This has been sitting on my computer for far too long and I thought that I might as well post it. Please note that it is still a WIP, there will be a second part some time in the future. Please don't be too disappointed it's not yet finished.:)
Anyway, I hope you'll like the first part. Many thanks for Masha for her help, as always.
"I'm sorry for leaving the sheet music on the rack. I completely forgot about them," she told her husband as they turned to the left after the strange nook in the wall.
Today's performance had ended not exactly an hour ago, but since the sheet music for the songs she wished to practice tomorrow had been left on the piano rack, they needed to come back down to the underground house to retrieve it before leaving for the house that was their home now.
Christine pulled her coat tighter around herself when a light breeze swept over the underground tunnel: she was still wearing her stage costume underneath. It was a rather impressive gown – after all, it was him who had designed it – but it was meant to be worn under the intense stage lights and not in the unheated corridors of the labyrinth beneath the Opera House.
A gust of wind whistled past her and stole into the folds of her coat, its chilly touch nipping at her skin.
After a long day of rehearsals and an evening performance it was rather difficult to ignore the cold in her limbs, much as she tried to do so. Maybe the cold weather which had been promised for last week had arrived at last – but it was rather difficult to tell when she had spent the whole day within the walls of the theater.
"Don't worry about it," replied Erik, passing a junction of the tunnels and then turning to the right at the next crossing. "It is my fault just as much. I should have remembered we were not supposed to return there today. But I could have gone to retrieve the music myself," he said, hurrying past a door. A low, humming sound drifted through it as they passed: the door led to the boiler room. An occasional set of shuffles accompanied the soft noise of the engines along with a couple of murmured words of the stokers as they finished today's shift, and her heart picked up in its rate, although the workers hardly ever used this back door – mostly because of the rumors about this particular corridor being haunted by the opera ghost.
She managed to stifle a most inappropriate smile.
"I know," she agreed, and stepping across the faint, shapeless light that filtered through from beneath the door, caught up with him. "But I didn't want you to do it all alone."
"I'm quite used to crossing the tunnels, you know." His voice was light and indifferent, no doubt meant to be reassuring her, but she couldn't disregard the allusions it carried and how her heart fluttered from them.
"That's exactly why I wanted to accompany you. You don't need to do everything all alone, anymore."
At her words he stopped in his tracks and reached out to her; she placed her hand in his offered palm, then her hand was lifted slightly as he bent forward and breathed a kiss to her fingers.
Having been married for more than eight months by now, he still quite often started on tasks on his own, whether it be fetching food and other necessities for the household or doing household chores himself. She had spent their first week with constantly reminding him that she could do her share of the work but he insisted that he was quite used to running his own errands and that he hadn't wished to marry her to have a housemaid. It took her a week to convince him that sharing the tasks would certainly not make her a housemaid, but even after that he often forgot to ask her to help him. It might have been infuriating if she didn't find it so endearing.
He gently let go of her hand and straightened again, and promptly another burst of wind swept through the tunnel and crawled into a cranny with a low, prolonged moan.
She shivered.
"Are you cold?" came his question with a scrutinizing look.
"It's unusually windy down here," she replied, trying to disappear completely in the warmth of her cape. There was a stark contrast on her neck where the coat ended and the cold began, though, and when she blinked, her lashes felt cool against her skin.
He reached up to the clasp of his own cape. "Here. You can have my coat as well."
"There's no need, thank you." He stopped but didn't let go of the clasp and so she reached up and coaxed his hands to lower back down. "We'll be upstairs in a few minutes."
"Indeed," he said, then nodded and started towards the stairs in front of them.
No sooner than her boot touched the first step, wind howled across the tunnel and...
She shuddered.
It must have blown into a crack in the wall for it to create a sound that most resembled the cry of a wounded beast. Clearly, it could be nothing else but the wind. But with darkness surrounding them just a few feet from where the torchlight ended who could say if there was anything – anyone! – lurking in the shadows?
She held onto the stone railing and tried to focus on how the torchlight danced on the embroidery of his coat instead of the long shadows it created on the stone beneath their feet.
His boots thudded rhythmically as he went, the sound echoing off the walls around them.
At last they reached the second floor and for a moment all was still, and an eerie silence hovered around them. The tight stillness seemed to tremble against her skin and when the hairs began to stand up on her nape, she looked up in wonder – then a moment later trembled with the familiarity of the movement: the gesture was usually followed by realizing the uncomfortable fact that someone had been watching her.
