Chapter 4 – In Unfurling Splendour
It was well past midnight a few days later when the shadow slipped into the Emperor's entrance; even that royal box had not escaped bearing a secret spring to open the door. Danielle slipped down into the grand foyer and slowly shut the door. Pale eyes gleamed behind her in the darkness, and she lingered against the frame, listening intently.
Then, with one swift spin, she turned around, dropping her cloak behind her. The eyes darted away into the darkness, and Danielle raced down the rows of seats. Only the rustle of fabric disturbed the silence, until the racers reached backstage. Catwalks, ropes, and chains jangled into life, cackling at the pair.
Danielle blew strands of hair from her face, stealing a glance up to the window-room door. No shadows moved around it, Erik hadn't beaten her yet. A few nights ago, he had been so eager to begin their composing that he had said he would race her for the folder tonight. It had seemed almost unnatural, but what they had written that night was beautiful and sad enough to wrench her heart. But tonight was a race.
She picked up her light skirt and bounded up a flight of stairs three at a time. Catwalks rocked and creaked as she leapt from one to another. Behind, she heard a cloak billow as ropes pulled a drunken jig. An exhilarated laugh broke free from her throat.
Halfway through, center stage and thirty feet up, a board splintered beneath her. Danielle gasped as the floor raced up towards her, and her eyes shut against her will. Her hand reached out blindly for the support ropes.
Suddenly, something snatched her out of gravity's grip. Erik's strong arm locked around her waist and pulled her back from the edge. Danielle gasped and retreated into his waiting arms. A shiver racked her form as her eyes flew to the stage still far below her; Erik's arms tightened protectively around her. His thick opera cloak fell around them both as she stood in his arms, panting. She swore Erik could hear her racing heartbeat. She forcefully unclamped her hand from the rope she was still holding to rest it over her fluttering stomach, started when she found Erik's still there. He tensed and drew back a bit, but only enough to look down at her.
"Are you all right?" he asked quietly. She turned her face up to his, her cheeks still flushed. He trailed his cool fingers over her hot skin with concern.
"I'm fine. Thank you, Erik." She sighed and rested her head against his shoulder gratefully. Erik paused and hesitated before holding her again. They stood in silence for a moment, and he held her closer, protectively, sincerely. Danielle wrapped an arm around his neck as she compelled her adrenaline to drop.
"How do you do it, Danielle?" he finally asked, giving in. "Make me feel so…" His words trailed off as he looked out over the Opera, searching for the right thing to say. "As if this isn't a prison."
"Because it isn't." She lifted her head from his shoulder and placed a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. His hand moved over hers, pressing her palm against his face. "This is my home. It's your home." When he looked back over the house, her gaze flitted down to the stage again, and she held a tight rein on her nerves.
"You're lucky you didn't fall," he said, following her gaze. "All of those ropes wouldn't have been kind." His hand traced her neck, stilling her shiver.
"Right. Like that poor Buquet the chorus girls always talk of." The warmth around her suddenly vanished.
"Erik?" Far below, the trap door fell open. Danielle leaned over the edge of the guard rope. The trap door was like a gaping black abyss in the floor, a void of a light. "Erik!" She descended as fast as she could, her former vertigo lost in the past, and crouched over the black hole.
The phantom's hurried footsteps echoed down the stone corridor she dropped into. "I'm an old wolf, Danielle," he cried back. He hall sloped down into darkness. Danielle groped along the cold walls as everything but his voice disappeared into the black. "You can try and draw me into the light, but I'll always live in the darkness. It's soaked into my bones." The sound of a spring bubbled up close by. Orange light flared as the darkness grew hotter, more oppressive, and the door of a furnace gaped its fiery maw. "It's shriveled my heart." His figure loomed up as a silhouette against the flames, his hand clutched over his chest.
"Erik, stop," she called, nearly losing her footing in the blackness. "I don't—"
"Of course you don't understand!" he howled back. "The dark is the only thing that has not shunned me. Every time I stray into the light, it spites me!" He turned to face her, and his eyes shone a terrible yellow in the firelight. "With Joseph Buquet. With the precious Vicomte. With Christine. So I spited it back!" He suddenly lunged at her throat, and Danielle flinched and threw out her arms.
But the blow never came. Danielle slowly opened her eyes to find that Erik had stopped, his hand trembling a few inched from her neck. She looked down at them, slowly lowering her arms. "I was always alone," he said softly, painfully, the light from his eyes gone and replaced with a sadness greater than she had seen before. "No one would ever listen."
