She could not know what she was doing to him, that he felt as if he was being tugged about like a marionette. She could not know this hot bitterness coursing through him at being an object of her pity. Worse than this, he did not want her to see that his hands were shaking, his heart racing, and he would not have stood up for anything in the world. His voice might make her voice flush with pleasure, but the merest touch of her hand and he was rock hard, aching for her. "God, I'm a fool," he thought. He stared at the wall and willed his pulse to slow, his jaw to unclench.

But her face—as he sang to her, she had worn an expression like a wanton, eyes heavy-lidded and cheeks flushed. It was beauty like the blade of a knife—one misstep and he would be cut in two. That she could have looked at him so afterward, unashamed and entirely open, was a mystery. What did she mean by it? Then to stroke his hand, to hold onto him when he tried to draw away. Surely it was friendship and nothing else. That was enough of a gift. It must be enough.

From the corner of his eye he glanced over at her. Had her eyes ever before been so clear? She was no longer the half-hysterical child he had manipulated with magic tricks and song. Of course, he was no longer the mostly suicidal blackmailer creeping around in dust and shadow just to catch a glimpse of her. It was the most difficult—the second most difficult—thing to sit here with her. He knew how to pine, how to plot, how to suffer. All he knew of conversations he had learned in the past three months, and Meg usually carried both topic and the bulk of actual talking. Yet he had wished for this. That it was strange and awkward did not make it any less welcome, so he would have to soldier through.

"Forgive me," he said finally, then had to clear his throat. "I am not well versed in conversation."

"I know," she said. "I know, Erik."

He had to close his eyes as heat surged over him at the sound of her voice saying his name.

"I must—" he said, at the same time she said, "I want to—" and they stopped in unison.

"Please," he said.

"I want to tell you how sorry I am for everything that happened. For all that I did."

Why did she keep apologizing to him? He blurted this out, along with, "I am a blackmailer. A murderer. A selfish brute. Mad. And you say that you are sorry?" He shook his head.

"You were not always mad," she said softly. "This time last year, you were not a murderer."

He whipped his head around to glare at her. "You said Giry told you of my childhood," he snarled. "So you know that is not true."

She had never before had such stillness. It was as if she had decided absolutely never to be afraid of him again.

"She said that he beat you," she said, and he could not hold her eyes. He had never spoken of this to anyone. Not once. He had tried to forget.

"Yes."

"She said he treated you like an animal."

Oh, it had been worse than that, but he would never tell anyone. Beaten by his keeper, by anyone who'd pay a centime for the privilege. Starvation. Those other, worse things for which he had no name. His fingernails dug into his palms. His entire torso ached.

There had been so many times when he had dreamed of this very thing, that she knelt beside him and laid her hand on his arm. Of course, in those fantasies she had declared her love to him. At this moment, the comfort was better. No one had ever tried to soothe him before—even Giry never quite knew what to do with him, having been a child herself. She had let him clutch her hand, but she had never tried to embrace him. Yet here was Christine—his own Christine—who had held his hand, who laid her hand on his arm and looked up at him with tears standing in her eyes.

"You cannot call that murder," she said. "Madame said he would have killed you."

That was very true. They would not have been able to keep him as he grew. He nodded miserably. Her hand moved so slowly down his arm, elbow to wrist, over and over. Erik closed his eyes and focused on the rhythm of it, let it calm him.

"My poor Angel," she said. "And I was so unkind."

He had to shake his head.

"Why do you persist in trying to blame yourself? I alone am at fault. If I had not thought of you as mine." He could not sit and say these things. He had to stand, to stalk the room, to put distance between himself and those mink-brown eyes.

"It was not reasonable. It wasn't fair. All those dolls I made of you, and you were just one of them, mine to mold and control." The window looked out on a sunny day, but he could only see a damp, candlelit cave, two men in battered clothes, and a girl dressed as a bride. Words broke out of him like a howl.

"If I had lost you in any other way I could have borne it. If you had been taken away by music, by duty—but I could never compete with a perfect face. The one thing I could never have, the one thing that has always defeated me." He sank into his desk chair. Three sentences had worn him out utterly.

"It did not matter how much beauty I created for you. It did not matter that I would have done anything, been anything. At the end of it, I am still a monster, just as I have been told for my entire life."

She was standing close to him again, her hands clasped together at her waist. Absurdly, he wondered when she had begun wearing such rich colors. They became her better than the white she had used to wear.

"Why did you send me away?" she asked, and the quaver in her voice surprised him. He looked up, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. He felt so hollow.

"You kissed me," he said. "I can count on one hand the number of women I have touched in my life. You know what I was. You know what I am. To show me that I am not alone? It was the only thing I wanted. No one else has ever touched my face with gentleness. It broke my madness, and I was able to see that I could not make you stay. To what? To live in darkness all your days with a murdering beast? And I knew that I could not touch you with these bloodstained hands." He looked up again.

"I almost thought, when you came back with your ring, that you had come to stay."

Then, miracle of miracles, she put her arms around him. As he pressed his face into her waist and wept for her, Christine bent over him with one arm around his shoulders, her hand stroking his hair.