All right, this is it. All three final chapters are going up in one go. My most profound gratitude to my readers, and I hope you find the ending to your satisfaction. I, for one, will be glad to be done with This Monster.

Erik had a very satisfactory interview with his banker.

He wasn't sure if the banker agreed; it was the first time Erik had ever come in for a personal consultation instead of merely sending his scrawled instructions. He had grown accustomed over the summer to having more direct speech with those who worked under him. Oh, he might torment himself in the hours after the fact by remembering exactly how the other person behaved, exactly what they said, and wondering why it had been so. But there was no denying the results. As long as he kept his tone civil and his temper in check, they would listen to Erik.

He was therefore able to leave the bank in a relatively short period of time with quite a bit more information on things like funds and annuities than he had walked in with. And what he had learned had pointed him to one word: freedom.

Perhaps not great wealth, or opulence, but freedom nonetheless.

That was one concern to be crossed off his list.

The second was his favor to Mojgan. He knew that he could find someone in Paris to forge her new papers, but he thought it was always best to put as much distance between such dealings and home as possible. Since it seemed that she meant to settle in France—perhaps near Nadir, he thought—he would rather not rely on the local demimonde. A few discreet inquiries revealed that the fellow who Erik had hired all those years ago may perhaps still be willing to work for a good price; Erik wondered if Mojgan would be amendable to going to Italy, or if it was better for him to go conduct the business on his own. Either way, he was willing to go. He had freedom enough for that, as well.

It seemed strange to think of favors in connection with Mojgan. They had never really had any debts between them, had they? It seemed that every service he had rendered her had worked out for his own good in the end. Look at Rouen: for all that the intent had been to give Mojgan a peaceful place to hide, Erik could not ignore the comfort she had brought to him there. For those few months, he had lived as any man might, both the joys and frustrations. It was not perfect, as he had once thought it must be. But perfection, he had found, was not a requisite for contentment. And so, even though it was a temporary state of affairs, Erik thought it might be a treasure beyond reckoning. And yet, she seemed to think that the courtesies he had extended to her were of value, that they were something to be repaid with good in return. Erik found the idea both appealing and off-putting. Appealing because, in all truth, he still liked to know he held some power in his life. And off-putting for the same reason—he was not sure that he wanted to claim such power over Mojgan.

Power over people, like perfection, was not the sure path to happiness he had once thought it to be. They had a way of eluding one's grasp, of damaging and being damaged in ways beyond Erik's desires. It was more responsibility than he wanted at this point in life.

So perhaps it was not a favor to be rendered. A service to be done? Perhaps. A gift? Erik found he liked the idea of that.

This time, he did not have her meet him at the opera by herself. He took a carriage to the Rue de Rivoli and played the proper escort. He had half-expected to see her in that wine-colored dressed she had been so enamored on but found her more discreetly attired.

"I remembered the climb," she said. "And the boat ride. And the storage room."

"You are a very sensible woman," he said admiringly.

"No," she sighed, "I don't think I am." Never the less, her forethought served them well as they made their way through the gate on the Rue Scribe and underwent all the trials she mentioned to get to Box Five. Mojgan, he noticed, seemed more relaxed this time. When last he had brought her to the Garnier, he could practically hear her heart hammering in the dark passageways. He was glad that no longer seemed to be the case.

Instead, tonight would be his test. He had long been fond of Gounod, for no unpleasant memories had ever been attached to the music. Until— he had shared his favorites with Christine, and in doing so had dampened some of his own pleasure in them after her leaving. He could bring out Gounod again on his piano, but could he sit and listen to those songs on that stage?

"Have you seen Faust?" he asked Mojgan as they waited for overture to strike up.

"Oh, yes," she said happily. "It is terribly irreligious and immoral, and very beautiful besides."

The first act proceeded well enough, and when the lighting brightened on Marguerite with her spinning wheel he was able to dispassionately approve of the staging. The second act passed, and then the third. Their Marguerite sang a fair Roi de Thulé, but her Jewel Song left something to be desired. They usually did.

Mojgan made for a good companion, though she was more of an enthusiast than a critic. Erik idly thought, she could learn. But then, why? There was something refreshing about her simple enjoyment of the show.

