“Why?”
I give a weak laugh. “You ask too many questions.”
“You keep too many secrets.” He smiles, and I bury my face in my hands so that those dimples can’t weaken my resolve any more than they already have.
The snow crunches as he moves, but I don’t trust myself to look or speak.
His arms encircle me. His fingers ease into the knots of my hair. His lips press against my forehead. “What is it?”
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“Away. I’ve done something terrible.”
“Then let’s go. We’ll head south. It’ll be warmer there, and—”
I shake my head as a sob chokes through my teeth. “No, I have to go alone.”
He is silent for a moment. His palms slide down to cup my cheeks and pull my face to look at him. “What are you talking about?”
I swallow, determined to keep my composure. His brow is furrowed, his expression confused.
“Did your mother ever say anything to you about catalyseurs?” I ask.
He frowns. “Not really. I think she mentioned they could protect Arlette.”
“That’s not entirely accurate. They actually compound gravoir power. Give us the ability to use our magic on people even when they aren’t singing.”
“All right...” He waits for me to explain the connection.
“For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my hands on one. Turns out it’s not an object, it’s a rare type of person.”
“A person?”
“You, Emeric. You are a catalyseur.”
He purses his lips, his thumbs stroking soot away from my cheeks. “So what does that mean?”
“It means—” I take a deep, quivering breath “—that I have to let you go.”
“But why?”
“Do you remember what happened at the opera house tonight?”
He considers for a moment, then shakes his head. “The last memory I have is of you extracting my elixir in the prison.”
“I used your voice to drain people,” I whisper.
“‘Drain’?”
I nod. “There are a couple hundred corpses lying in the theater.”
He stares. I wait for his expression to sour, but instead he asks, “Why?”
“Because they were trying to kill me. Because they were keeping me from you.” I pull myself out of his grip and turn away so he can’t see my face. “Because I wanted to.”
“Just like Marvault,” he says faintly. “Like Arlette.”
I nod.
He grips my shoulder. “It was not your fault. Not any more than what happened in Marvault was Arlette’s fault. I was there. My sister was not a murderer or a thief. She was not mad or dangerous.”
“I’m afraid I knew a bit more about what I was doing than Arlette did.”
His jaw hardens. “You are good, Is.”
“I wish I were the person you see when you look at me, but—”
“But nothing. My sister was not the one who hurt everyone that day in Marvault. It was like something else had taken over. She—”
“Exactly,” I break in.
He blinks. “What?”
“This power inside of me is strong, and the more elixir it gets, the more it craves. My inability to extract from people unless they are singing keeps me sane, but with you around...with you affecting my abilities like that... I’m afraid it will take over. That it will destroy me.”
“I won’t let it.” His voice is firm. “I’ll help you keep it in check.”
I shake my head. “I can’t risk it. Every moment I’m here with you, that power is simmering beneath the surface, begging for me to use you again. Craving more elixir and more death.” Even now, the beast reaches ravenous claws toward Emeric. Sing again, it hisses. Sing for me, boy... I swallow the saliva collecting on my tongue, the hunger gnawing in my gut, and meet his gaze. “If you come with me, I am certain that it will consume me completely.”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “So, what, you’re expecting me to let you go by yourself? With a whole country after you? How does it help either of us if you end up dead?”
“Luckily, I have a whole life’s worth of practice keeping out of sight. I’ll be all right.”
“What about me? I’m just supposed to go back to my life as though you never existed? That’s not fair, Is.”
“Please.” I tremble. “Please don’t make me fight this. I will lose.”
He mops a hand across his face and sniffs, shoving to his feet and turning away to look down on the city. I stare at the hard lines of his back, at the way his broad shoulders are framed by the orange light of the flames.
“Why did you want me to sing?” he asks.
I move to his side and slide my right hand down his arm. His fingers interlace with mine and squeeze gently. He looks down at me.
“Why?” he repeats.
“You don’t know how strong the...the thing inside of me has become. I’m afraid that just leaving you won’t be enough. It’ll know that I can always come back, that you’d accept me and care for me.” I reach up and tuck a tuft of hair behind his ear, then trail my hand along his jaw. “I—I need you to forget me.”
He drops my hand and backs away, expression darkening. “Why would you even ask me that?”
“You think I want to do it?” I say, balling my good hand into a fist. “Do you think I want the only person who has ever cared for me to forget I exist? Do you think I want to live the rest of my life running away from the one person I love?”
We both freeze, that final word striking between us and electrifying the air like a bolt of lightning.
My whole body is trembling again in spite of the elixir.
And I realize it’s true. I do love him. I’ve loved him since those first nights in my crypt when he was rifling through my things and conversing with skulls on my walls. Since he saw my mask and chose to trust me anyway. Since he realized what I was and decided it didn’t matter.
“You,” I whisper. “With the caramels and that laugh and those damn dimples... How could I have stood a chance? From the moment I heard you sing, I was bound to love you.”
