Erik

It was purely on a whim that I still chose to sit in box five. It was habit, and habit was half of what had kept me sane, this last year; habit, and my beloved music. I had been in Vienna for a month now, longer certainly than I had stayed anywhere else—I had picked up my previous life of wanderlust easily enough, but something in that old city called to me. So much of music had been born and, I was certain, would yet be born there. I had even, half-heartedly, begun to tinker with a few compositions of my own. This particular night the city was abuzz over some new young soprano who was to open for the Vienna State Opera. They said that her voice was purer than an angel's . . .

That, of course, was the point at which I stopped listening. I had already heard the voice of my angel on this earth, and she had left me. I didn't have enough heart left to be angry with her; she was so much younger than I was, so much purer; until I had forced my way into her sorrowful existence, she had known melancholy but never true darkness. It had been me who put pain back into her once-empty voice . . . me and my wretched depravities. Would she be glad to know I had not killed, had not even come close, since the night she left?

Would she even care?

Undoubtedly not. She was happy, somewhere, living out a gentle quiet life with her aristocratic Adonis. And, in the end—as long as I could convince myself she was happy, as long as I forced her last bewildered, almost pleading look from my mind—then I was content. I had given her up willingly, and the consequences were mine alone to bear. I would never, never consciously burden her . . . particularly not with memories of me.

I was aware of someone coming into the box and sitting next to me, but I ignored them. If some poor fool had the gall to enter a privately held box and disturb the single, eccentric occupant, who was I to argue? He might even turn out to be good company. As long as he dismissed the mask as the strange custom of a rich patron, I was safe enough. The tales of a masked terror who enjoyed opera had not, as far as I was able to determine, made it out of Paris yet.

My composure flew out the window when he quietly spoke my name. No, he definitely was not going to be good company.

"Erik."

I knew that voice. It was a warm, good tenor—a voice that, under other circumstances, I would have been quite happy to work with. These, however, were not other circumstances. I froze, feeling every muscle in my body tense as I waited for the muzzle of a pistol to poke into my side. After all, I had been trying rather enthusiastically to kill him at our last meeting; why should he hesitate to return the favor?

What on earth was he doing here? I had left Paris—I had specifically left Paris to them. Had left the whole bloody country of France to them, for that matter. I would have been happy to leave them Europe and the whole western hemisphere with it, but the Orient had proven too tempting a place for a man of my past to stay indefinitely.

"Erik, look at me."

Blasted boy. No, what had I called him before? Wretched, that was it. Wretched, wretched boy. At least tell me he had spared me the pain of seeing Christine . . . surely the Vicomtess, by now. I could not bear to see her walk away with him again, despite all my noble intentions. If I had to go through that night again, I knew what slight hold I had on sanity would disappear without compunction.

There was no pistol. In fact, as I turned very, very slowly toward him, I realized that he was completely and utterly unarmed. Unarmed, and holding his left hand out to me as though it was of vital importance. A courteous and knowledgeable man would simply have been compensating for my own southpaw grip, but Raoul and I had never gotten around to being courteous with each other. Fighting over an angel will make demons out of even the best of men.

"Erik." He was exasperated with me, I could hear it. Strange, how slowly my mind seemed to be working.

Calling my vocal chords out of their inexplicable and brief retirement, I managed to answer with something approaching a coolly civil tone. "Monsieur? I believe . . ." I couldn't say you are mistaken, not with him giving me that blasted look of . . . was it possible? Pity? I sighed and began again, more simply. "Good evening, my dear Vicomte."

If he noticed my deliberate, ironic mocking of Firmin and Andre, he didn't acknowledge it. The young man—oh, very well, Raoul—was very earnest and serious now, looking straight into my eyes without flinching, which is a trait I have always appreciated in others. Fine, I could play that game as well. "Did you need something, Monsieur?" Such as a particular length of catgut?

"Her name is still Daae, Erik." This was said quietly, that invading left hand still held out as though for my inspection. I noticed that it was utterly without adornment, no rings of any kind . . . and then what he had said registered in my mind. My head jerked up, and I stared at him wide-eyed. He couldn't possibly mean . . . could he?

I was saved from answering by the voice of an angel.

The curtain must have risen, the orchestra must have begun to play, all without my noticing, but nothing in the world could have prepared me for hearing her voice again. My Beloved, my Angel of Music! I whipped around to face the stage, and there she was, her dark curls cascading around her, her porcelain-pale skin glowing in the light, and her voice . . .

Her Voice!

She sang an aria to a lost lover, but I could not hear the words, for I was overwhelmed by the unashamed longing . . . the love in her voice. The love . . . and the heartbreak. She had surpassed my teaching. Somehow, in the last year, life had given her the heart to sing as she had never sung for me, not even when she tried her hardest—her whole soul was in that voice. For the first time, she was holding nothing back, and the intensity of her ability shattered every wall around my heart.

Then she looked up into my box, and I knew—beyond the opera lights, beyond the darkness of the audience—I knew that it was not the young man beside me she was singing to.

She was singing to me!

Her song lasted for an eternity, and that final note, rising higher than I had dared take her voice for fear of harming her beautiful clarity, seemed to echo in every chamber of my soul. I didn't think. I simply acted. Unbidden, my voice rose from the stage in all its own power, enchanting and strange and beautiful in its own right. I had just enough presence of mind left to throw my voice to the tenor across the stage from her, though I believe he was so shocked at hearing someone else sing his part that he never made a sound . . . I did not care. Her voice rose again to meet mine, and we danced around each other in music, harmonizing, yet with an weird and triumphant discordance that made me—and everyone else in the audience—shiver.

I don't know when our song ended; I don't know whether we even sang the right parts. I don't remember the rest of the opera, even; the next thing I remember is Raoul—dear, dear boy—helping me into a carriage and driving me to their hotel. It must have been an hour later, but it felt like only minutes when she walked through that door. I was standing by the window; I had seen her carriage arrive. The only power that was left me was to turn and quietly speak her name.

"Christine . . ."