I am so relieved this chapter is done - haha! Fun stuff to come.

Chapter 5: decide

Erik had cast aside his glamour, let it fall like a wave of dispersing fog around them. He had never done such a thing in the presence of a human – even with Madame Giry, he had maintained a standard of presence around her. Humans were stupid and quick to presumptions. He had lived his entire life being judged for his appearance. When he had… changed, when he had finally had a choice, he had put up the glamour and never looked back.

But he had also never had a human react to his glamour the way this woman had. Perhaps he should have ended everything at this moment. He should send her home and rescind the engagement. He should heed these warnings. Instead, he remained kneeling before her with nothing blocking the gaze of her appraisal but his mask.

Christine's face smoothed, the lines of pain gone from between her fine brows, but it was her eyes that let him know the effects of his glamour had ended. She blinked her sky-blue eyes, and when she settled them upon him again, she truly saw him for the first time. If he had been alive, he might have held his breath then. He breathed so little as is, and so he just held still and let her look and tried to control his trembling under her studious gaze. Her grip on his hand was firm and unrelenting, but she could have kept him in place with merely a soft word.

She reached out and touched the cheek of his mask, and he almost hissed then, his instinct to prevent what might happen next so strong. He had never, never allowed someone to remove his mask since he had fled Mazandaran, and violence lurched unbidden to the surface.

But she merely touched the porcelain with the pads of her fingertips and said in a wondrous tone, "There you are, Erik." And her full lips curled into a small smile.

If he had a pulse, it would have quickened. She could see everything – the edge of his mask that did not quite cover every disgusting lump of flesh, the shriveled skin around his eyes, the odd thinness to his lips. If she continued to study him, she might notice his too perfect hair and the hairline of his wig he tried to disguise with powder.

But she only smiled at him. There you are, Erik.

He was lost. No, he was found.

By her.

"Is this… to your satisfaction?" he asked, conscious that she could now see his real lips move. He kept his words vague, but truly, he meant his appearance. She could take it to mean the headaches and dizziness, if they were gone.

"Yes, Erik," she said, those two words so simple and so magnanimous.

Gods, his name formed upon that mouth. He swallowed dryly. "The tea grows cold."

"Oh. Right. It does."

The spell broken, she let her hand fall as she also let go of his fingers. He was bereft of her, released by her spell. He stood and fetched her a cup, attending to it in the way she asked: no cream, one lump of sugar. When he returned, he handed her the cup, careful not to let their fingers touch, and seated himself in one of the high-backed chairs opposite her, the distance needed to help his head clear.

She busied herself with sipping her tea, and he allowed himself to take her in. Her hair was piled atop her head, an unwelcome change from how her ringlets had always fallen freely down her back when he had seen her before. She was dressed in a new gown of emerald green and rich blue, and the high quality suited her, the neckline cutting a heart shape across her fine collarbones, the lace sleeves falling to her elbows. He was entranced for a moment by the fine hairs on the backs of her arms and the steady pulse in her neck and the gentle sound of her swallows.

He noticed she was looking at him again and cleared his throat, a human thing he remembered to do before speaking. "Tell me about yourself, Christine."

"There is little to tell, I think," she said, her mouth turning down ever so slightly in the corners. "I was born in Sweden, but I started traveling young. My father and I moved to France when I was a little girl." She held the teacup upon its saucer too stiffly in her lap. "I am rather plain, monsieur, and my life has matched."

"Do not," he said, leaning forward to balance his elbows upon his knees, "do such a thing to yourself."

She blinked at him. "D-Do what?"

"Presume. You believe your life has resulted in few stories to tell, that you can skip over all the details to give me a mere summary of your twenty-one years."

Clearly caught off guard by his bluntness, she bought herself thinking time by raising the cup to her lips. When she lowered it again, she had formed an answer. "I have never thought anyone was interested enough."

He leaned back in his chair. "I am interested. You are here this evening, aren't you? I am interested, Christine."

