skin so pale and waxen that even the port-wine stains seemed ashen. “Blindly?”
He scuttled away, his eyes darting to Raoul, then me. Even in the candlelight, I could see how he trembled, and, despite everything, I wanted to reach for him.
I could loathe the situation he’d forced me into and still long to offer him comfort. He now looked like a bewildered child, scared and in need of someone to take his hand. I remembered how Madame Giry had described him at the carnival, seeing him all alone, wretched and frightened.
Before I could move, Erik stood and straightened, his body tensing, back under his control.
He smoothed his tufts of hair and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt.
He was putting his facade back on, brick by brick, strengthening and hardening it like a molting invertebrate’s carapace.
He drew in a deep breath, elongating his spine, and I could see the exact moment he regained his equilibrium, his transformation complete.
“You try my patience,” he said coolly, his voice flat and disaffected. “Make your choice.”
From my miserable spot on the floor, I held up my hands in penitence, even as I heard Raoul’s sharply drawn breath. “Erik…” I begged.
He only turned his head, uninterested in whatever compromise he assumed I intended to offer.
I looked past him to Raoul, who was standing on the tips of his ruined dress shoes, struggling against the Punjab Lasso with heroic effort. He’d fought for everything heroically, all his life. To be a good son, to become a good man. To rescue a beloved scarf from the sea…
He’d been a hero, always, and a hero did not belong here now, fighting for his very life all because he’d given his heart away to a girl who had already given hers to another.
I stared at him, watching his perfectly handsome face redden. Then, as it began to turn blue, I realized that this time, I could be the one to bravely fight. It was my turn to play the hero. It was my turn to save him.
Our eyes locked and his struggles increased as he guessed what I was going to do. He reached for me, choking as the movement tightened the noose round his neck.
I looked away, unable to watch, unable to bear the weight of his heartbroken eyes upon me. This was no longer about Raoul.
This was all about him.
Slowly, as if confronting a cornered animal, I pushed myself from the carpet, keeping my movements deliberate and unthreatening as I crossed to Erik. “I know about the carnival,” I confessed.
He would not meet my gaze, and so I stepped closer, feeling like a penitent approaching an angry god. “How they locked you in a cage, how you were all alone and in the dark.”
His body was rigid, waiting, but I caught the smallest flicker of movement as he swallowed, inadvertently revealing his nerves.
Buoyed by this tiny triumph, I took another step toward him.
“And even after you escaped, you were still on your own. I can’t imagine how frightened you must have been, how lonely. ”
His eyes betrayed him, landing on mine with a worried expression. He didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know what decision I’d made.
I took my last step, bridging the gap between us. He held out his hands, instinctively cowering, and I swiped them into mine, lacing our fingers together, joining them, palm pressed against palm with surprising intimacy.
“You’ll never be alone in that darkness again,” I promised, standing before him as a bride swearing a vow.
“I won’t?” he whispered, his expression lightening as he dared to hope.
I looked up at him, taking in all the angles of his twisted visage, knowing in my heart that this was the last face I’d ever see. I could not return to the world above. Not after this night. Not after all that had happened. We would have to flee the opera and start again somewhere new.
I would never have the stage or the spotlight.
But I would have Erik and his music.
And his love.
I prayed to God for the courage to seal my oath.
“I’ll be with you,” I murmured, then released my hold of his hands and gently cupped his face, bringing it to mine.
For a moment, we only stared at one another, his mismatched eyes panicked with wonder and wanting. Then I rose on tiptoe and kissed him, pressing my lips to his with a fervent pledge, surrendering my whole self—my heart, my body, my mind—to him.
Somewhere in the dark behind us, Raoul howled.
Erik broke the kiss first, letting out a startled hiss that sounded equal parts pleasure and pain. His breaths were deep and gasping. He looked dazed, lost in a confusion of thoughts, and I threw my arms around him, trying to still his trembles.
His movements were slower than mine—slower and so cautious—but when he finally enfolded me into a possessive embrace, I felt as if my missing half had been returned, and we were whole at last. He pressed his lips to my forehead, murmuring something I could not hear.
When I looked up to meet his gaze, he grew bold and kissed me again.
That kiss was like a struck match. We both were the tinder, and together how we burned.
His hands moved across my back—grazing at first before growing confident enough to wind around my loose hair, then caressing my arms and running the pads of his fingertips over the soft skin of my inner wrists.
He touched me with adoration, with reverence, and I realized I was the first who had ever allowed him such access.
I placed my left hand in a curve along his misshapen cheek, feeling the thick ripples of scar tissue and protruding cheekbone. His hair was so fine, as soft as the downy feathers of a baby bird, and I gently gripped it, bringing him even closer to me.
“My Angel,” he murmured against my lips. Our mouths were wet, and I noticed we were both crying.
I went to kiss him again, but he took a step back, casting a void between us I didn’t understand.
“Erik…” I reached for him but he jerked away, stumbling into the pipe organ. He grasped the music stand to steady himself as his eyes darted around the room, shifting from me to Raoul, then back again.
“I…” He brought a hand to his lips as if he could still feel the imprint of our kisses upon them.
I knew I felt it on mine. My mouth was hot and tender and aching to return to him. It was as though a dam had broken, spilling out my desires in a flooded torrent too wild to ever again stanch.
But Erik made no motion to return to me. Uncertainty clouded his features as he stared at Raoul. I turned back to look at him.
What were we to do with Raoul?
Just because I had chosen Erik did not mean that Raoul was bound to accept this without question, without protest.
I shot him a look, silently pleading for him to understand, to leave without a fuss.