In Act Four, Erik found himself wincing at Faust's debaucheries far more than he had in the past. And then the fifth act, with its bacchanalia and ballets. But even the devil could not make such sensate pleasures last, not in the face of the beloved Marguerite. It was almost as if Erik was seeing the drama unfold for the first time.

My heart is overcome with terror, Faust sang and Erik agreed.

Yes—it's you—I love you, sang Marguerite, and Erik thought he might agree with her as well.

Stay alert, or you'll be lost! Ah, there he was. Méphistophélès. Perhaps Erik agreed with him more than anyone else. Tarry any longer, and I will no longer involve myself!

The company put forth a commendable effort into the trio, but Erik knew that many of the patrons were like him. They had the echo of something finer, something transcendent stuck to the radiant angels.

And yet… Erik found he could still sit back and enjoy the show. He released a slow breath and looked over at Mojgan. She was fixed on the stage, blinking in time to orchestra. He almost laughed. He did smile, and she caught that and smiled back. His heart was full of relief. At last.

Judged!

As the chorus of angels began, Erik leaned over. "That is our exit, Madame, if you do not mind."

She nodded and let Erik usher her into the secret passage of the pillar. By unspoken consent, they started downwards. He meant to take her to the Rue Scribe, but as he readied to the boat, she said, "It's early yet, Erik. I have missed our talks. Do you think you can stand my presence for a while longer?"

"That is hardly in question," he replied. "But I warn you, the flat is not fit for company at the moment," he pushed the little boat off into the water.

"Then I must see it. You know I'm good at bringing things into order."

"Order? It probably never will be again. I'm tearing the place apart."

"But why?" She was not loud, but her voice echoed weirdly off of the cavernous walls. Erik almost laughed—how often had he been tormented by that selfsame echo of why, why why?

"Because I do not need it," he said simply, "but I would like to have some of the bits and pieces."

"Like your mother's furniture."

He blinked. Sometimes it surprised him how much he had said to her over time, and how much of it she remembered. "Yes. Some of it, at least."

"Do you think that, given the chance to relive your life, you would still leave home so young?" she asked. "Knowing what you know of the world now—being a man grown, and understanding that your parents would not have wanted you to go?"

"Is that what I understand?" he sighed. "I do not know. There were certainly crueler houses than the one I was born into. But as for whether I would do so again?" He rowed harder. "I will take you to the house, and show you my latest project, and perhaps that will answer the question."

When they arrived, her lit the lamps in the hall and parlor, and stoked up the embers of the fire. He had pulled many of his chests out of storage and they littered the room like Bluebeard's treasury. In the center of it, in what he supposed was the place of honor, were what he had pulled out from his time in Persia.

She kneeled amongst the scattered goods, a light hand ghosting over the piles. Cashmere so finely woven it settled almost like silk. Leather books with vellum pages, illuminated with real gold. And gold—gold as yellow as a field of jonquils, glinting even in the half-light of the fireplace. Erik awkwardly lowered himself to the floor besides her. He sorted through the gold with ease, knowing exactly what he was looking for. It was hiding under the coiled chain the Sultana had given him. He pulled out the ruby ring.

"I am sorry it was mixed in with all of the other things," he said, holding it up. The stones glinted true red, without any touch or purple or pink. "But I could not bear to look at any of it for the longest time." There was another pile, tossed a little further away than the rest. Strings for a variety of instruments, made of catgut for the most part. As he had sorted them earlier, he found that a few still had blood dried on them.

He had been in the habit of carrying such a length of bow string in a pocket for so long that he sometimes forgot what it had been—where it had started. That his use of the weapon had been sanctioned by the authority of the land was of little comfort now. He could not change the number of men that had fallen to his lasso. He could only lay these strings aside and use their fellows for their intended purpose alone: music.

Mojgan brought him back to the present. "But you can bear to look at them now?"

He nodded. "They are the steps of my life. I cannot retrace them and decide where to leave off and take another path. You asked if I would have stayed in my childhood home longer? It does not matter. I left young, so very young, and it has led me here. And by the account, I cannot rate Persia as any worse than Russia—or Tonkin—or even Paris. Even if I could choose to undo it, I do not think I would. In fact, it may have done me more good than harm in the long run."

"I hope so," she murmured. "I truly hope so."

The silence stretched on too long and Erik arose. "Wine?"

