I didn’t care what else the mask hid. This was no devil I held together in my arms and no demon or monster. This was a man. For the first time, I understood what that meant and did not shy away or create angels or ghosts instead.
“Don’t go,” I pleaded and could not argue with instinct as I pressed flustered kisses to his back and felt him stiffen in surprise. “Don’t leave me. I’m sorry, Erik. I’m so sorry…”
His tears choked his voice as he insisted in broken sounds, “There is a good reason I wear a mask, Christine, and it is not to hide the face of Satan. It is to hide something unworthy to exist, unworthy even to be Satan’s.”
“I know,” I whispered and pressed another compassion-laced kiss to his spine. No…I didn’t know, not the full extent, but I could imagine more horror and it only made me hold him tighter.
“Christine…” A gasp suddenly escaped him, but without a view of a masked face, I was unsure the trigger until his hand delicately caught one of mine and disentangled my hold. That was the wrist he had gripped in his anger, such a betrayer that I didn’t even want to own it as mine, and although I had yet to survey it, the dull ache told me it was injured, perhaps bruising. I felt it was justly deserved.
He was silent as he held my wrist and inspected, and I could feel the self-loathing radiate in ripples from his tensed back.
I could never say if his next actions were to prove a point, perhaps that despite his deficiencies, he was no different than any other man, or if it was simply impulse fueling him as it fueled me. But his free hand lifted to his mask again. I was unsure what he was doing until my injured wrist was guided without struggle from me toward his face. Then his lips tasted me, and I stopped breathing.
He kept the mask held, certainly only exposing that distorted mouth again, but in all its abnormalities, it lavished healing adoration on my sore skin. Kisses, awkward and unsure at first, and I could make out the unnatural swell of his lip with every pressing through feeling alone. As he grew more confident, perhaps assured when I didn’t try to pull free, he took more liberties. Slower, more languid, that misshapen mouth latched to my flesh, lips moving in devouring ravishment, and at their parted seam, his tongue was freed to lap gently at my veins.
I buried a cry in his shoulder blade and shivered. I was terrified as heat raced from the spot his mouth claimed to settle with a dull ache at my core, and yet for all my fear, I pressed firmer to him as if he were my savior at the same time. As much my protector as the one who could destroy me. With him, it was everything. Every emotion and sensation, good and bad, entwined in one package and weaving thorn-laced vines about our embracing bodies. I was so frightened because I wanted so much!
One more stolen taste as his tongue circled my inner wrist and made bruises ache inside and out, and so sudden that I mewed in disappointment, he lowered my arm and adjusted his mask. …And I’d never gotten another view of that malformed mouth and regretted that fact.
Still delicately clasping my telltale injury, he softly insisted, “You deserve so much more than this, Christine, more than I could ever give you. You deserve a perfect prince, not a disfigured creature in the shadows.”
“I like the shadows,” I gave as a weak protest and rubbed my forehead against his back.
“I was under the impression that you did not favor the dark,” he bid, but I caught the hint of a smile in his voice and savored it.
“When I’m alone,” I corrected. “But when I’m with you, …nothing frightens me more than losing your heart.”
“Oh, Christine…” My name thick with that exact heart, and he lifted my held wrist again and pressed its injury to the bare half of his face, arching his cheek to my skin as he insisted, “You never need worry about that. It is yours, only yours.”
I gave him hope because he deserved hope, because in spite of every trial in between, I wanted that heart and meant to be brave enough to have it.
This would be my greatest challenge: to follow my own heart and its emotions and stop letting the outside world in. The rest of humanity would dub the man in my arms as an ugly monster. I was determined not to allow such things to matter. I knew in my heart that he was no devil or demon, no monster, nothing worth fear, and I was adamant to cling to my own intuition.
With a soft sigh, Erik broke free of my hold, and I felt my soul go with him. A chill overtook my body where his had been and rattled me to my bones with a necessity to feel him again.
“Go in to bed, Christine,” he commanded, meeting my stare, and though his tears were gone, I saw their dried remnants upon his one bare cheek and longed to touch them.
My gaze averted to the wrist he’d marked, and vibrant purple stared back in stark splotches. It didn’t feel as guilty as it looked.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, wincing as I took in his damage, but I’d already shrugged it off to nothing. How could bruises matter when the kisses he left felt more lasting? “Will you…meet me tomorrow for your lesson?”
He asked a question he’d never asked before, but it was obvious he felt a need for assurance that I readily gave in a definite nod.
“Of course.”
He still glanced at my wrist, and I thought it ridiculous to know such regret. I’d hurt him just as bad when I’d tried to unmask him. He only bore the disadvantage that his reprisal had evidence. “…Goodnight, Christine.”
It was a dismissal, and though I hesitated a moment more, I obeyed and replied, “Goodnight, Erik.”
My heart longed to stay, but my legs carried me off the stage and toward the entrance to the dormitories. I kept a lingering worry what the next night together would bring. He might put up walls, might hold back in fear of the damage he could cause. But I was adamant that I would be there waiting for him tomorrow and every day, and I’d prove his doubts unwarranted. Prove my heart, prove my soul, and prove that a mask didn’t matter as much as my actions tonight made it seem. No, …only the heart mattered, and his heart was mine.
