I'm not exactly sure where this is going, but rest assured that no matter what it may look like in this chapter, no characters have undergone personality transplants.
A tremulous hand reached out and turned the scorpion. Christine turned eyes filled with tears to her tormentor and quietly confirmed what he thought could only have been a hallucination.
"Erik, I have turned the scorpion."
Her wide and ever-innocent eyes looked up at the menacing figure as her dark angel took a step toward her. His head tilted nearly imperceptibly to one side as he silently questioned her choice, scarcely believing what his own eyes had seen. She had chosen him over certain death! Chosen marriage to death himself over death himself! He almost laughed aloud at the sad thought of it.
He reached one skeletal hand toward her angel's face and moved forward – oh but ever so slowly! And then – and then - she smiled at him. An innocent, truly beautiful smile that if possible seemed to elevate her fair features even closer to what he supposed graced the countenances of celestial beings.
But no, Christine did not even merit that comparison, Erik mused hazily. For it would be the angels themselves who could only hope to approach the beauty that he saw in Christine Daae.
And any trace of her former tears only enhanced this delicate loveliness.
(The angel in hell… Persephone in Hades...)
She stepped closer as if to meet him halfway, lifting her chin to offer her alabaster forehead or even (he chided himself for allowing himself to hope for it!) her lips to his wretched, still unmasked face. She allowed her mouth to part invitingly then and even he could read the invitation on her expectant face.
Erik's cat's eyes never saw the glint of the dagger that Christine pulled from somewhere in the folds of her costume.