She gripped the railing and looked around.
No one was there.
"What is it?"
Her husband's voice snapped her back to reality and finally she let go of the banisters.
"I don't know. Something..." She looked around again and saw nothing, just like a minute ago. It would have been rather unlikely to find anything or anyone down here, but she knew that strange feeling well enough to know it had been real.
But how? Why? Who?
"It must have been the wind," he said, reaching out to her, and she slipped her hand into his with a grateful sigh. "Come, we'll be at home in no time. It's not too late, we might even find a coach to take us home."
He resumed his previous pace and they passed the familiar row of doors on their left as they headed towards the stairs that would take them to the first floor. The breeze they felt on the third floor was present on this floor as well, and she wondered just how cold outside could be for the wind to carry it so far underground. Save from the occasional soft wail of the wind the tunnels were silent, though, and – well, Erik would certainly know if something was amiss: in the years he had lived here he surely had met all possible disturbance of the cellars. As it was now, all were as usual: the torches were in their usual places, all the doors they had to pass were closed, as they supposed to have been, no foreign noises disturbed the relative silence around them, there were no drifting shadows, created by the torches of a possible intruder...
No, that strange sensation must have been nothing more than a fabrication of her mind. Rehearsals in the past few days had been quite strained, as they usually were when making the final touches to a new production and...
She let out a deep sigh.
It was foolish to think that lack of sleep and all that anxiety would not take a toll on her nerves.
"Christine Daaé."
The soft call of her name rippled through the air.
She stopped immediately.
Erik stopped, too, and turned back to her. It seemed that it took an eternity for his voice to reach her, carrying through the suddenly deafening silence when he asked, "What happened?"
Haven't you heard it?!
"Someone just called my name," she managed to force out.
"I didn't hear a thing," he replied, and she saw his throat move as he swallowed.
But that was certainly not something conjured up by her over-exhausted mind. Could it be that he, who heard every single fraction of a noise, missed something so obvious?!
"Don't sounds from above drift down to the tunnels?" she tried feebly, half-wishing he wouldn't answer her.
"They do, but you cannot hear a thing on the second floor. All was set up so that I could hear the sounds from above on the third floor," came his answer while his eyes slowly swept up and down her frame, clearly searching for something.
She could barely resist a squirm.
"You must be quite tired," he said stiffly after a short pause, and offered her his arm, which she took without hesitation. "Let us go home."
He resumed his pace and she went with him, but it was impossible to miss how his steps were now more hastened than before.
It must have been rather late, now possibly close to midnight, and no doubt he just wanted to catch a cab before they all went home.
She skipped the next step to match her pace to his.
Odd as it was, she didn't really feel tired. Her back might have been yearning for the soft pressure of the mattress, and a warm bath was a most desired prospect, but there was no sign of that familiar pull in her chest that was usually the signal of her overexhausted psyche. Even though it had been months ago, the memory of those days still vividly lived in her mind: how lack of sleep had rendered her unsure of herself, how her perception of her surroundings began to fade until it had seemed that every word spoken to her had come from under water and she had seen her body move from afar – but even then she had not imagined things.
And surely she had not imagined that voice now.
Gripping onto his arm she once more skipped a step to catch up with him. She stole a glance up at his face but she needn't have been so furtive in her gesture: his eyes were trained forward in an unwavering stare. She quickly turned her gaze back to the ground beneath their feet, watching how the shadows of the torch flitted and moved with every step.
"Christine Daaé."
She jolted and he stopped immediately, turning back to her.
The floor seemed to slip from beneath her as the tunnel swayed around her; she blinked, and a moment later was surprised that she was still standing upright.
"Are you feeling unwell?" he asked her.
She had to blink a few times before she could answer with certainty, "No, I'm fine. But I heard it again," she said, her throat closing up.
"Did you," he replied, but his question sounded more like a statement. Her stomach shrunk into a knot at seeing his throat moving with a forced swallow before he quickly averted his gaze to look at something on their left.
Bracing herself with a deep sigh she followed his gaze, and her heart skipped a beat when there were no shadows flitting across the darkness.
Who was that, then?
"It was soft. Eerie," she explained in a choke, turning back to look at him. His eyes were now riveted to her face and he stood very still – so still in fact, that she wondered if he was breathing at all. "Almost like the sound you used to call for me with," she added, and wondered if she meant to describe it to him better or wanted to proffer an explanation to herself why he had not heard it.
