There was only silence in the after. Apathy would not come.

Professor Valerius had purchased a mild-mannered bay gelding from a racetrack in the Parisian countryside once. Its wounded hind leg healed, yet it couldn't compete any longer and so, for a fee, the former champion was reduced to pulling a brougham through crowded streets. She remembered the animal's lost eyes most of all. Now that it had won its race, there seemed to be no use to walk forth at all. If it did not run towards a bright ribbon and away from a slaughterhouse—then what was the point? Where had its finish line gone?

Erik was cut from the same cloth. It was like watching a mouse spin around in a circle. The kind thing to do would be to crush its skull with the handle of a broomstick for it would never walk straight again. But he was the one with the strength and tools; as always, she was reduced to the role of silent bystander in a life with enough space for only two.

Little by little, days dragged lingering madness from him and color from her. It would blaze bright sooner or later, she knew, for she'd shattered his vessel of restraint. For now, however, the calm was a harbor in an everlasting storm.

Erik wrote many letters. Oftentimes she would watch from the canopy as his hand flew. Such controlled, graceful flick of the wrist shouldn't translate into crude penmanship where letters bled together, she would think. There was little to reflect upon and if at times Erik brought a candle's flame to words he did not want her to read, she'd muse in her stupor that it was better to burn early on than gather dust upon rich parchment, always awaiting the delivering blow of a letter opener.

"Who is it you're writing to, Erik?"

After the room of mirrors, the little bag of life and death, the smirking brass statuettes—after all of that, she didn't think there could be silence again. Yet here it was, maddening and suffocating, interrupted only briefly by the folding of yet another message.

There would be no wedding at the Madeleine, he'd said, but truly there had to be more than this.

He paused and as he did his hand stilled too. In that position he remained, fingers furling and unfurling. Once, she thought his composition befitted nobility. Some skills were meant to be refined in absence of others. If he stood tall, it was only for his benefit and never appearances.

Those maddening lines of confusion, those pages upon pages of carelessly scribbled secrets, would serve ends she'd never learn of.

"Have I not made you shine?" he said, reclining in his chair.

"You have," she replied.

"No," he interrupted words that were not there. Not on the surface but under her breast, little springtime buds of wonder if not hope. "Erik made you incandescent. An automaton with eyes of glass, you were, but with me you took breath."

"I owe you my voice," she agreed.

His fingers caressed the air as he spoke, modelling the nothingness into a harp to suit his tones. Spider-like and long, they sliced and drifted.

"When I lived in Persia all those years ago, I observed an interesting fact your god-fearing heart would flutter over," he said, voice echoing with not so much longing as reminiscence. "It was never the first wife, not even the second, who knew how to make fortune favor her. She who smiled the prettiest and knelt without being prompted walked away with allowances and jewels. Don't avert your eyes so. You were in the chorus, were you not? Ah, the things those pesky petit rats whisper about once the curtain goes down. Most of them are unfit to wear white."

The Sorelli wore sable during cold months and had emerald pendants to compliment the specks of green in her eyes. Her finger had never known the weight of an engagement ring, expensive or otherwise. Yet it was she who led the life most wives publically shamed yet fantasized about beneath cold sheets after their husbands had departed. Count Philippe would never marry her, all knew, but she did not need his name. Only his patronage.

"It's a fickle type of power," Christine retorted. "Beauty fades."

"Unless one has none to begin with." He laughed then, a terrible sound straight from the diaphragm. It was how she sang, how he taught her to breathe. His voice carried, catching yet always resuming its morbid cadence, until at last he sighed. "How lucky Erik is to have never been burdened with such triviality. Albeit, one might argue, this world of ours is obsessed with this little triviality alone. Not so lucky after all."

"Please don't talk like that. You never answered me."

In the candlelight, he held up two envelops, one already sealed and one awaiting its contents. She didn't know if it was an invitation or merely for show and so her hand paused mid-air, an abortive gesture.

"De Castelot-Barbezac," Christine read, tongue tripping. "I do not know that name."

"Of course you do not," he chided, a teacher having caught their student at their own game. "You are not of the nobility. The T is silent; the R less pronounced."

"Giry," she read off the second envelope. "As in the portress from the rue de Provence? She takes care of the boxes occasionally."

"Wonderfully useful woman," Erik remarked. "She speaks very little, but accomplishes quite a lot. Little Meg Giry with her dark hair and darker eyes, too-long legs and narrow chest, is her daughter. Surely you've heard of her. There briefly was talk between our dear managers that she would usurp La Sorelli."