"I'm here," Danielle offered gently. She took his outstretched hand in hers, warming it. "I listened."
"You listen to my music," he scorned resignedly, "like Christine did. But when it's over, you'll disappear with it, running off to someone else."
"I haven't heard any music tonight." His calloused hand was warmer as she pressed it to her collar bone. "Wolves don't have to live alone. Your night doesn't have to be this dark." She impulsively pulled him forward, leading him back the way they had came. She led him up until they resurfaced onto the stage, dragged him up even further. As they climbed, he protested and dug his heels in, but Danielle urged him on with only a slight tug. They climbed higher and higher until the ceiling sloped close above their heads.
The roof expanded before them when she unlocked the door. The young woman tripped easily down the steps, and Erik finally pulled his hand from hers. The phantom hung back in the indifferent gloom of the landing, watching her. For all his efforts to drive her away, to save her from the pain he knew would come, she didn't care. He watched her sashay across the frosted rooftop with a strange feeling in his heart, as if he had suddenly realized something. Realized that maybe, just maybe, this game wouldn't have to end the same as the others…
Paris twinkled beneath the Opera House, bedecked with more golden lights and the silver ribbon of the river than jeweled Versailles itself. The Eiffel Tower stood like a column supporting the stars above. The Opera around them stood like a silent muse, quietly and knowingly waiting in the night. Winged horses were frozen with pinions outstretched, hooves balanced in a lunge. Angels crouched over their instruments with wings furled against the wind. Reigning over the cityscape was Apollo, lifting his lyre to the endless vault of the sky, presiding over his court of marble figures.
On the eastern horizon, the sky was just fading into gray, traces of pink inking the few clouds that strafed the atmosphere. Danielle leaned on one of the horses' flanks and turned back to the doorway. Erik was veiled in the gloom, watching her from behind his mask. Danielle had almost forgotten about it amongst the catwalks. She still itched to tear it off; questions still burned in her mind for why he wore it. She had learned not to ask, though.
"Come on, Erik," she beckoned to him gently.
"It's the same dark, Angel." He still denied the faint hope that tried to taunt him with its allure.
"No," she disagreed, leading him out onto the roof. She waved at the spacious sky. "This is fresh darkness. They call it 'night.'" Wind stirred his cloak as he followed her. Apollo and his court were oblivious to the two beneath them.
"It's the same night I have lived in for years." Danielle shrugged and took him to a corner of the roof, leaping up to the Pegasus. She balanced on the ledge, arms outstretched. Angels didn't fear falling. She lifted a pining hand to the sky, a movement that shamed the figures around her.
"You see, Erik. The night has its own light." He touched the small of her back to bring her down. Instead, she leaned out, supported by the horse's hoof. "It can be more beautiful than the day's." He finally stole her from the heights, helping her down, before looking up. The moon hung in the west, a precious pearl low in the sky. Its ethereal light transformed Danielle into a pale beauty. She sighed as she descended from the ledge like Venus from her scallop, breathed in the night and the moonlight falling from Apollo's lyre. She looked more a phantom of the night than he.
As she breezed past him, a lock seemed to give way in Erik's soul. He suddenly remembered what the night was, and not the darkness. The music he had lost so long ago whispered in his mind, the spirit of the night flowing in his veins. Danielle turned back to him once more, smiling faintly, and he could read the music lacing her very skin. It pushed his pulse faster, the sight of her waiting patiently, of the night sky stretching endlessly above them.
He suddenly swept past her and leapt up onto the god's back and the angels' wings, reaching a hand back to his Angel. Her wisp of a grin made him smile back. He pulled her up, climbing behind her to stand framed between the marble wings. The wind seized his cloak and whipped it behind him as he held Danielle close. The sky was so close he could have touched it, pink and gold staining it like watercolors. She gasped and stared out over the city, now sprawled beneath them like a carpet of lights.
"A better view, don't you think?" he asked in her ear, smiling at her delighted expression. His hand clasped hers, their fingers interlacing. Danielle fell silent and turned her head against his shoulder.
"Much better," she whispered. Erik glanced where she looked. The eastern sky had turned a butter yellow, and a thin sliver of the sun rose above the earth. The light fell on the pair above the Opera, extinguishing the moon's pale glow with a rich, saturated warmth that immediately into everything. Danielle took a deep breath and leaned back against Erik contentedly. They might as well have been statues fro all that Paris noticed, but the sun shone on them as benevolently as the rest of the city.