His eyes bore into hers, unwavering, and so she saw the exact moment when a shadow passed his gaze and subsequently, the visible side of his face seemed to lose color even in the poor light of the torch. He turned away hastily but even so she caught a glimpse of the twitch that contorted his expression for a moment.
"Erik, someone's down here," she said, a stream of cold beginning to curl around her stomach. How can you still not hear it?!
"Of course you would try to..." He didn't finish and she wasn't sure if he didn't want to or his voice had failed him. He turned back to her, his face still pallid and emotionless. "I'll come back down to find him once we reached your room," he promised and turned away quickly.
Some emotion, quicker than she could identify it, squeezed her throat, but there was no time to dwell on that since once more, he had started on his route. He was walking just as fast as before, although after a while his steps began to falter, then he picked up pace again. Once it seemed that the torchlight became unsteady for moment, wobbling on the ground in a precarious dance, as if the torch itself wavered in his hand – but...
She shook her head.
No.
It made no sense whatsoever.
Could it be that the calls existed only in her imagination? If there was someone down here, he would certainly notice it well before her, especially that she had now heard it twice already. She noted with a strange tingle in her chest that probably he would notice any intruder even without them making any sound. How come that he heard nothing?
I'll come back down to find him.
The memory of his low, raspy voice rippled down her back in a cold wave.
She remembered well how furious he had been upon realizing that she had a friend, a young and handsome man interested in her enough to ask her out for dinner. He had spared Raoul's life in the end, of course, but it seemed unlikely that he had changed so much as to be so calm about an apparently unhinged devotee of hers who was bold enough to brave the cellars in pursuit of her. His wife! No, he would certainly not brush it off as lightly as he did now, considering he had been quite ruffled even about the fact that she and M. Bertolet, the handsome leading tenor of the theater, had to embrace each other on stage in one of the upcoming productions.
Now with a man who decided to follow her down into the tunnels... He should be incensed, and yet he continued to march forward without a word.
His hold on her hand faltered for a heartbeat, and in the next moment he let go of her hand completely.
"Here," he told her, holding out to her the torch. "I'll return in a minute," he continued, and without waiting for her reply he turned away and started to march towards one of the tunnels on their right.
Her heart leapt to her throat as he left her, and she watched with horror how darkness began to swallow his frame with each step he took.
Until it stopped – or rather, he had, for she could still make out the blurry contours of his black cape. He had... stopped in front of a wall?!
Torchlight flickered as she held it farther away from her and she squinted through the darkness: yes, he had clearly stopped just a few feet away in front of her.
Something squeezed her heart – his posture was far too hunched to listen to the possible sounds that would give away the whereabouts of the intruder.
Before she knew it, she was already walking towards him.
His back straightened as she approached him, but it was impossible to miss how his shoulders moved with his shallow breathing. Previously, he had asked her if she was feeling fine but now she had the suspicion that maybe it was him who was unwell.
"Are you all right?" she asked, resting her palm on his shoulder and his back shuddered beneath her touch.
"When did it start?" he gasped, his eyes still directed to the floor.
"What do you mean?" she prodded as suspicion's cold wave began to form on her nape.
His answer never came, but she saw the familiar movement as his thumb reached out to brush the ring on his finger. Her heart gave a forceful throb. "Maybe it is not too late," he mumbled moments later.
"Too late for what?" she asked through the lump in her throat.
"To stop it." Finally he turned to her, yet his eyes remained on hers but for a moment before they left to roam over her frame. "It can be nothing more than the belated effect of trauma."
Trauma? What trauma?
Nothing overly traumatic happened since...
She let out an uneven sigh.
Well.
Since then.
There used to be a time when she had been followed from the shadows, when she had been haunted by a voice that always found her, when she couldn't escape the sight of her mysterious pursuer, who tried to control her every move until despair drove him to actions even he himself had known had been beyond acceptable.
She wondered if he believed there could ever something even remotely similar happen again, that someone else might resort to the same actions as he did back then; and that her refusal of that someone would drive her non-existent stalker to follow her around...
Or maybe...
Or maybe he was not even talking about that fictional person but her? Could he possibly think that after what had happened she would want to escape even the memory of it and would try to find a way to distract her mind? That she would try to find solace in the arm of someone else?
"You think someone's following me around because I rejected him?" she asked instead, trying to elude the truth of the latter thought that now seemed to be now more and more probable. "I cannot recall anyone who would go as far as to pursue me."