Chapter Seven
Erik~
“Well done, Christine.”
The praise might have been understated, but the awe in my voice made it hold more meaning, and I saw a reverberation of its colors upon her smiling lips. Her aria had been a source of brilliance tonight, lacking her usual tendency to second-guess and question sounds before letting them loose. Her training was coming along nicely, but I had no assurance that she would be ready for what I was about to throw in her path.
Gala night was quickly approaching, the launch into a season of opera, and I was determined that Christine would sing opening night and put herself in the forefront as a rising diva. My Christine… But it was difficult to look at her and see anything beyond a young girl still growing into the confidence she needed to possess.
So innocently exquisite, …so desirous without even realizing it. I scolded my inevitable train of thought and tried to focus on talent alone. But…as she stood before me in her rehearsal attire, I allowed my gaze the right to roam her curves as if they were already mine, and I pondered her center-stage as the prima donna, lavished with attention and spotlights. To some degree, it was a disappointment and left me the bitter aftertaste of envy. I wasn’t going to like sharing her with the world as much as I’d originally thought…
As I caught her blue stare again, I noted the blush upon her cheeks and wondered how blatant my musings were that she could read my wanting like an open book.
“Christine,” I sighed, desperate not to show her how thrown I was, “it is late, and you sang beautifully tonight. Perhaps you should go in to bed.”
“Must I?”
Was that disappointment to leave me? I wanted to change my mind, beg her to stay, to let me hold her, touch her, all the things I’d been longing for days, but with another heaved sigh, I concluded, “You need your rest. The show is approaching, and Madame Giry is working you to exhaustion. I am no better. I should be more conscious of your well-being.”
“My well-being excels only in your presence,” sh
e declared with that smile. It was genuine and new in my company. Ever since the night I’d bruised her wrist and marked it as mine, she’d given me such smiles. I could not understand why, but I never questioned when every time pink lips arched, light twinkled in her blue eyes and illuminated happiness so pure that I yearned to have it forever.
“Then…” I hesitated before countering with a hint of apprehension, “Perhaps you should always be in my presence.”
That smile again! What did it mean? Was she only humoring me, or did she agree? She never said so, as with a little shrug, she decided, “An angel is always with me, isn’t that right, ange? So I will go in to bed now, but my angel will guard my every breath.”
My gaze traced her features with a longing that tingled my fingertips. “I wish I were a real angel and could give your sentiment meaning.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head, that smile ever-present as she tentatively approached my piano bench, swaying slightly on her feet at my side. “An angel would have to leave me for heaven, but you…you’ll never leave me.”
“Never.”
She held her breath and lowered her eyes for a quick instant. …Shy? I sought to read her but didn’t have enough experience with this version of Christine. Smiles, blushes, coy…like a girl in love. The conclusion made me shiver and ache for it to be true.
“So I will go in to bed,” she repeated with that grin, “but I have a promise for more moments like this to bring me sweet dreams.”
“I am a sweet dream to you?” I inquired full of hope. “In spite of the unpleasant details in between? …I hurt you last time I touched you.”
She lifted the wrist I’d marked, a discolored bruise on its way to fading; she showed me without even a flash of condemnation. “When the mark is gone, will you then forget? Because I already have.”
“Have you, Christine?”
I watched her timidly duck her eyes again before seeming to grasp conviction, and with a tremble to give her uncertainties away, she brought that lifted hand to my masked face. I stiffened with a lingering fear, recalling how she’d sought to steal my mask the last time we’d attempted touches, but I wanted so desperately to trust her that I forced myself to remain petrified in place and wait. If she wanted to unmask me, she need but do it. I’d be pliant as my own sweet dreams shattered, but perhaps that was our inevitable fate anyway.
I clenched my jaw to keep from lashing out in words and temper and glared fixedly at her approaching hand. But to my shocked surprise, she extended a single finger and brushed a languid caress along my exposed bottom lip. It was as if she hinted at our shared secret, the true distortion of my mouth, and validated the kisses it had taken the last time.
I stared at her beautiful face as she touched me, and though she refused to meet my eye and only watched the progression of her touching finger, I saw no disgust or doubt. I saw emotions so gentle I could hardly believe they were mine.
As if timidity finally caught up, she withdrew with a brighter blush and bid, “Goodnight, Erik,” with that sweet voice.
I couldn’t even make a feasible reply, simply gaping as she turned and scurried off. Everything seemed to be falling exactly as I’d laid it out. …Why then did I also know a terror for it to shatter before I could ever claim it? Curse my infernal pessimism!
But it hung like a dark cloud as I eventually gave up my staring vigil and retired to the shadows below. I tried to focus on the next step of my plan: ridding the stage of La Carlotta. An accident would be sufficient, a warning and a letter… I couldn’t let Christine find out about the underlying deceptions to her push into the limelight. No, those had to remain my sins to bear in silence.