He caught the way she shivered at that. "As you wish, Erik," she said, a bit of annoyance coloring her words. She was frustrated with him, and he admitted to himself that he was delighted over the new bloom of red upon her cheeks. "I… was born in Sweden. That explains my accent, if you have noticed it."

"I have noticed. I have never been to Sweden, however. What is it like?"

"I was eight when we left. But I remember it being cold. I hated the winters there – there was little daylight and the snow piled up so much that we couldn't go out anyway. I lived for summer when the sunlight lasted all day and it was warm again. I didn't mind when Papa wanted to move south except that it meant leaving Mama."

"Your mother?"

Christine took another long sip of tea. "I did not want to leave her gravesite. She died a few months before we left Sweden. Influenza. I wish I had been older so I could remember her better, but I have snippets. I remember her hair being as wild as mine. And a lot of the foundations of what I know about music, I owe to her."

He straightened his back at that. "You are well versed in music?"

She flushed and rose from the sofa, walking over to the tray to place her empty teacup. Erik saw her sudden surge of nervousness in her movements, in the way she fiddled with one of her pinkies, in how her eyes did not quite meet his. What was she hiding?

Christine picked at the nail of her pinky finger, grasping for any moment she could get to collect herself. She needed to backtrack this conversation before she said anything she should not disclose. She should never have brought up music, but her thoughts always turned there when remembering her mother.

Her words from one of the last conversations she had with her mother floated into her head. I have a song inside of me, Mama. Can I not share it? And then her mother had gotten ill, and her father had… well, she had thought she would never hear his violin again.

She chose her words carefully. "My father has quite a talent for the violin."

"Your father could easily have a place in any opera house in the world."

He could, she agreed silently. She had always known Papa was one of the greatest violin players alive. But no one ever wanted to listen to the less fortunate long enough to notice.

She hovered where she was, not coming back to sit. "That is kind of you to say."

"It is the truth." He tilted his head to the side, considering her with new attention that made her flair of nervousness worsen. "Do you play?"

"The violin? I know how to hold it, how to draw out a note, how to clean it and tune it and change the hairs. But no, I do not know how to play. Papa never let me attempt such a thing."

"A mistake on his part."

She swallowed hard. "I shouldn't speak ill of him. Any music is a great gift."

"It is."

He rose then from the couch, and she found herself countering by edging further away, as though the distance would erase the fact that she did not want to talk about her background.

I have a song inside of me, Mama.

"Christine?"

Oh, the sound of her name upon his lips. At that moment, she felt like she would tell him anything if he would only call her by name again. She needed to diverge his attention to something else lest she give into the temptation. This man… he wanted to make her his wife, didn't he? Could she not reveal herself to him?

Papa's words of warning echoed in her head. She had a gift, but it was not one that could be easily given. She could not simply shut off years of silence. And if Erik was as interested in music as she suspected he was, she feared his reaction above all.

But temptation was a powerful encourager.

"This is a beautiful piano, monsieur," she said, crossing the last distance to the baby grand in gleaming black. "May I?" She tapped the cover to the keyboard in question.

"Of course," he replied, his golden eyes attentive upon her.

She lifted the cover and slid onto the bench seat, then touched the smooth keys with reverence. "It has been a while since I was able to play."

"Do what you like."

She spread her fingers and settled into a chord, feeling the sounds within her body as much as she heard them with her ears. Then she pressed out another and another. "You keep this piano perfectly in tune."

"Yes," he said simply.

A little indulgence could not hurt, could it? She played a few snippets of a tune in her head, nothing recognizable, then faltered. It had been so long since she had been able to play a piano, and now she had an audience.

"There is sheet music on the rack," Erik said from her elbow, "if you need something to play." She looked up, having to crane a little due to his height. When had he moved to stand beside her?

There was indeed sheet music. Christine chewed on her bottom lip. She really should have dived in and played something from memory rather than have to admit that she could not read music. She reached out and thumbed through the pages, seeing that it was a short sonata for the piano.

She flipped to the title page, read the title: "Sonno, a Sonata for Piano," and gasped with delight. "I know this music!" Then she read the composer's name. Her eyes widened, and she swung them up to stare at him. "You wrote this!"

