Chapter 6

They made it back to the dressing room before Christine. Rebekah still had to consider her someone different. So they look and sound alike, big deal. Julian and Rebekah stood and watched as Christine came into the room, and saw the single long stemmed rose. She glared at Julian with that, he just ignored her. Christine then heard the music, and eventually followed it into the passage behind the mirror.

Julian and Rebekah followed close behind. Rebekah looked at him. She wondered how much it was taking out of him to project all these memories around them. "Did you build that passage in my dressing room back at Rosenfield?"

Julian looked at her, puzzled at first. "What? Oh, no. Behind the mirror in your dressing room was another place like this. It existed between my world and yours, unless I want it there, you will never be able to cause the mirror to open up again."

Rebekah was slowly starting to take what he said at face value. She figured, since nothing made sense anyway, she might as well give in an believe what he told her, because nothing on it's own made sense.

"So, how much of Leroux's novel was based on truth?" She asked.

"Good Ole Gaston." Julian smiled. He was not just a drunk reporter with dreams of the writing. Most of what he wrote was accurate. Well, minus some characters, the murders. Well most of them, and some minor details. But when he said the Opera Ghost did really exist, he did. I was the Opera Ghost. Though, what he thought was my body was not my body."

"Body? Oh, you mean the corpse wearing the gold ring they found that he considered to be Erik?… er…You.?"

Julian didn't want to tell her, but he had to eventually, might as well tell her now. "About that. That was not Erik's, …my body. It was yours…. Christine Daae's."

Rebekah stopped dead. "How….who….?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. All I knew is it happened after you left me. You and the Vicomte left and no one saw either of you again, until they dug up your body, still wearing the ring I gave you." He reached in his pocket and pulled out the ring she had been wearing that morning. "This ring."

The walked on in silence. Watched as Christine and Erik made their way into the little house. Julian grimaced, and time sped up around them. He didn't want her to see something.

"Why aren't we going in?" She asked,

"You pull off the mask. I lose my temper. I force you to vow the oath on the inside of this ring. You put on the ring. I take you to your dormitory." He said coldly.

"Oath?"

Julian repeated the words of the ring, "All I refuse & thee I chuse." You swore to love me and only me. I forbade you from seeing the Vicomte. And threatened that if you lost the ring I would claim his life." He looked distant. "I didn't mean to be so cruel. I was furious that I had found this new emotion forbidden among my race. Shadow Men were considered incapable of love. And then with the face I was forced to wear, I was incapable of gaining love. Then I learned that even with the face I have now, my true face, you still chose him over me." He looked bitter.

Rebekah bit her lip. "I'm sorry."

Julian sighed. "What I don't understand," he started. "Is how I watched you read the novels based on my life as Erik. I watched you weep for him…for me. I watched you long to be with me, as him. But when you had the chance you turned me away. That's what I don't understand."

A single tear shone in the rim of his dazzling blue eye. Rebekah felt like a betrayer.