Beneath her, Erik suddenly started shaking. The young woman started and twisted around to ask what was wrong, but her words vanished. He was staring into the sunlight, smiling. The eyes behind his mask were bright with a foreign bliss that looked so beautiful on his face. And he was laughing.
"Erik?' she asked, an enigmatic smile curling her lips. He beamed down at her like a captive free of his chains as he finally let himself grab at hope.
"I haven't seen the sun in so long," he said. His hands entwined in her hair, and another laugh escaped him. If his singing was like an angel's, than his laughter was like the purest sound of the first rain to ever fall. "So long, Danielle." The new day's light washed over them as the sun rose higher. Erik caught her up in his arms and leapt down to the roof, spinning her around joyfully. The pair started laughing, so loud that they woke the birds around them. Doves and pigeons burst into frantic flight through the sea of light, while the two beneath them were oblivious to anything but each other.
Erik let her feet touch the ground as he looked down at her, fixed on the hazel in her eyes. Danielle lifted them up to his face, his glorious face even in spite of his mask. Erik brushed back her hair and bent down. "Oh, Danielle," he whispered, and kissed her. The sunlight was golden around them, gilding the moment. She was stunned as his lips pressed against hers.
He drew away slowly, closing his eyes to savor the moment. "Forgive me, Danielle," he said quietly. He had no right to kiss her, but it had been so marvelous. It had been everything he had ever dreamt. He had never kissed a woman before, not him, and he just wanted to savor that moment before it was gone… "I shouldn't have—"
He gasped as she suddenly kissed him back, his eyes flying open. Her hand rested on his side, and she lifted on her tiptoes to move her mouth against his. And when he placed his hand on her back, holding her close, she felt like the sun was rising for the first time. When she drew back she took her first breath all over again.
She had thought that the world was beautiful before.
He had thought that he had given up on love.
Nothing could ever be as sweet as that music…
It took an eternity to shut the front door. Danielle smiled wistfully even as she put her hand against the wood. Her back leaned against the strong wood, and she thought she felt it shift as someone on the other side did the same. Wings fluttered as the birds began to settle back to the roof, still wary of any more laughter. But the two were reduced to smiles, breathing in the fresh morning air that felt so new, so splendid in their lungs.
Her hand dipped into her pocket and touched the little silver ring from the Persian's house. Only one ring was there, and she pulled it out to smile at it. Erik had laughed at it when it fell from her pocket, and pulled it apart as easily as a child's toy. He had even pulled a flower from her hair, out of thin air. She would have asked how if she hadn't been laughing too hard. With a small laugh she started humming music to herself and skipped down the steps, glancing backward up at the doors contentedly.
"Up early, Mademoiselle de Chagny?" Danielle missed a step and whipped around. The daroga stood at the corner of the theater steps, wearing his astrakhan cap and wielding an ornately carved black-wood walking stick. His eyes were intense as they flicked over the silver clasped in her hand. "I see you've figured out my little trick? That was fast. Where is the other?"
"I gave it to a friend," she stammered, surprised at the daroga's presence. He stood tensely, as if he were on the edge of asking something. The step he took towards her was like a lion's from his native home. Danielle felt a shape shift in the shadows of the theater in response, and she took a tentative step closer to it. Her inconspicuously raised hand stilled it, and Erik paused in the gloom. She wasn't even sure he was there as he slipped back into the dim light, back through whatever doorway he had unlocked.
"Someone in the Opera, mademoiselle? At this time of day?" He spoke congenially, but Danielle thought she heard a whisper of something else in his voice. As if he did not want to ask, but had to know. He stepped closer to Danielle, and he was so much taller and slightly intimidating in his insistence that she had to dodge past him.
"Yes, daroga. I left it here for someone. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time I was home." She walked down the street calmly, but his eyes on her back made her hike her cloak a little higher on her shoulders. The silver felt cooler in her hands.
When she was gone, the Persian turned his gaze back on the Opera House. His knuckles gripped the cane tightly as he scanned the ornate doors, the beautiful stone work. He guiltily found himself wishing slightly that it was his trusty pistol he held instead of the cane.
Had he returned? Could the monster truly have returned? Had the Angel of Music hooked its claws into the young woman? Or was the daroga just chasing waifs from his past?
"I'm getting too old for this," he muttered ruefully and walked away.