Hobbling to her desk, Cecily took out a piece of paper, ink, and pen. Grabbing a handkerchief, she wiped her face of tears, not wanting what she put down to be obliterated by further weakness.

Concentrating on not shaking the pen, Cecily placed it hesitantly to the paper. Who would she address it to? She couldn't very well say to the Phantom of the Opera, and would it get to him if she wrote Erik? She would have to risk it.

To Erik, she began, but then crossed out the words. This must make amends.

Dear Erik,

I cannot speak what I am about to say, and now it does not matter, for I do not think you would listen to me. I have made a grave error, one that I hope you can forgive in time. I can offer no excuse worthy of you, so I will offer none. Here I place the only explanation I can think of, though it is not in its entirety. Perhaps someday you will deem it well and good to forgive me, and then I will fill in joyfully. I am sorry.

Cecily stopped her pen. How to begin? Her mind drifted back in time, a time when the sound of a violin filled her with all the joy a father could bring his daughter. She had loved her father dearly, and she had presumed in her childish innocence that he had reciprocated. It had been a wrong assumption.

Her father had left one day without a word to either she or her younger sister Sophie. Neither of them ever heard from him again. Cecily was six.

Cecily's mother had never inspired the same devotion in her children. A libertine, the woman had looked upon her role as mother as a financial obligation. Cecily and Sophie had never lacked food or clothing, and there was always a fine roof over their heads. Still, the two girls mourned their father for years.

Their mother had done no such thing. Within the month following her husband's disappearance, she had wed another man, a financier named Vincent de Lille, who hadn't done a day's work in years. Being content with the money, Cecily's mother had a platonic relationship with him. She saved her romance for the string of men that paraded through the house.

It had not taken long to begin. Cecily still could not put it into words, but tried for Erik's sake. She had come to abhor Vincent de Lille as she had never hated anyone in her life. His touch, and even the memory of it, turned her stomach sour. But she had taken it at the time. Her young mind had it figured that this was how she protected her sister. Distract the monster until Sophie could escape. Unfortunately, monsters do not work according to the logic of eleven-year-old minds.

The monster, it turned out, could turn its attention on more than one victim. At age twelve, Cecily had gone up to put her sister to bed when she received a blow to her left shoulder that left a scar in the shape of his belt buckle. He had hit her before she could duck because his belt had already been off. That was what hurt. She made her decision that night.

She had locked Sophie in her room that night and made the eight-year-old promise not to let anyone in except Cecily. Then she had gone. As expected, Vincent had come for Cecily, and Cecily was ready. The monster had barely dropped his trousers when he felt the sting of a blade. If one could feel the knife as it sunk into your heart after a throw.

She had left him there to rot, for all she cared. She had gone down into the cellar and scrubbed herself off. Burning her dress, knowing that men had been convicted on less, she had not noticed the small piece that floated away into the corner. It would be a careless mistake that would cost her six years.

She was parted from Sophie when the pressure in her chest indicated pneumonia. Sent off to a Paris hospital, Cecily had coughed herself to the brink of death. A rich woman had been brought into the bed next to her. The woman knew quite well she had not long to live, and had treated Cecily with a kindness she had never known.

The woman had told Cecily stories of her life and let her eat chocolates that she could not bring herself to nibble. The woman had given her two gifts beyond any other, though. The first had been a book of opera stories that the woman read to her from. Cecily had listened attentively as the woman read tales of daring swordfights, brave princes, loving families, and happy endings. She never read the sad endings.

The second had been tales of the Opera Populaire. The woman had once been a ballerina there. She had married a regular at the opera when she outgrew her skills, but the couple had attended faithfully until she grew ill. Now the woman relived the glory days of her youth in scandalous stories of backstage chaos, blossoming young love, raging prima donnas, and the rumor of a ghost that haunted the Opera Populaire. A rumor that became the Phantom of the Opera.

Cecily never got the chance to thank the woman. One night, the Surate had come for Cecily. That little scrap of dress had told its tale. Thrown into a women's prison, Cecily did not see the light of day in freedom for five years, and only then because of a clerical error that set her free.

Prison was a remarkably educating experience. Jaclyn LeRongeur had taken Cecily under her wing, for a price. Jaclyn, in prison for murder herself, saw in Cecily an innocent, at least for prison. Cecily became the latest in Jaclyn's series of "errand girls," who in reality were whores to the guards in exchange for privileges for Jaclyn.

Cecily shuddered as she looked down at the words that had poured themselves onto the page. She was close. Closer than the edge of a knife.

At nineteen, Cecily had been released by a paperwork error that reduced her sentence from 16 years to six. Lost and alone, knowing her family wouldn't care to hear from her, Cecily had gone to the only other place she knew anything of: the Opera Populaire. Somehow securing a position as a chorus girl, Cecily had gone quietly about her life for several months until that wretch of a stagehand had dragged her down into the bowels of the opera house. Her life had not been quiet since. Happier, yes, but never quiet.

Cecily lay the pen down and smiled bitterly to herself. This time, she had destroyed the happiness herself. Life would grow quiet again, and that stony chill that protected her heart would settle in for another lifetime of winter loneliness.

She carefully folded the paper and opened the passage. She had no intention of going down to him. Instead, she laid the paper by the door he would most likely use: the one to Christine's lesson room.