I'm baaaack! Did ya miss me? Or just the daily updates? Well, I'm on schedule again, so work up some free time to read the chapters as they come up, please:-)

Disclaimer: I did a lot of things this weekend… went to a West Point graduation, a surprise birthday party, and visited a monastery, among other things… sadly, obtaining the rights to this wasn't one of them.

Of Knights and Dragons

Chapter XVII: Infidelity

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

(Albert Einstein)

Christine dreamed she was running through a field of wildflowers. They unfolded around her, rose and white and green, a thousand winking eyes and bright faces. It was her first dream since the Angel of Death… a dream of life.

The tall grasses bent around her in the sweet wind of her passage, rippling outwards like the violent surface of the sea as she danced upon it. The wind teased her hair out behind her, ruffling the long curls, lighting a fiery spark to dance upon them, a sister-spark to the light in her eyes.

Then the field ceased and a vast valley played out beneath her feet, a sheer edge, only inches away. Beyond and behind her the field of wildflowers stretched on unbroken to infinity. Before her the world fell abruptly away, rock-sheer down into a seething ocean.

The wind rising up off the sea swept straight up the cliff, blowing her hair back in an elaborate halo, taking away the heady scent of the flowers and replacing it with an equally intoxicating salty tang that stung her lips. She opened her mouth to taste it and felt the song welling up in her soul pour out of her.

Maybe it was the wind's fault, so teasing and enticing above the vast sea. It irked her into competition with it, into communion with it—she had to sing. Lost in the throes of that intoxicating, pure sweetness, her blue eyes drifted down over the raging sea two hundred feet or more below, where the angry waves dashed their gnarled forms against the spikes of saw-edged rocks.

There was a ship there, a small one-man craft, its sails like white wings. On the craft there was a man, his face upturned as if to see what goddess poured out her soul above the sea. The sun was behind her, so that she was limned with heavenly gold as she sang. The ship slid towards the rocks. He looked up at her, uncaring of the looming danger. The sun flashed off his face, flashed white…

She screamed, and the rock gave way beneath her, crumbling away into the sea, and she with it. Her arms opened as she fell, fluttering like a scrap of lonely cloth—

As it is with dreams, an instant before she struck the sea the scene shifted about her.

She sat up, puzzled and disoriented, in her bed. A quiet, cool breeze blew in through the open window. "…and do I dream again?" she said aloud, herself uncertain. She cast back the coverlet and rose to her feet, pulling her long curls away from her face. "Do I dream again, for… for now…" her tongue was slow and thick, unable to properly form the words. "Now I find, the Phantom…"

"…of the Op-er-a is there, inside your mind."

"What is that?" But the words wouldn't properly form, even in her mind—surely then it must be a dream, for only in dreams were the mouth slow and the voice arrested. Her Angel had taught her to sing, and only something as strange as a dream could prevent that song.

"This is the way things might have been." That voice—oh God, only in dreams such as these could its timbre be resurrected so perfectly. The slight weight to might, the hiss on this is, the rich empty depth that glazed over by a rough slide of diamond tilts…

The shadows coalesced into a copy of his form, perfect in every detail. The image her mind constructed of shadows and imprinted with his likeness was so exact, so precise, she found her vision blurring—not because her dream disintegrated around her, but because it was refracted by pure, salty tears.

A cold finger brushed against her cheek, smoothing the betraying tears away. "No weeping, little angel." God, it was he. The freezing touch—so it was not a result alone of the cold cellars of the Opera: that cold existed as a physical part of his self. If he was not merely a remembered figment of her imagination, returned only to torment her…

"Dreams guide us where we would never dare to otherwise go," he whispered, lifting her chin on his fingers, tilting her up to him. "Places forbidden in the world of light and life and freedom."

"But you are dead," she murmured, the words sliding out of her before she could sensor them.

His other hand came up to her shoulder, pushing her curls back tenderly. "Do I appear to be dead to you?" he whispered. "If this is only a dream, even, Christine…"

"My dreams of you are always true," she said slowly, in hesitant realization. "If you are here, then you are alive." As she spoke the words, she smiled, and her last resistance vanished. Polar opposites, they drew together. Locked thus into the framework of his arms, she looked up at that outlined, shadowed profile; half white, half black. He was not so cold when they were this close; there was a fiery spark, an unholy burning heat in his chest, and she pressed close to its searing fires.

She fell forward into a void of emptiness; he had called her "Pandora", and desperately her soul longed to fulfill that image—what was it about reaching, desiring, that was so immortal? Cool white leather slid beneath her curling fingers.

"Do not replace this dream with a nightmare," he begged. She had to obey. She could not refuse what that angelic voice asked of her. Her hand flattened against the cool leather façade, and she looked up into those eyes—burning, burning, was this what Hell was like? Surely not, for that was damnation. Is there not more fire in Heaven than there is in Hell? It is above the dreams of mortals. But surely not, for here I am…

A field of electricity sparked between them, beyond either of their controls, and Christine surrendered herself completely to the hidden mastermind of this dream, letting her rational thoughts slide away, abandoned, left forever. She felt now, felt the fabric slide beneath her hands, the sureness of skin and muscle beneath, even beneath that biting cold… felt the line between the cool white mask and the side of his face, a smooth and even ridge, stained glass smoothed away by the constant flow of sand… felt the hungry fire as he bent to her, as their lips touched.

Oh God, Raoul.

Even in dreams, sinning had never felt so sweet. Sweet, and cloying; a fervent feast that left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue that she could not qualify; but she did not care, too hungry to care, too desirous of that which was before her.

Is this what it was like to have sanity slide away between your fingers? She wondered deliriously, what little rational thought she had once possessed now long gone. They parted, staring at each other over the distance of mere inches, of centuries, neither quite willing nor able to believe what had just transpired. She tasted salt on her lips, unable to decide if the tears were his or hers, deciding it did not matter.

Dreams were so sweet, and so fleeting.

His fingers touched her eyelids and obediently they closed, though she could hear every breath he took, feel the motion in the arms that upheld her, feel the heat even through that searing, burning cold that enveloped him. His eyes were gold, she thought dreamily. Pure and tempered gold.

Abruptly she woke. The plain wooden ceiling above her reflected the growing light of day through an open window, which invited a fresh breeze. Slowly Christine sat up, recognizing that she was in her bed in Christophé and Diana's home, waking from sleeping a night undisturbed.

She pushed her hair behind her shoulders with hesitant hands, looking slowly about the room. Dew had formed on a few simple flowers in a vase that she remembered from the night before. The coverlet was securely tucked about her, the door was closed, a soft breeze continuously seeping in from the window.

So it had been a dream.

Her eyes closed—whether to ward off tears of sorrow or of guilt, she couldn't decide. It hadn't been real… Erik had not come to her… and yet, did she not always dream true of him? He had to be alive. She rose on that thought, dressing quickly, smoothing the coverlet back on the bed, reaching for the door handle. He had to be alive. That was enough. They could go back to the estate… back to England, perhaps… and he would be there, still, in her dreams, and that would be enough. She left with a little smile at the thought.

So distracted was she that she failed to see the rose on the pillow… or the note beneath it.