He reached up and as he cupped her face in his palm his fingers twitched against her skin.
Her stomach suddenly shrank into a knot and a cold tingle started on her nape.
Or maybe he thought that she sought comfort with the only man who had seen it all...?
"Love, it's not him! Raoul's left the country long ago."
His thumb brushed her face in a short caress and when the torchlight flickered for a moment, his eyes seemed to be shining brighter than usual.
"I know. Why would you think I..." The hand on her face twitched again as he trailed off with a shake of his head. "It's almost laughable how I could still believe there would be no more consequences of my actions."
"Christine Daaé."
The whispery call of her name drifted through the corridor until it died somewhere in the distance, as if the last echoes were swallowed by the darkness.
In a trembling silence, she waited for the sound to continue but it never came. The corridor was quiet again, only the soft flicker of the torch breaking the silence.
Nothing.
She listened for the inevitable sound of shuffling footsteps but it never came.
At any moment, the face of a stranger would materialize from the shadows, and she didn't even have a clue from which direction to expect the intrusion.
Her heartbeat picked up at was now drumming an erratic rhythm in her stomach.
In the end it was a well familiar sound that broke the silence: the voice of her husband. "You really did hear that sound."
His tone was so low that she could barely make out the words, but even so relief was evident in his voice.
A moment later, though, the meaning of his words registered in her mind as well: her heart gave an extra beat as her throat tightened.
"You thought I was lying?!" she wheezed.
"No. I thought that I had scarred you far beyond my worst fears," he replied, his voice hoarse.
"What do you..." she began but he cut her off with a curt, "Sssh."
At his sudden command, she fell silent and started to listen alongside him.
Any moment... Any moment the owner of that awful voice would appear from the darkness.
Silence roared in her ears.
Her back tingled with the anticipation of imminent shock and horror, but the longer she listened, the more obvious it became that there was no quiet shuffling whose sound she missed due to the drumming of blood in her ears, and that all previous, unnerving sounds ceased for that matter.
She turned to the left, and held her breath as she raised her eyes from the floor, looking over the faint horizon of the torchlight.
Nothing.
A cold wave trickled down her back as she turned to the other side, holding her breath in preparation of the discovery of a dark shape hidden in the shadows.
It was only the blank darkness that met her eyes.
The skin was crawling on her back.
"I cannot hear anything," he said at last with a sigh and she let go of her suspended dread with a deep exhale.
"Neither do I. But I really did hear my name just a few minutes ago," she told him, shifting on her feet, and not braving another look to the left.
"Yes, I heard that, too," he agreed, turning once more to her. His eyes left hers in a moment, though, searching the darkness behind her back.
"But not the ones before," she clarified, the words more of a statement than an actual question.
"No," he said over her shoulder, his eyes looking far off to the distance.
A breath later his gaze returned to hers, but she couldn't miss the hint of restlessness in them. "I really did hear those, too," she insisted.
"I know now," he said, looking down at their feet. "I feared the worst."
The worst?
Eight months ago she had returned to a ghost huddled over her crumpled veil, whose head hung just as dejectedly as now...
The next breath caught in her throat. "I would never even think about having an affair," she managed to force out.
His head snapped up to look at her. "Huh?" Then a moment later he shook his head. "There is a worse fate than seeing your beloved swept away by another."
A rapid sequence of memories attacked her mind at once: the weight of hundreds of eyes on her back, the drift of his black cape as he stepped forward from the shadows, the low hum of music drifting up on stage from the orchestra, a woman's shriek, the smell of smoke...
"Being betrayed by them?" The words were out sooner than she could even think of stopping them, and her stomach quivered. He must have heard the tremor in her tone for when his eyes met hers again they were shining with affection.
"Witnessing how they suffer from the effects of the misery you have inflicted upon them," he replied, his eyes slipping closed as he leant forward and swept his lips across her forehead.
Her skin warmed beneath the soft touch and she shuddered from the reverence with which his lips lingered on her forehead before he pulled back slowly. It seemed his gaze sought hers, but as soon as their eyes met he averted his sight. His eyes shone faintly in the unrelenting light of the torch.
"You thought I was hearing voices?!" she gasped.
"Not voices," he muttered, looking down at his feet. "Only one. Just mine."
"But...you offered to come back down here and find the intruder."
