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Christine

Chapter 48

The Lesson

We didn't see Ibrahim for another two weeks.

It was as though he simply vanished after being sick in Erik's bathing room. He didn't even say goodbye. He just left.

Erik began going to meetings again, bringing me with him to spend time with Reza upstairs while he sat with Nadir. Ibrahim didn't join. This annoyed the Daroga greatly - he'd gained one but lost the other - but there didn't seem to be much that Nadir could do. I think he seemed to remember that, when it came to the hierarchy of the court, the Grand Vizier did outrank him. He could moan and complain all he wanted, but he couldn't take many large steps if he wanted his secret meetings to stay that way.

When we were not at meetings, we were in Erik's chambers. I drew. Erik worked. We had lessons. And ten out of the fourteen days following my first time trying hashish, there was an execution. And at every execution, I was made to smoke.

I kept telling myself that it was fine, that the deliriousness only lasted a few hours, though it seemed like longer. And I kept telling myself that I hated that delirious feeling. It made me embarrassed to be in such a mindset. But a small, uncomfortable part of me was looking forward to that loose, giggly feeling.

I was starting to secretly crave it.

Erik refused to touch me or kiss me more than a hug or peck on the cheek while I was in my altered state, I usually simply went to bed after returning - and the night was stolen from us. The four days that there wasn't an execution, we fell asleep together, gripping each other, kissing deeply. Erik's hands and lips were feverish, urgent, like he knew it wouldn't be like this the next night, or likely the night after that. That it wouldn't be completely me he was falling asleep next to, and he was savoring the full, sober me while he could.

Most nights, deep into the night, I would again feel a kiss on my face and then hear the bookshelf door moving. I didn't think much of it.

I was too foggy to think much of it.


It was at the two week mark that Ibrahim, at last, appeared.

Erik emerged from his study at around three in the afternoon. He walked around the couch I sat at, drawing and petting Ayesha, pulled me up to my feet, and greeted me with a gentle kiss, moving his hands to my cheeks, fingers in my hair. I gripped his arms as our lips connected. His mask was off. He didn't wear it around me anymore, not when we were alone.

He pulled away and kissed my forehead.

"Singing lesson?" I whispered.

He nodded his head. "Ready to start?"

"Always." I smiled. "I wait for them every day."

He smiled genuinely, stars in his green and brown eyes. "Me too." And he kissed my forehead again.

Erik took my hands softly in his and began pulling me toward the grand piano, when a knock sounded at the door. He closed his eyes, lines starting at the corners of them, frustrated. He dropped my hands and went stiffly into the study, retrieving his mask.

Another knock.

"Yes," he shouted. "I hear you!" He said something just as loud in Persian; I assumed he was simply repeating himself in that language.

Erik opened the door, and there Ibrahim was.

Smiling. Widely. His former self returned. A false self, as he'd said.

"Good afternoon, my friends!" He strolled right in, taking a seat on the couch opposite the one I'd been sitting at. Erik closed the door slowly, watching him wide-eyed, as the Grand Vizier leaned back, put his feet up, and crossed his arms behind his head in a relaxed lounge. I stared at him. Though he smiled and looked like he hadn't a care in the world, I saw that his bottom eyelids were colored a bit darker than the rest of his face. That the light didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Why do you stare, Rose?" he asked cheerfully. "Happy to see my face again?"

"Where have you been?" asked Erik, not sitting, standing by the table. "You haven't been to any meetings."

"Oh, you are one to talk, Angel of Death." He grinned. "You didn't go for an entire week."

"And you haven't been for two."

Ibrahim shrugged. "I am a bit useless there anyway. It's normally the two of you talking, while I interject with a suggestion you both ignore. I can see, though, how my absence has made it boring. For that I apologize."

"Ibrahim," I said softly.

He turned to me. "Rose?"

"Are you all right?"

It was a small movement of his face. A twitch of his eyes, his lips. Barely noticeable, were one not paying attention. But I saw it. Very slight. There one moment, and then replaced by a laugh. "Of course! Why would I not be?"

"Because you were sick with drunkenness in my chambers a fortnight ago," said Erik lowly, looking at Ibrahim with concern. As though he were drunk once again.

Ibrahim waved this away with a hand. "Oh, yes. I have decided that the Prince's business is his business. Who he chooses to love does not concern me. There are plenty of men and women I could go after. It does not matter if it is him."