He stares at me, an unreadable expression on his face. Then all at once he’s stalking toward me, a sudden intensity in his gaze.
His lips meet mine as he wraps his arms around me and braces me tight against him. I gasp, and he kisses harder. The fingers of my good hand tangle in his hair.
His mouth is warm and soft and fills me with a fire hotter than the one blazing behind us in Channe.
He lifts me and presses me back against a tree, and suddenly there is nothing in this world but his lips and his hands and his heart thundering in time with mine. There is no beast inside of me. There is no police force hunting me. There is no death and no blood, no gravoirs or fendoirs. Only the two of us, locked away in this impossible moment where what is forbidden and what is right no longer matter, and all that exists is this feeling. Being loved. Being wanted.
When the heat in his kisses changes from a blazing inferno to the seductive smolder of glowing embers, I whisper, “This is why I have to do it, Emeric.”
He pulls back to meet my gaze, his hands stilling against either side of my neck, his thumbs cradling the curve of my jaw. “This is why you can’t, though,” he says. “Because I love you, too, and that means I get a say in what happens.”
I whimper as his words rock through me. I love you. Words said in fairy tales and dreams. Words I was never meant to hear. “It’s because we love each other that I have to go. Do you know what it would do to me if I hurt you?” I press my forehead against his. “It. Would. Destroy. Me.”
His thumbs caress my skin, leaving tracks of hot fire in their wake all up and down my neck. But he doesn’t respond.
“I
want to think I could keep the monster at bay,” I whisper. “But when I was draining the elixir from those people in the opera house, I was not in control.” I suck in a breath. “As much as I hate the world for what it’s done to me, I don’t want to imagine what I might do to it if that power overcomes me.”
He leans in and presses a gentle, tentative kiss to the corner of my mouth. “But you’re strong, Is. We’re strong together. We can fight this.”
I meet his gaze. Ferocity and fire, determination and resolve ripple one after the other in the expression on his face.
For a moment I let myself imagine it. Him, Arlette, and me, in hiding but happy. Far away. Maybe in a cottage like the one where he grew up.
But even as the scene plays out in my mind, I know it would never be like that. The beast inside me has tasted what Emeric can do to my power, and it wants more.
Do it, it whispers. Take him back to the city and finish what you started.
I shake my head. “I’ll either succumb to it, or I’ll go mad trying to resist.” My voice trembles. “Do you want that for me? Because I wouldn’t want that for you.”
His thumbs slow their gentle movement. He releases me and interlaces his fingers behind his head with a grimace.
“The demon I would become...it wouldn’t love you anymore. It would see you only as a pawn. I’m begging you, Emeric. Please don’t force me down that path.”
He mops his forearm across his face and considers me for several long, quiet moments. Then, finally, he nods.
“All right,” he whispers.
My soul unravels, and the tears I’ve been keeping at bay spill out onto my cheeks.
He crushes me against him, and his own quiet weeping rocks through us both. I knot my hands in his shirt, press my face into his chest, and breathe him in. Caramel and burnt sugar tear me to pieces.
His hands move to my hair, weaving into the snarls until he’s cupping both sides of my head behind my ears. He presses his lips against mine once more.
Our tears mingle and stain our tongues with salt. I cannot breathe through the lump in my throat or the pain in my chest. I brace my arms on his neck, and he hoists me from the ground. I wrap my legs around his waist. He pushes me harder against the tree.
“I would have loved you forever,” he says, his breath hot on my mouth.
I meet his gaze. “And I will.”
His mouth dips against mine once more, but this time it is soft and gentle, quiet and questioning, as though he is exploring every inch of my lips with his so that he might memorize them. They are gentle kisses. Kisses that know they cannot last. Kisses that beg for just a breath longer. Kisses that mean goodbye.
When I don’t think my soul can bear it a moment more, I break away. I slide my legs back down until my feet touch the ground.
He unknots the leather cord from his neck, the one that holds the blue stone his mother gave him. He holds it out for me. “To remember me by.”
I stare down at it, hiccupping. “I’m a gravoir. Remembering is just about the only thing I can be counted on to do.”
“Please take it.”
I lift my hair and turn so he can tie it around my neck. His hands settle on my shoulders, heavy and final, and his mouth presses against the hollow under my ear. I lean into the feel of him one last time and reach into the neckline of my dress to tug out the pendant. Pulling away, I lift it from my head and drape it around his neck. “Keep this for me, then.”
He never takes his eyes from mine. “Always.”
The pendant glimmers orange in the firelight. I dig the edge of my thumbnail into the crack, and it pops open, filling the night with our lullaby. The ballerina twirls. Her song fills the night with faraway tinkling bells.
Weakly, I sing, reaching up to trace his face.
Meet me in the darkness,
He joins in, his voice barely more than a whisper. But as always, his memories are strong, and they crash into me with their voracious current. My thumb trails along the contours of his nose, down into the crease of his upper lip. One last memory for me to keep.
Meet me in the night.