His mouth quirked up at the corners, amused. "I did. You seem surprised, Christine. Your father did not tell you? I outlined my career and estate when we discussed our engagement."

No wonder Papa had been so gleeful. "You are Voclain," she said in awe. "The Voclain. I don't know why I did not even think of such a thing being possible. You are Voclain, the Italian composer."

"Not Italian," he said. "Most of my lyrics are in the language, yes, but I am French-born."

"My apologies. I-I started reading music reviews in the newspaper when we moved here. The critics seem to make a lot of assumptions about you, and you have never given an interview to tell the truth. Your accent has a different lilt to it than French."

"I have traveled often, and I do not much enjoy the company of people, as you may have guessed."

Christine let that jab at himself slide. Even with all this discussion, she had learned little about him; he avoided details about his life with an ease she noticed. She wanted to know so much more about him, but she saw that she would have to pull every ounce from him.

"I still cannot believe you wrote 'Sonno,' monsieur." She placed the sonata back upon the rack and dived right into the second theme of the piece, her favorite part. She knew this sonata, had hummed portions of it whenever the mood suited her. Papa had played it a few times, but she was the one who had latched onto the melody in her head since she had first heard it.

"You have memorized this piece?" Erik asked.

"I can hear it in my head," she admitted. "But I- I am a poor piano player. Papa can read music, but I never learned." She was ashamed to admit it, now that she knew he was a composer. He wrote music for a living! She continued quickly, "They are too harsh critics of yours. I have not been able to hear much of your work, but this is one of your more famous pieces, right?"

"Yes." He sank to the bench next to her as she scooted to the far edge to make room. There was not much space for the both of them, and the edges of their thighs brushed. Decorum demanded that she pull back from this situation, that she perhaps get up and move to a nearby chair. She stayed put.

He settled his hands upon the keys. "May I?"

She gave him her first real smile of the evening. "Would you play this piece, please? I love it so."

"Do you?" He turned his head to look down at her. He was as close as he had been during that moment in the rain weeks ago, a moment that seemed a lifetime away, but she could see him more clearly now. She kept her attention on his eyes, sensing that he would be uncomfortable if she scrutinized the mask.

"I do," she said honestly.

"Then I shall oblige."

He hesitated, a split second of his long fingers hovering above the keys, before he dove into the piece. If she had not been observing him so closely, she might have missed the moment's pause. Truthfully, she had been waiting for him to remove his gloves; she could not imagine he would play such a difficult sonata with the restriction. However, he left them on, and her curiosity flamed as to why.

She knew the melodies of "Sonno" by heart, but she had never heard it played the way it had been intended – with piano in the starring role. Erik's gloves did not seem to hinder him in the slightest; he played expertly, the keys merely an extension of his fingers, which splayed their long, narrow lengths across the ivories with ease. She held her hands in her lap, careful of the space she inhabited upon the bench. When Erik had to lean over to tap the lower register, she held her breath as his shoulder pressed against hers.

Christine had heard far more entrancing songs before. Papa had always made certain that she was exposed to a variety of music. But something about Voclain's sonata had captivated her. The way the notes intertwined in ways she had never heard before, or maybe it was the sudden changes in tempo and chord. The sonata kept the listener off-guard, and even though she had heard it before, she could still feel her body thrumming with the feel of it when he finished. A composer had just played his own arrangement before her, and she could do little more than remind herself to breathe.

He sat back, rested his hands upon his thighs. "I… rarely play for an audience. Did you enjoy it, Christine?"

"You never create anything beautiful," she murmured aloud.

His little bark of a laugh drew her back. "An accurate assessment, my dear."

She felt herself flush bright red. "I-I mean, I read that in a review of your works. In the newspaper. I am so sorry!"

"Far be it for me to correct."

"No, no, I disagree actually. Those music critics – they want songs they can figure out. Oh, I am sure they want to hear melodies they have never heard before, but they also want them to make sense, to be sortable." She raised a hand and plinked out a few notes from one of her favorite parts where a sudden shift in tone occurred. "You didn't make anything easy in "Sonno" and the critics hated it. But I love it, truly. I find it a beautiful song."