She laughed. She was pressing a hand to her forehead, like she had a headache. "Please."

He used the few minutes it took to go to the kitchen and find a decent bottle to collect himself. They were just things, he reminded himself, those mementos of Persia. Part of a past that led him to today. Today was not so bad, was it?

He returned to find Mojgan now on the divan, fiddling with the ring. "It used to be loose," she complained, accepting the wine glass.

"You are not nineteen anymore," he replied. "Aren't you glad of that?"

"When you put it that way, yes," she said. "It was difficult being nineteen. And twenty-nine, for that matter. I suppose that thirty-nine really has served me the best out of all of them." She laughed quietly. "I think I might have you to thank for that, Erik."

"I don't know how old I am," Erik confessed, "but I suppose I must also say this has been one of my better years. I could happily stay here for the rest of my life."

"Oh, don't say that," Mojgan said, "not when we just saw what happened to poor Doctor Faust. Eternal youth is not worth the price."

Erik snorted. "What of eternal middle age? No, that is little better. But I've long had an affection for Faust. I suppose it has started to fade, though the music remains."

"Why do you say that?"

"I used to be able to sing Faust with my whole soul," he said, "for I thought we were alike. I was sure I had sold my soul—or had it sold for me—at some young and foolish age. And I thought that perhaps it would have been worth it, for love." He shrugged, and poured more wine. "And then I realized I was Méphistophélès. And I did not know what to do with that." He tried to wave his melancholy away with a joke, "He is a bass, after all, and I am merely a poor tenor."

"No one who has heard you sing would ever call you a poor tenor," Mojgan said with a smile. "And as for being Faust or the devil… I believe that you may be in a different opera altogether."

"Oh? And which one would you cast me in?"

"One that ends happily," she said simply.

Without anything to say to that, he drank his wine. "You told me once that you did not think you were a creature made for happiness. If that is true of you, then it is doubly so for me." The wine had seeped under the lip of his mask, and did his best to dry it with his handkerchief. "I don't have all the essential parts, as you well know."

"If not happiness, then why not love? You have all the parts you need for that. To be accepted and have hope for the future—those you possess, Erik. You can make something with that."

He stilled at her words. He folded his handkerchief and slipped it back into his pocket slowly. "Love is not something that ends well. You cannot make it into something better than it is."

"I cannot agree with that. Is it not the hunger of every human soul? To be accepted for what we are, and loved for what we could be?" she murmured. "Who does not want to have someone look at their quirks and caprices with kindness, and still say—something fine can be built with that. Not change, as such. Not metamorphosis where the caterpillar is consumed into a butterfly and made unrecognizable. But the marble that a craftsman may glory in, a block to build with, hewn to display its patterned nature to best advantage."

So that was love to her. He could not agree with her any more than she did with him, though the words were pretty enough. He commented, "Some marble is easier to work with than others."

"Yes," she admitted. Her glance flashed over to Erik, and she grinned. "But I have been to Florence and seen David there. Difficult marble at its finest."

"Yes, David is a fine fellow," Erik said primly. He gave in after a pause. "Perhaps I am fit to make up a very nice tombstone. Never mind what I am now."

"Come, now. A tombstone? I'd say you're at least fit for a grand old mausoleum." She quieted, and when she spoke again, her voice was serious. "You are a man who has suffered much. You have not been able to live as other men have, and sometimes you practically act like a child because of it. You are brilliant beyond my reckoning, and I think you sometimes despise the rest of us for being so small, but how could it be otherwise? You do not always have the best taste in friends, but I have never seen you act disloyally to those who care about you. You take in the ugly parts of the world, and can put out things of beauty instead. You eat too many sweets and keep the strangest waking hours—but if these little things bring you some pleasure in a painful world, I would gladly bring you cakes at daybreak anytime you please." She had never stopped looking at him as she spoke, her gaze even and earnest and—yes, kind. Now, though, her eyes lowered, as if she was embarrassed. "That is what I see as you are now. I think… something very beautiful could come of it."

Erik listened to her, to every word that was so obviously carefully chosen. He had met her eyes, where there was no mockery or deceit to be found. And now he stared at her downcast profile, with its flying eyebrows and eyelashes, the sloped nose and the short lip. Always pretty, but never a great beauty. Somehow, he liked her more for that. He chose his own words as carefully as she had. "I have long believed you to be… very kind, Mojgan. Kinder than most. But you and I are also in an old habit of joking with one another—not many would do so either, and I take it as another sign of your kindness." He paused, waiting until she would look at him again. As soon as she did, he said: "I hope you are too kind to joke now."