His lips opened and then closed without a sound. He tried again. "I didn't want to ruin your brave effort at trying to cover it up with an attempt of a credible explanation."
Fear squeezed her heart, and yet morbid curiosity still got the better of her and she couldn't stop the question forming on her lips, "What did you want to do?"
His answer didn't come immediately. "I have no idea," he breathed after a long moment.
She shivered once more but this time the cold had nothing to do with it. Months ago, when she had ripped away his mask in front of a packed theater right after he had worked up enough courage to finally propose to her – even then he had a backup plan, however makeshift it had been yet now...
That he had that strange lilt in his tone when he said he had no plan this time...
A cold flutter washed down her back.
Probably it was for the better that she didn't know what he had meant.
"I'm perfectly fine," she whispered, reaching up to rest her hand against the uncovered side of his face, and her heart responded with a forceful throb when he leant into it. "I know it is Tuesday, that I will have the day off tomorrow, that a man in the sixth row had a quarrel with his wife during act two and... that you don't like jam."
"You're still upset about it," he sighed with a half-smile, and her chest swelled with the large gulp of air she took.
"No, I'm just... How can you not like jam?"
"How can you be so fond of it is just as unfathomable. Something so unnaturally sweet!"
"Should you be willing to try it you might find that..."
The loud noise of a door snapping closed reverberated through the tunnels and she jumped at the sudden return of reality.
Someone had been calling her name for about ten minutes now.
Someone had come down to the underground tunnel.
And that someone hid himself so well that even Erik couldn't locate his possible whereabouts.
Her breaths began to follow the rhythm of her heartbeat and she felt dizzy.
"Erik, he's behind us," she whispered with her heart now skittering in her throat.
"Impossible," came his low reply, and at the same time he reached into the folds of his cape, but then his hand reemerged empty.
She swallowed as a cold wave of dread started on her nape.
The rope.
She shuddered as bile began to rise in her throat.
I don't want to see it.
Their eyes met and she saw the silent question in his eyes, the almost imperceptible lift of his shoulders as he braced himself...
She said nothing but gave the slightest shook of her head and his shoulders sunk with a sigh. A long moment passed until he reached out to her again and she took his hand, her heart echoing the flutter of his fingers around hers.
"He couldn't have rounded us unless he passed us on his way," he added, looking around again.
"But the noise came from that direction," she protested, trying not to feel the strange tingle on her nape. Undoubtedly the man was there, somewhere – but how did he get there? That Erik couldn't hear him was distressing enough; if the man somehow managed to slip past them...
She shuddered.
No.
"What if he... hid somewhere," she tried, gasping on a breath, "...and came out when we had already passed?"
"That would mean that he followed us down here and lay in wait until we were inside the house – or that he had come down here way before us, in which case he had probably found one of the entrances all by himself," he reasoned, and from his tone it was clear that he doubted either of these possibilities.
"Is that such an unearthly occurrence?" she asked, grasping onto his hand a bit tighter. An intruder having stumbled across one of the entrances was still better than an intruder stealthy enough to follow them around without being discovered.
His grasp tightened around her hand momentarily. "Christine, there is not a soul there," came his answer as he rounded a corner and continued towards the stairs that lead up to the tunnel that adjoined her room with the cellars.
Not a soul there.
What if...
Another icy current swept through the tunnel and she pulled her coat tighter around herself.
Unreasonable, not to mention highly improbable and yet...
"Do you think he picked the lock on my door?" She asked hastily instead, trying to ignore the tremor in her stomach. It would be a work of a slim chance to find any of the entrances that lead down here, most of them were hidden or blocked. Maybe... maybe that someone had decided to enter her dressing room to wait on her and since he was already in there, he just happened to find how to open the entrance through the mirror. Although... the lock on her room was an intricate mechanism, designed to protect the most vulnerable entrance to the tunnels: the mirror in her room. Having installed it on the door Erik showed her how to secure it – and it had taken her three tries even with his guidance to master the tricky apparatus.
"He must have got past it some way. I had thought it to be sufficiently secure but apparently he's a lot more determined than a usual admirer," he said, starting up on the stairs that lead to the first floor. She grabbed at her skirts and hurried after him, almost having to leap over the steps to keep up with his pace.
At last they reached the first floor and he turned to the right. At the far end of the corridor a faint light flickered: the single torch they left there upon leaving the room. The torchlight glinted and flashed, the fire itself growing in one moment and then almost disappearing in the next, dancing in the never-ceasing breeze.