The beast inside of me raises its head at the sound of Emeric’s voice. More elixir. It opens its mouth to drink.
But for now the pain in my heart is stronger than the beast’s hunger. I push it down, down, down until its appetite is only an ache in my gut.
I drag my fingers over the dimple in Emeric’s right cheek as his memories swirl, strong and beautiful, through my soul.
It’s time.
I plunge into their depths. Back to the first night he glimpsed me in the opera house’s hallway, dashing away from a toppled candelabra in the dark.
Meet me where the star-touched breeze
Whisks away the light.
The roughness of shaven stubble sandpapers along my palm as I follow the contours of his jaw and chin with my touch.
Gritting my teeth, I manipulate the image of myself on that first night we met, reworking the memory until I’m nothing but a shadow on the wall.
For there under the canopy
Of a tall and silent tree
I move forward to when he found me behind the chair the night I offered him voice lessons. I transform past-Isda into a regular-looking tutor. An older man with a crooked nose and dark hair swept away from his brow. No more fire-red curls, no more sparkling, feathered black mask.
Emeric watches my face as my fingertips trail over his mouth. He kisses them gently.
Midnight comes to life, my darling,
To guard our memories.
I am bleeding inside. Pieces of me break away, leaving gaping, empty crevices in my chest.
The shadows of yesteryear
Where dawn and afternoon fade
His memory of my crypt morphs into one of a music studio at the back of the opera house. My organ disappears. My music fades.
Keep our moments quiet waiting
In a whisper-worn glade.
Emeric’s voice is thick. His eyes grow distant. His mouth twitches away from my caress.
As they rest in moonlight,
Angels sing them all to sleep.
I find past-Isda shining in white lace, red curls spilling over her shoulders. I feel Emeric’s rush of warmth at the sight of her. I let myself fall into the dance we shared one last time, that moment before everything around us shattered. I revel in the heat between our bodies and the way the music drove us around and around and made the rest of the world vanish.
So meet me in the darkness, darling,
Our kiss in his apartment. Coming undone, carving out a piece of the march of time where we could pretend we belonged to each other for just a moment.
Until, finally, there’s only one memory left to change.
Tonight.
I drop my hand to my side and back away from him. He does not protest, does not follow. He cocks his head, biting on his bottom lip like he thinks he should know me but can’t quite place my face.
My body quakes, but I keep my head clear as I manipulate the last memory, as I transform the past hour into nothing more than him waking up alone and cold in the woods.
Where past and present meet.
The power growls its frustration, begs me to undo what I’ve done.
Emeric stares at me for a long moment as the song fades from his lips, his eyes tracing the hills and valleys of my face. “Do—do I know you?” he asks.
I shake my head, blinking away the tears still warping my vision. “I’m afraid not.” I force the words through the thick knot in my throat, and they come out warbled and weak.
“Who are you?”
“Most people know me only as the Opera Ghost.”
His eyes trail over my face—but he’s not looking at my mottled visage. He’s looking at the tears and the blood. He reache
s out for me, tentatively, as though he’s afraid I may run. “You’re hurt.” He glances at the bullet holes through my left shoulder and the bandage hanging in tatters from my hand. “Who did this to you?”
I shake my head. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. I’ve come to tell you where to find your sister.”
His eyebrows shoot upward. “You know Arlette?”
I close my eyes and nod. A small part of me fears what sending him to her might mean for him. She could be even more dangerous than I am. There’s no telling what she learned from Cyril.
But I could never keep him from her. She’s the only family he has left. He’s been searching for her since the day she disappeared, convinced that if he could find her, he might be able to make up for his mistakes.
It is my job only to love him, not to be his caretaker. Whether they learn to control her power is between the two of them.
And so I let a slow breath out through my teeth and say, “She’s waiting for you in a small, boarded-up chapel on the northern outskirts of Channe. Rue des Morts.”
“It’s really her? She’s alive?”
“It’s really her. She’s in bad shape, but she’ll be okay.”
He bounces on the balls of his feet.
“You’d better go now, though. She’s hungry and cold.”
He turns to leave but pauses. “Are you sure you’re all right? I could at least help you clean your wounds.”
I think of his soft, gentle hands working at my bandages, brushing against my skin. A sob chokes through me. “No. Please. Just go.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod. “I’ll make it.”
“At least let me give you this.” He pats at his pockets until he finds what he’s looking for. He pulls something out and presses it into my grip, shaking my hand as he does. “Thank you so much, mademoiselle.” Then he turns and sprints down the hill.
“Adieu, mon amour,” I whisper, glancing down at the caramel he left in the center of my palm. I curl my fingers around it. “I’ll remember for both of us.”
I watch him until he is out of sight, and then I slip into the shadows, tugging my cloak closer around my neck and pulling its hood up over my hair. Tears continue to fall as I stride into the night, but I do not wipe them away. Instead, I look upward at the open skies and the stars twinkling between the reaching branches. I breathe in the cool, night air. Let it soothe some of the pain in my heart.
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