His golden eyes had widened during her speech, not quite so shadowed by his mask when they were sitting close together. His lips parted, and if he had asked her right then for her hand, she would have given it. This fact startled her, so much so that she almost missed the way he suddenly pressed his lips back together. It was an odd action, not one meant to stop himself from speaking. It was almost as though he was… holding something in.

A soft knock startled the air between them.

"Pardon me," Darius said from the doorway. "You wished for me to let you know when forty-five minutes had passed."

Erik jerked away from her, rising from the bench in a quick unfolding of long limbs. "Of course," he said curtly. "I promised Monsieur Daaé to have her home by nine o'clock."

"I suppose I should be going then," Christine said, getting up from the opposite side of the bench.

"Darius will escort you out," Erik said, his back to her, his shoulders broad lines of stiffness.

Christine gave him a long look. Something had shifted between them. They had gone from an easy discussion about music, one that had excited some life within her, to this odd tension. Why did it feel as though the butler had walked in on them engaging in something immodest? Erik had been nothing but polite during her time here, in all ways. But something had shifted between them. Erik was doing everything he could to make a quick exit.

"I had a lovely time," she said to Erik. And then she held out her hand.

Propriety demanded that he respond. He swung around and bent over her hand, his own rising to barely cup her fingers in a shadow of a handshake. "As did I," he said softly, voice strained. "Good night, Christine."

He swept out of the room before she could say anything else. When she stepped to Darius's side, he had vanished down the unlit hallway that extended down the length of the second floor.

Darius gestured for her to follow him. "Was everything to your liking?" he asked as he gathered her cloak and gloves.

Christine glanced once more up the broad stone staircase, but there was no sign of Erik. A gentleman would have accompanied her to the door.

"I am not certain what I did wrong," she said, following Darius outside where the carriage awaited, horses stamping in the cooler night air. "He was fine, and the next moment, he was not."

Darius helped her into the carriage and closed the door behind her. "You did nothing wrong," he said. He climbed into the driver's seat, effectively ending their conversation.

Christine's thoughts spun. Monsieur Erik Voclain. He had gone to her father and asked for her hand in marriage after merely seeing her a handful of times. He was a renowned composer, clearly a man of wealthy means. He had worn a mask and tried to cover it up from her. And yet, during their short time together, he had spoken kindly to her and played the piano only because it seemed to please her.

The night was heavy with the earthy scent of fallen rain, and the horses' hooves splashed upon the street. She simply could not leave things between them like this. Christine lurched forward and banged on the wall of the carriage.

"Stop at once, Darius!" she called.

Erik fled down the hallway, the darkness not a hinderance to his golden eyes. He made it down the far end before he ducked into an empty room, one of many that had never been decorated. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. She had been too close for too long, her warmth too overwhelming. Her pale skin flushed with every feeling she emoted, the reddened cheeks of her frustration or embarrassment, her ears pinking, the silhouette of blood rising to the surface.

He pressed his gloved hand to his lips, clamped down hard against the fangs still protruding from his gums. Control had been lost, only for a moment, but if Darius had not entered when he did…

This was all a mistake. How could he wed this girl when he could barely exist in the same room as her?

Still, it took only a moment for his fangs to subside, and then he was out of the house in a blur of black clothing. He would only see her home safely, only watch until she made it back to her apartment. A light misting rain dampened his eyelashes, seeped behind his mask, as he slipped through shadows. The trail was easy to follow, but the carriage had taken a roundabout way back to her neighborhood.

He drew up sharply.

The carriage was pulled to the side of the park where he had first seen Christine, its bulk a darker black against the night. Christine stood underneath a streetlamp, trees casting long shadows across her slight form. Darius still sat in the driver's seat, and when Erik approached, his eyes pleaded for no violence because of this turn in events.

Erik had seen what Christine could be like when determined. He doubted the butler had been given any choice.