Without stopping, he marched forward towards the faint light at the end of the passage. She matched her steps to his and walked alongside of him, but unlike him, she ducked her head deeply when they reached a narrow, adjoining corridor that crossed their path.
As they left it behind, the soft noise of a creak drifted up from the passage, as if coming from a door that turned slowly on its hinges. But... where was the fresh wave of air that usually followed such a disturbance in the current of the already present draft?!
Maybe it was not so unimaginable, after all...
All Souls' Day was just two days away...
"It might be a ghost," she ventured at last.
He stopped short in front of her.
"There are no ghosts."
As he momentarily turned away from the torch his face fell in shadows, but the light got caught on his eyes and created the illusion that they were glowing in the darkness.
Then a sudden waft of air made the torchlight dance and flicker and the image was gone.
She let out a shallow sigh and bit her trembling lips.
Of course there are no ghosts.
There must have been some mundane, however yet unknown source of the noises.
And the soft touch she felt on her shoulder was probably nothing more than the doing of the awful draft that has been blowing up and down the corridors all night.
She shivered.
A moment later she felt the comforting weight of warmth around her body – he had wrapped his cape around her. The material was still carrying the heat of his body, and with the next breath some of the tension melted from the muscles in her neck.
"Whoever it is, I'll find him," he told her, reaching out for the sheets so that she could adjust the fastening of the cape.
"I don't want you to come back down here all alone," she told him, letting her hands fall back to her side when she had secured the fastening.
"I have to know you safe," he reasoned, sweeping her hair back where it had fallen to her face.
"Let me stay with you, then."
The visible side of his face twitched before his eyes closed for a moment, he then bowed deeply and brushed her lips with a reverent kiss.
It was over a breath later but before he could pull back, she swept her thumb across his face and pretended not to notice his overly bright eyes.
"Fine," he agreed with a sigh and took her hand once more. "Let us go back to your room and secure that entrance first. Then we can check all other entrances from outside and see if there was any disturbance made to the mechanisms."
"All right." That sounded reasonable enough. It was not a ghost but a resourceful intruder, who had wandered too far in the tunnels in pursuit of her, and he can easily disarm him – she hastily patted down on her borrowed cape – there was still two adjoining narrow tunnels they needed to cross...
"Erik." At his name, he turned back to her. "Where is the..." She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, instead tapped down on the cape once more, hoping to find it.
"I have all that I need," came his reply, making a feeble gesture at his jacket.
She nodded wordlessly and wondered only briefly on the unnoticeable transportation of the rope from the cape to... wherever it was now.
Her stomach churned as air trembled in her throat.
Next time she would probably see it when he...
Her head snapped up at the faint sound of a step – he had shifted on his feet in front of her but was still standing on the very same spot as a minute ago and hadn't tried to resume their pace. His arm that was closer to her twitched at his side.
"Maybe it would be for the better, after all, if you stayed in your room," he offered, not quite looking at her.
She shook her head, the gesture as much directed to her as it was to him. "No. I'll be fine," she said, looking down at his hand that was still at his side. When she reached out to him, though, his hand clutched at hers with a relieved hold.
As they started towards the trembling light at the end of the tunnel wind picked up again, but now it didn't stop just after one gust that swept along the tunnel; it was now whistling in a constant low moan, and the echoes of the long, empty space made it sound as if a pack of otherwordly wolves were following the two of them. The unsettling sound crept beneath her skin and bristled her nerves, but... Erik was here – and of course, the awful sound had a perfectly rational source.
Still, she dared not look anywhere else but at his face, determined and unafraid.
She only noticed they had passed the first crossing tunnel when they were about to pass the second.
Nobody is hiding behind the walls.
She held her breath as they left the protective walls of the main passage and took the few steps that was the adjoining tunnel.
Nothing.
Wind continued to moan low and the walls echoed the drawn sound.
A few steps before they reached the torch at the end of the corridor, the previous creak of a door repeated, but now the torchlight did move with it – until it stopped its dance a moment later when a loud snap of a door reverberated off the walls.
Her heart was beating an erratic rhythm in her throat as he finally reached out to open the mechanism of the mirror and she didn't care anymore about keeping up the appearance of being calm as she finally bolted through the entrance to her room. He followed her shortly and closed the mirror behind them, but not before she heard her name being called once more.
And for the first time that night, the voice finally had a shape to it: it was hovering in the mirror – right where they had just stepped through.