I was meticulously laying out the details in my head when I received my next shock of the evening. One of my alarms was resounding through the catacombs and calling me even at a distance, and with a heaved curse through the passages, I hurried my pace to seek out my intruder. I had traps and alarms at every point in the dark cellars for anyone who dared venture below, determined never to be taken unaware. I knew the deadliness of my traps before I even found the body, strangled by one of the ropes and dangling off the stone floor.
Joseph Buquet, meddling stagehand, his crutch was pinned between the rocks and likely set off the trap before he ever realized.
I felt no remorse for his death. He was at fault to seek out the Opera Ghost. What a fool! Transforming from lusting deviant to noble hero out to preserve Christine’s innocence. Or perhaps he had been after simple revenge for a fall and a broken leg. No matter. He’d have none of it now.
Making an annoyed face at his dangling, oversized body as I contemplated the effort it would take to rid me of his corpse, I chose to leave it until morning and walked onward. Ignorant bastard! And now when he went missing as all victims to my traps did, Christine might find reservations I’d hoped gone. Damn him! A nuisance in life and death!
I was muttering curses with every step, and perhaps my anger dulled my typically attuned senses because I did not gain my next, awaiting shock of the evening until I arrived outside the hidden door of my house. Someone was inside… I knew it before I ever set foot past the threshold, someone who’d managed to bypass traps and alarms and actually solved the riddle of the Opera Ghost’s maze.
…There was only one person I could deduce with skills enough to anticipate my devices.
Scowling in growing aggravation, I burst through my door and greeted before suspicions were ever confirmed, “Daroga, you better have a very good reason for this unplanned visit and intrusion into my home without invitation.”
Perhaps he had hoped for the element of surprise on his side, yet he was the surprised one as he leapt up from my couch and stammered, “Erik, …it’s been years.”
I searched the daroga for hints of the exact number passed out of each other’s presences, but he looked nearly the same. Small of stature, dark skin that insisted how out of place he was, simply gazing at him gave me the reminiscent sense of being in Persia, and I had to remind myself that was the past.
“A decade, give or take,” I sharply filled in, “and yet your detective skills are obviously at their finest if you arrived at my home unharmed.”
“Unlike your overweight friend?”
“Friend?” I spat. “The traps are for enemies, as should be implied by the dead body of a useless stagehand.”
“More murders, Erik,” the daroga tutted with disapproval.
“No, daroga,” I curtly snapped. “Not this time. The traps are for my protection, and if someone dies in their grasp, I am not at fault. Their folly, not mine.” Eyeing him snidely again, I added, “I have yet to reason why you are not dangling from one right now.”
But the daroga shook his dark head and insisted matter-of-factly, “I know you too well, I suppose. Your traps were predictable.”
“Predictable!”
“Did you not use a similar spread for the shah’s palace?”
I sneered my perturbation. He was right, of course, but I’d never considered anyone from Persia finding me in the cellars of the Paris opera house, so repetition had been a matter of convenience.
“Damn you,” I mumbled anyway and retorted, “I have worn out my patience with you already, so tell me why you have sought me out when you should be rotting away back in Persia. I have more important things to deal with than congenial visits from an old acquaintance.”
“Acquaintance? I anticipated friend at least after all I did to help you escape the shah’s dungeons.”
More points I did not feel like reminiscing over tonight.
“What things could you possibly have to deal with?” the daroga questioned in his interrogative manner. Was it any wonder he’d been such a stellar law official for the shah’s regime? His skills seemed just as pointed as ever as he surveyed my sitting room and awaited an answer.
Lying was futile; he knew all my tells. So I gave honesty instead, “I haunt the opera house.”
“Ah yes, the resident ghost.”
He earned my glare of annoyance with his nonchalance. Asking questions he’d already researched answers to and then making my role inconsequential and a self-righteous crusade without value!
“And how long have you been spying on my life? Because none of it is your business anymore. We parted ways amicably. You cannot now come and preach on a moral high ground. It’s too late for that. You knew what and who I was when you helped me escape.”
“And look what I caused. I set you loose to terrorize another city.”
“Terrorize, you bastard! I no longer kill without valid reason. I have more sophisticated tastes.” I hesitated to reveal details, but gave one viable answer. “I play ghost to run the opera house in a better way than the ignorant management.”
“Better way? Your way,” he amended; he truly did know me too well.
“What does it matter to you? We’re not in Persia anymore, daroga. I owe you nothing as far as I’m concerned. Now get out of my home.”
The daroga shook his dark head doubtfully. “And…the young ballerina?”
I went numb and ground out, “She has nothing to do with you. Leave it be.” How distracted did Christine make me that I hadn’t noticed a presence spying on our lesson time?
“Will you lie and tell me that you are simply teaching her to sing?” He asked questions he’d already formed answers to, the correct answers.
“I am teaching her to sing.”
“And?”
I cringed to make admissions. “Curse your interrogation! I’m in love with her! All right? Does that satisfy your exemplary detective skills? It is not a sin for me to fall in love.”
But the daroga looked unconvinced about that. “Does she know the real sins on your head? …Has she seen your face?”
“My face should not determine if she could love me in return!” I roared.
“No, but…well, it does factor in, Erik,” he somberly insisted. “A young and pretty girl might be thrown by its…distortions.”
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