There he leaned forward some, free hand always dancing and dashing as his voice took a nasal quality.

"Fresh and fine like a twig, she is," he spoke in the voice of Moncharmin. "It's most unfortunate Count Philippe won't look her way, although who is to say of the future. Perhaps one day our prima will finally have use for that dagger she carries."

"Will she?" Christine asked. "Will she be the new prima ballerina?"

"She will not," Erik said with cold finality.

The envelope was sealed with red wax. He used no seal, merely allowing it to dry in an abstract pattern. The letters found refuge in one of the drawers of Erik's mahogany desk.

"She will be as close to an empress as I can make her. This, I promised to her mother. Erik can do more than make soulless girls come alive."

The room seemed to spin around her as he spoke and she rearranged the woolen shawl falling off her shoulders. In the hailstorm of Erik's intricately woven half-truths and recollections made to shock, there was no haven for a troubled mind. He walked too slowly to where she sat and she watched as one of his hands darted behind his back, fingers twitching. The second extended, awaiting hers. She allowed him to take it but it was no better than a dead thing, motionless yet so much warmer than his had ever been.

"The baron is an old oaf," Erik whispered. "He will marry her and she'll have everything. I suppose no young beauty desires an aged cripple, but worse arrangements have been made throughout history. Her future is secure. And so, how good it is that we are not in Persia. She won't have to fake her smiles at all to enjoy prosperity."

"That is very kind of you."

A feather-light touch ran over the plain gold band she wore like a diminutive shackle. Erik remained standing, his gloved hand restraining hers.

"Nothing about your god or this institution called marriage is sacred," he said. "I am not a bastard, but have enjoyed the fate of one. In the Almighty's eyes, Erik is destined for hell as he wears a name that was not given to him in any church."

Her head hurt. A sharp pain behind the right eye had weaseled its way through the front of her skull and now swirled around like a fury without escape.

"Watch how with a handful of words and favors awaiting years to be called in, one who after a short-lived career would have ended up in a wash house, is elevated among common folk. There is no divinity at work here, only arrangement. Oh, she will swear to love and cherish before the altar but it will all be lies. It always is, Christine. Very rarely do people speak the truth in the House of God."

The silver cross nestled between her breasts seemed to burn as he spoke. An irrational part of her wanted to tear it off, press it against Erik's skin and watch if he would blister.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked instead, equally wary and weary, two states that shouldn't coincide. "Please, you know I can't speak in riddles."

"It is all lies," he murmured, "but Erik will not lie to you. If you must take comfort in something, draw it from that simple truth."

The Madeleine or a country run-down church with an altar of moldy wood—Raoul would not have lied in either. Not where God's eye was most watchful and colorful glass mosaics allowed a clear view of the assembly; not even where windows were too grimy for midday sunlight to pierce through. He'd spoken of being disinherited, but caring not a dime about losing both title and income.

She could have been happy with very little. Her mother had been.

"Your father, even with his kind heart, would have given you not to the one who spoke in verses, but one who could assure your future. If I had asked, he would have offered me your hand, Christine." His finger toyed with the gold ring in a blissful moment of silence.

The possible truth remained trapped between her temples, a fury of surprise and questioning. What if, what if. How many paths could have there been? Would any of them have been of her own choosing?

"Tomorrow then," Erik concluded.

His touch fled as he resumed his post at the desk. She heard him refill his fountain pen. A new bottle of ink was opened. Red this time, perhaps?

Was this a kindness, she wondered. An odd sort of kindness, but one nonetheless, that to convince her that this is where she would have ended up either way.

No, Erik was not an animal who knew not what to do with a stubborn prey finally caught. In that regard, she'd been wrong. She was the mad mouse running in circles, bashing her head against many walls.

"Will there be a house above ground?" she inquired, not watching the ghost of a man yet still seeing him in her peripheral, the rise and fall of his shoulders as something akin to a chuckle shook his chest.

"Why do you think Erik has been bloodying his fingers penning all this nonsense for the past few days? Ah, no matter how wide one's reach, it can't be exploited without the written word. It is better that way, I suppose." He turned fully towards her, fountain pen resting between thumb and forefinger. "Although the truth is a lovely thing to have, it neither feeds nor warms. Erik can offer you more than pretty lines. Never doubt that."

Erik's truth, she did not need. It was ever more poisonous than his lies.