He stopped a length away from her, not wanting to crowd, a predator approaching potential prey.

Christine was breathing heavily as though she had been running. "I knew you would follow me," she said, her tone as fierce as he had ever heard it. "I knew you would watch to see if I arrived home safely. You are always doing that, always watching, aren't you? You have been since the first time I saw you here, standing behind that tree."

"Yes." What else could he say?

She continued, barely pausing to hear his short response. "I do not have to ask why you are following me now, Erik. I know why. I know you keep me safe. I know you have been taking care of me. Your money has bought my father some time. Your money has bought me these clothes when I needed them." She fisted her skirts with white knuckles and shook the satin blue and green fabric. "You have clothed me, fed me, and through all of that, you have watched me in order to keep me safe."

Flinging her arms to either side, she spread her small hands wide. "But I do not know why me!" When he did not give an immediate response, she gave a rueful laugh with no mirth in it. "That first day, you saw me do little more than collect money from strangers, and yet you came again and again. You followed me home, and since then, you have watched me attend to laundry or fetch groceries or run into the street in a panic when Papa was ill. Any other man would have grown bored or found someone much more fascinating than me by now."

She swung her eyes to the ground, staring at the space between their feet, chest heaving. Curly tendrils of golden hair had escaped her pinning, and he resisted the urge to strip off a glove and run his fingers along its twisting edges.

He crossed the distance between them, forcing his hands to remain loose at his sides. Her heart fluttered wildly in the pulse in her neck, but he kept his gaze upon hers lest he unwittingly release the monster inside himself again. He was the one who should be doubting why she would agree to marry him. It was all a farce, this life he offered her.

But he had nothing else to give.

Her words mirrored his own thoughts. "I have nothing of worth to offer you," she said, voice now falling to a whisper. "No money, no name, almost no family. If I did something today or said something to cause you to change your mind, all you should do is tell me, and I would understand."

He tucked a spindly finger under her chin and tilted her face up. Her eyes snapped back to his, those blue depths swimming with unshed tears. She had faced such hardship, and she still stared at him unflinchingly. She was strong, his little bride. He wanted her all the more, consequences be damned.

"I have money, Christine. I have a composer's name. Become my wife, and I will give everything I have to you."

"You barely have any idea of who I am," she cried. And nor I you, he heard in the echo.

"Then we will learn. But promise me this, Christine. This is the final time you will ever doubt your own worth to me."

Her eyes widened, those eyes the color of a clear sky. He knew exactly how long it had been since he had seen the real sky, how long since he had felt the sun upon his skin. If this woman would agree to be his wife, he could find some peace in her presence. He could stop counting the moments and simply forget.

"I promise," she said at last. "I-I should be getting home. My apologies for… this."

"None are needed. But indeed, you should be getting home." He looked over his shoulder at Darius, who immediately straightened on the bench of the carriage. No words had to be exchanged between them. Erik knew he would not see Darius again this night; no doubt the Persian would stay away rather than face Erik's wrath.

Christine seemed much mollified by the conversation, pulling the edges of the cloak around herself as though cold. Pausing at the first step of the carriage, she said, "I will give you an answer soon about our engagement."

"Take the time that you need," he replied.

She nodded, and the edge of white teeth flashed as she bit her lip. "Good night, Erik."

"Good night, Christine."

He waited until the carriage had pulled back onto the correct path to her apartment before following deep within the shadows. His glamour should not cause her any harm at a distance, and so he used it to keep himself from her notice. If she did catch a glimpse of him lingering until she was safely abed, she gave no sign.

If fed properly, if not set ablaze by sun or fire, if not beheaded, Erik would live forever. He had grown used to waiting with patience. What was one day versus one year to a man who was suspended in time? He had told Christine to take her time, but what she did not know was that her father had less than a month to live. The cloud of death hung around him too darkly now, and there would be no going back.

And she also did not know that Erik had already published the bans of marriage, even before her father had accepted his proposal. One way or another, they would be wed.

He had told her to take her time. It was not the first lie he had told her. It certainly would not be the last.

Next up: wedding bells?