"But you loved him," I said softly. I wasn't helping, I know. But something about Ibrahim's sudden nonchalance was making me uneasy.

"I did, but loss is part of life, yes?"

"But Ibrahim-"

"I'd like to stop talking about this now." He was still smiling, but it was a faux grin. A hard expression of not-joy, intense of eye, controlled. "I did not come here to discuss my love life."

"What did you come here to discuss?" asked Erik.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing! Am I not allowed to visit friends?"

Erik watched him, thoughts clearly running through his brain. Then he shrugged at last. "Well, if you say you are fine, then you are fine. Right, Christine?"

He turned to me then, and I was about to protest that, no, I certainly did not think Ibrahim was fine - when a look in Erik's eyes made me pause. He seemed to be saying, "I know, Christine, but go with it". And when I looked back at Ibrahim, I could see, mixed into the veiled exhaustion and fake joviality, a pleading look. Like he knew as well as us that he was falling apart, but that he needed us to pretend with him. Despite how he'd raved two weeks ago that he hated pretending, he still wanted to.

Needed to.

"Yes," I whispered. "That's right."

Ibrahim nodded. "Excellent."

"Now, unfortunately, we were about to have our singing lesson." Erik crossed his arms. "Quite literally as you came knocking."

"Oh, yes! I would love to hear!"

I went white. "Wait, no."

"Why not?" Ibrahim cocked his head.

Erik looked at me curiously. "Yes, actually, why not?"

"Because...because..." I sputtered. But I knew if I said I didn't think I was good, Erik would take offense - whether because he found my voice beautiful, or because I implied he was a poor teacher. Likely, it would be both. I sighed. "All right."

"Perfect!" Ibrahim shot up out of his seat. "Let me use your facilities for just a moment, and I will be right out."

"Destroying my toilet again?" asked Erik as the Grand Vizier walked past him. "You should have seen the look on the poor servant girl's face when she saw what she had to clean."

"Not this time, friend! Just piss."

Erik looked disgusted. "Too much information, mayhaps?"

"You asked!" he said in the doorway, and closed the door.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Erik went to me and kissed me again, hard. I melted. When he pulled away: "I'm sorry we will not have privacy. I think...I think, though, that he needs us at the moment even if he will say he doesn't."

I shrugged. "It's all right. He's a friend. I want to be here for him, too."

A pause, while he looked at me tenderly, playing with one of my curls, twirling it around his long forefinger.

"What," he said then, "or rather, when, is your birthday?"

My eyebrows raised. "A bit random."

He didn't respond to that; he merely waited for my answer.

"November twentieth," I said finally.

He smiled slightly. "It's a good thing I asked. That's a little less than a month away."

My jaw slackened. "It's October?"

"Yes."

It was still warm - not hot, but comfortably warm - at least, it had been warm two weeks ago on the roof. I never went outside, other than that. I had no idea the time of year. It wasn't like in Paris, where I was outside every day, every night.

He kissed my forehead. "I think, then, if your birthday is so soon, I should begin thinking of a gift." He moved to transfer his kiss from my forehead to my mouth, when -

"Do you know my birthday, Erik?" Ibrahim.

Erik scowled. He didn't even turn to Ibrahim as he stood in the doorway, smiling widely at us. "No," he responded under his breath, "but I know your death-day."

Ibrahim laughed then, purely and without thought. No pretending in the sound. If for a moment, his happiness was real.


While I sang, I tried to ignore Ibrahim sitting and watching. It was hard, though, when he kept interrupting to make suggestions - among the most brilliant were, "try standing on your head, I hear that helps you sing higher" and "try holding your nose to get rid of nasally sounds."

Erik called him a nuisance.

Ibrahim told him that "nuisance" was a terribly funny way of pronouncing "delightful sweet treat".

In all seriousness, though, the Grand Vizier - when I was done - told me that my voice really was pretty, and he complimented Erik on his teaching and piano-playing abilities.

And when he left, he hesitated before walking out the door. His eyes flashed a desperate, lonely emotion, before his lips smiled and uttered their goodbyes.

Erik kissed me again, then, and I tried to lose myself in him like I'd done many times before - but a nagging feeling of worry for Ibrahim wouldn't let me go. When Erik pulled away, his cloudy-eyed expression told me that he was feeling the same way.