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Hope you enjoy!
Christine
Chapter 52
The Mirror
Images of hard, cold, black metal flashed through my mind. Of sharp, rusted objects. Of stone rooms, damp with dew and blood, filled with agonized screams.
"A torture chamber?" I whispered.
He didn't move. His eyes watched me steadily behind the mask.
"As in," I continued, "like...like a dungeon?"
"I see you like medieval stories as much as me," he said, but there was no humor.
"What kind of torture chamber?" I asked. I felt entirely cold.
He didn't respond to my question, not directly. "You do hate me."
"No."
"You do."
"Stop," I whispered. "I don't." But I couldn't explain the chill that passed through me. Perhaps it was merely... "I don't like that you have to do it. And...and I don't like the idea of torture."
"Neither do I," he breathed. He pursed his lips and gazed down. "Why do you think I've been stalling?"
"But it's to kill the Shah?" I clarified. "Just to kill the Shah?"
"Yes, but the Shah doesn't know that."
"Obviously."
He smiled without joy. "Yes. Obviously."
A small silence, like a brick barrier between us. I didn't care for it. "What kind of torture chamber?" I asked again, finally bringing my legs down.
He shut his eyes for a moment, tightly.
"Erik," I said.
He opened them again.
"No more secrets. Please."
His gaze saddened, and he nodded very slightly. He went to the ground and sat, cross-legged. "No more secrets."
But he didn't continue right away. I could sense his hesitation, his anxiety, like an insistent tug against me in his mind. It was himself he was fighting now. I could see the war raging: he felt he may lose me either way, but couldn't quite decide which way would be more dignified, less painful.
I left the chair and sat as well, across from him. I took his hands. He looked at me, eyes shining. I smiled. "I will understand. I understand now. Your will is not your own in this - I know that."
He lifted my hands and kissed them softly. Yet, he still said nothing.
"Your will wasn't your own when you were a child forced to perform," I added, and he winced slightly. "Don't you realize I know that?"
"I know, Christine." He lowered my hands. "I was ashamed. That's all."
"But why? I would have thought no differently of you."
"I don't want you to know me as a boy in a cage." He frowned. "I told you I was almost raped. But that is a key word: almost. I wasn't. But I was trapped for years with a man as cruel as the Shah. And your father saw me -" He paused. "I didn't want to tell you because the person I am is shameful enough already."
"That's not true," I insisted. "I don't think you're shameful. Do you think it's shameful that I'm a...a love-slave?"
"No," he said immediately.
"Then it wouldn't be fair for me to think ill of you."
He stared at my hands as he spoke: "I am designing a room of mirrors."
I listened.
"It slowly heats up," he said. "Slowly, gradually, until it is unbearably hot. The only way to end the torture is to hang by the neck from a rope on a iron oak tree."
I felt chilly all over again.
"Before it is officially used," he continued, "the Shah wants to look at it. He said so himself. Surrounded by guards, of course, so that no funny business takes place and we don't roast him alive."
A pause. "But," I said, hands still in his, "you do plan to roast him alive."
"Yes." He looked to the door of the room, to where Nadir existed somewhere beyond. To where all of those meetings took place several times a week. "That is one of the many puzzles that we meet to discuss."
The rain pattered gently against the window of Erik's - our - bedroom. No thunder tonight. Just a soft wind that whistled and the dripping of water against glass.
It was a particularly strong gust of wind, combined with Erik rising from the bed, that woke me. I thought, perhaps, he was going to use the bathing room. Or perhaps get a drink of water. But then he kissed my cheek, my eyes still closed, and I heard once more the sound of the bookshelf-door.
There had been no execution tonight, a month since I'd first tried hashish. Two months since I'd been gifted to Erik. Time had flown, as had my mind all those nights I was under the influence - an influence I now fully enjoyed. If I was forced to do it, I reasoned, I may as well like it. But tonight, I wasn't foggy. This time I was clear.
I sat up. "Erik?"
My dark-adjusted eyes found him standing, back to me, in the doorway to Echo Hall. He didn't move.
"Erik," I whispered, "what are you doing?"
He didn't turn around for several seconds, and I thought perhaps I was dreaming, when he faced me. "No more secrets?"
"No more secrets," I responded.
"Then I have a secret to tell you. To show you." He held out his hand for me. I pulled back the blanket, stood, and went to him. I took his hand.
"What is it?"
"The Khanum," he said, before pulling me into Echo Hall and closing the door, "is not mad."
Ten minutes later, the Hall was lit by sudden light, streaming in through a large square opening.
No.
Not an opening.
A glass wall.
A two-way mirror, Erik told me with his voice trick. We can see in, but they cannot see us. They see a reflection.
They, apparently, meant the Khanum with two of her harem ladies, within her bedroom. The Shah's mother was currently yelling, crying, at an empty chair. Her ladies were attempting in vain to calm her fit, but to no avail. She paused, as though she suddenly had peace.
I saw Erik's throat work, his mouth remaining closed.
And then the Khanum screamed anew. She picked up the incense burner that presently smoked and threw it at the chair, shattering the ornate pottery, sending ashes to the floor. I nearly yelped, but remembered where I was.
I can change my voice to sound completely foreign, he whispered in my ear, and the next words didn't have his vocal tone at all; it was too low, too harsh, too raspy - even his Angel persona was more beautiful than this, so that it does not sound a bit like me.
Understanding gripped me, and I nearly gasped aloud. But at the understanding, I didn't feel badly for the Khanum. I felt something foreign to me: devilish glee. Pleasure at someone else's pain. For all she'd done to others, to me, to Erik. I felt such malicious joy.
Then Erik's voice in my ear again. The voice she hears while I perform, and late at night, is not in her mind. It is mine.
God help me: I couldn't help but smile.