"Oh," she breathed. "How could I joke about something like this?"

Truthfully, Erik wasn't entirely sure what this was. It sounded like a lot of pretty words, and he did not know if he could trust a single one of them. And yet—when had Mojgan ever lied to him, or misled him at all? "If not a joke—then, why?"

"Why?" she repeated. "I can tell you why not. It is not because you are a familiar face in a sea of strangers, though you are. It is not because you have been a source of comfort to me in this chosen exile of mine, though you have been. It is not because I cannot live without a husband, because I have and can. I suppose the best I can say is, I like having you in my life and would like to keep you. And I have seen how having a woman at your side can ease your way in the world, and I would like to be able to give you that. But it is your choice, azizam. There is no debt between us. I offer something freely. You may take it or decline it—freely."

More pretty words, thought it seemed to Erik that only one really stood out: sweetheart. He had never heard her say that, to anyone. His mind was a blur, as if an image of every time he had ever seen her was flying across a grand stage like scenes in a play. He saw her as the unattainable dream of having his own little wife to sit next to in a garden and worry over his health. He saw her holding up to his harshness without losing her own softness. He saw her simple willingness to trust him when she had no reason to do so. He saw her next to him, morning, noon, and night and always, always kind.

He had never longed for her, as he had for Soraya. He had never loved her, as he Christine. And yet, where was the Sultana now? Where was Christine? …and where was Mojgan?

"Is it to be a marriage of convenience, then?" he asked, his voice very dry and somewhat mocking.

She shrugged, but her voice did not lose its earnestness. "Is that what you want, Erik?"

That… was not a question Erik had ever considered in great depth. It had always been a pleasant little dream: finding a woman who could care for him, who he could dote on. A wedding, a wedding mass to compose. Walks on Sundays and card tricks in the parlor. The reality of living with her had been different. Better? But he learned long ago not to torture himself with visions of anything further. And yet, was it possible that his faultless ear was deceiving him? For it sounded like he could have all that for the asking. All that, and more. Real friendship. Real companionship. They had stood on the precipice of that so many times in recent months, as it was. What was it she had said before? Someone who knows. Someone who does not need an explanation. Erik had never been very good at explaining himself, anyway.

"Would it be a real marriage?" he asked, quietly.

She looked at him somewhat quizzically. "Is there any other kind?"

He could not help himself. He laughed. "Oh, Mojgan. You have gone about this all backwards. Fine ladies do not ask poor corpses to marry them."

"They do," she said, "when they love them."

"You throw that word around very easily," he murmured, though it in fact shocked him to the core to hear it said aloud and towards him.

"But not lightly," she replied. She reached out and took Erik's hand in her own. "And I do not need to hear it repeated to me, to know it to be true in my own heart."

The clock on the mantle struck midnight, and Erik half expected the world to set itself back to rights. But he supposed he made for a poor Cinderella: Mojgan looked as serious and tender as she had the hour before.

He took a deep breath. "You know, my dear—there's still time if you wanted to marry Darius instead."

If she had paused, or baulked, or protested, Erik would have turned all of her wild fancies away and let the whole idea stay stuck in the day previous. But she did none of those things, as such.

She laughed, merry and true. "I suppose I could! But this is not a matter of first and second choices, Erik. If the idea displeases you, I will not go around offering my hand until someone takes it. I will be your friend, no matter what."

They sat for a long time. Words had deserted both of them: Mojgan because she had said everything she had wanted to, and Erik because he had no idea how to respond.

"Nadir will kill me," Erik said at last, staring at the ever-ticking clock. He stood and helped Mojgan up. "He will well and truly take my head."

"I assure you, this is not the first time I've stayed up past one," Mojgan replied.

"No. No, Mojgan," he helped her into her cloak and put on his own overcoat. "Not for returning you at a late hour." He found he could not speak with her eyes boring into him, and so turned back to the rack to select a different hat. "The idea does not displease me."

She startled him all of a sudden, and the only thing he could think was—a kiss on the forehead was not the full sum of earthly happiness.