Her promise to him lay just as shattered as the mirror of his mother's vanity. The night she agreed to be his, she had promised. It had been a lie.
This was the ultimate betrayal. Not her love for Raoul, and he knew she still loved him, but this. She had taken away the one thing he had suffered and burned for all those years. His mind was reeling, not wanting to accept that his Christine had injured him so fatally. Crimson drips slithered down the legs of the vanity.
She was sitting in front of the ruined mirror, head resting on her arm. He had found her that way. The jagged shard that gouged her flesh had fallen from her hand, but was so covered in blood it resembled stained glass.
He stood at her side, hardly breathing. Even now, his Christine's beauty stole the air from his withering lungs. Her face was sublime – no trace at all of the melancholy state she'd been in since the night of their wedding. Through the weeks, he'd attempted to raise her spirits. He'd play music for her every night. Those first weeks, she would often sing with him; but that, too, eventually fell from her interest. He had let her be, allowing her to spend her days in bed when she didn't have the will to move. That was the state he'd left her in that morning, so when he heard the crash from their bedroom, he was quick to investigate.
Her dim eyes hadn't left him since he had swung open the door. The subtle rise and fall of her chest hadn't changed at all in the few short seconds he'd been standing there. It was as if she expected him to arrive. The gaping wound in her arm poured forth, adding to the horrid trickle down the piece of furniture. The gash was rough and unclean, clearly accomplished by multiple stabs into the pale skin. Erik had only been a minute or two between hearing the crash and entering the room. It was undeniable that the wound had taken longer than that to be inflicted.
"Christine!" he screamed as finally his senses caught up to him. He pulled her from the vanity and grabbed her up in his arms. Just a year prior, she had been so light to carry. Now, even as most of her blood left her body, she was heavy.
Slowly he sank to his knees against the wall, cradling her limp body against his own skeletal frame. He gripped her hand, feeling the cold metal of their wedding band around her finger. Every song he had ever sang to her, every word of love he'd spoken in her ear, all clamored to escape his tongue. None of them made it out in time. Within seconds of holding her, he sensed her fluttering heartbeat stutter to a halt. Her last breath wisped into his neck, and then she was gone. With her, went the last fraying strands of his sanity.
His fury came first, a blind white rage. He ransacked the entirety of the house, throwing every one of her possessions into the lake. He returned to the bedroom after he was sure nothing of value remained intact. He once again took Christine's body in his arms and rested her head against his chest. He had every intention in the world to stay with her until he, too, faded into oblivion.
She'd broken her promise to not take her own life after becoming his wife. He wasn't going to let her get away. She wanted him to face the ultimate hell: the remainder of a lifetime without her. He wasn't going to give such a wretched, vile, beautiful creature the satisfaction. He took up the slick piece of mirror from the floor. The flesh of his wrists may have become thick after decades of morphine needles and stress-relieving slits, but the shard was able to find his artery after a few desperate jabs.
Finally, the grief came. He collapsed in sobs against the wall with Christine on his chest, screaming his voice hoarse. When his tears and voice were all but spent, he pressed a kiss into her lips. They were already becoming cold as the ring on her finger. Whatever level of Hell he was soon to awake in, he knew she was already there waiting. The deceitful, traitorous Delilah. Truly, she had lost her soul to him to do such a cruel, sadistic thing. Oh, how he loved her.
As his own blood mixed with hers, he continued kissing her pale lips, again and again. He wanted the taste of her to be his last sensation. And, indeed, it was.