The most remarkable aspect of Christine's captivity was how utterly unremarkable it had been; the immensely peculiar circumstances of her abduction, which had left her with a miasma of resentment, anger, and pity, had faded into something that almost resembled a normal waking life. For a man who swore to lay heaven and earth at her feet, who had cloaked the initial months of their relationship in the most absurd deceit and mystery, Erik had been a downright mundane captor.

If it weren't for his awesome hideousness and the reality that she was trapped five stories beneath one the most trafficked sections of Paris, Christine would have felt that she had been left to the devices of a well-meaning distant relative. Mornings were for lonely breakfasts and detached voice lessons, their prior intimacy having died along with the Angel. Afternoons, for books and reflection and endless, fruitless praying while Erik left her to do whatever ghosts did during the day, which appeared to be harassing innocent people. Evenings, to awkward dinners that vacillated between clinical conversation and one-sided declarations of adoration over wine. It was almost as if she were sixteen again, where her existence had been consumed by her role as Mama Valerius's companion and the anxieties of the Conservatory-singing for her sanity and miming her way through life's little patterns to hide how much she was screaming inside.

And then there was sleep. Empty, dreamless sleep that left her feeling neither tormented or well-rested. She awoke each morning with a growing sense of clarity, and it made her feel none the better. Every day, I die a little death at Erik's feet and am reborn into this misery.

Sometimes she entertained herself at the piano in the sitting room, plunking out the paltry knowledge she had picked up over her years of study-parlor songs, scales, passages of Schubert. Erik had tenderly given her permission to amuse herself with the instrument however she liked, but it was a mixed blessing. If Christine so much as struck out a note on the keyboard while Erik was home, he would immediately rush into the room and to gently scold her-her fingers weren't arched properly, she slouched too much, pedals were there for a reason; all of the simple joy she had ever derived from those keys had been snuffed out by him.

But mostly, Christine read. If Erik had trapped her in a world where music was both her only happiness and also the biggest source of her despair, books were still a trusted friend. The impossibly high shelves lining the wall of his sitting room sat packed with all odds and ends-fashionable novels, tracts scientific and philosophical, and endless poetry. None of it surprised her, even the gilt-edged bibles and what she surmised was a beautifully detailed copy of the Qu'ran. For, in spite of his wretched godlessness, which he loved to tease her with, Erik was still very much a man of the world.

It had been nearly a week since that surreal night in which Christine had wrenched off his mask and had condemned herself to this tedium. She found herself that afternoon sitting with a bound copy of Nana, her hands trembling as she held the book that had been all the rage in France for the last year. Erik was out "running errands, and if he had a nose, Christine would have imagined it wrinkling as he told her. She had been listlessly scanning through his library when her eyes fell upon the novel, wedged in tightly with a collection of Zola's other works. Nana was a story that had always struck her curiosity and one that Mama had forbidden from their apartment, insisting that it was the sort of thing good Catholic girls did not read.

I have lived my life as best as I could , she reasoned. I asked for God's guidance, and He has dropped me in a basement with a mad man.

She grabbed Nana and threw herself down onto a couch.

Within less than an hour, it became abundantly clear that Nana was, what some would say, a trifle warm for Christine's sensibilities. Its titular protagonist, a talent-less Parisienne singer with something of an appetite for conquest, horrified her; the men loved Nana, not for her voice, but for her vulgarity and lewdness, and in the end, it killed them all, heroine included. But it wasn't just the explicit text that drilled its way into Christine's conscience. It was the absolute familiarity with which Zola had imparted his scruple-less lady. Nana was every saucy ballet rat and heavy-lidded mezzo soprano in the company at the Garnier. Nana, the artless theater trollop. Christine, the brainless opera hoyden.

"The passion for defiling things was inborn in her. It was not enough for Nana to destroy them, she had to soil them too."

She hurled the book over the coffee table and crossed her arms, feeling embarrassed for herself. She derived no pleasure from her defiance of Mama's orders, nor from the words themselves. Nana was ashes in her mouth. She briefly wondered if the familiarity had struck Erik, too—if he had read it and thought of the mouth-breathing blue bloods who sauntered outside of dance salons and dressing rooms like dogs, the charwomen looking for an escape from their grueling lives, if he thought of her—

It has always been a strange and cruel assumption people made about Christine-that she was childlike. Innocent. Naive. Uneager, perhaps. Inexperienced, certainly. But she had lived these past twenty-one years on the road and in the theater, and there were certain realities to be expected in those respective paths; her Papa and Mama Valerius had done the best they could to cloak her in virtue, but the world was so much larger than them and their simple, safe morals.

And she sat there in the prim, old-fashioned sitting room and wondered if everyone saw her like they did Nana. Did the management? Did Raoul? He must have, between what the rest of the de Changey family likely thought of her and the way she had been giving him the run around prior to her kidnapping.

Did Erik?

Erik had proclaimed his great love for her, after all, and he was only a man. While she had stopped taking her sewing scissors with her when she went to bathe, she never forgot the weight of his gaze, even when he left her alone this far below the ground. The way his long fingers flexed around her wrist as he guided her to the couch-

It was as if Erik was in the room with her, the horror of her memories struck Christine so keenly. She sprang to her feet and, crossing her arms over her chest, paced over to the ornate sideboard by the fireplace, where a water pitcher and glass sat waiting. Pouring herself a glass with shaky hands, Christine willed the vile thought out of her head as best as she could- that wretched, disgusting, hideous man -but still felt as if she had been riding down a sled in the snow too quickly and had smacked her head into a tree.

The piano would bring her no distraction-it only made her think about his hands, her wrist-and lying down in bed felt like a sin. A book. Another book. Any book! I don't care if it's Pilgrim's Progress or Shakespeare or Ibsen or nursery rhymes. I will read my bible from cover to cover twice over before touching that horrid Nana again.

His bookshelves were meticulously carved monstrosities, easily seven or eight feet at their highest. Erik was able to reach the top shelves with the assistance of a small stepping stool; Christine was less fortunate. Not only was she short for a young woman, but God had gifted her a spectacular case of short-sitedness that made squinting a necessity. Craning her neck up at the books on the higher shelves was a lost cause-they practically disappeared in the gaslight.

Resigned, Christine flopped down to the ground and assessed the volumes closest to her. They were the heavier books-encyclopedias, textbooks, all dry reading that would do little to chase away the visions of Erik's "devotion" that made her stomach wrench. She was about to give up her search and resign herself to her sewing, a boring task made downright evil in this setting, when she ran her fingers across a series of large, leather-bound ledgers tucked inconspicuously towards the end of the shelf.

There was nothing to distinguish them from any of the other scores of books in the room, let alone any given titles, and yet something about them made Christine's heart thump against her rib cage.

A woman's curiosity .

She clamped her fingers along the top of the first one's spine and pried it away from its companions with all the care and concentration of a surgeon. As the book revealed itself, it quickly became apparent that this was no properly published text-rather, a collection of loose papers, all clasped together between the covers by a buckled leather strap. Like a portfolio, Christine supposed, and her body stiffened as she felt its contents shift around.

She lowered the book gingerly to join her on the floor and stared at it. Minutes seemed to have passed, during which she debated with herself about the next course of action: should she open the blasted thing? Return it to the shelf? Ask Erik what was in it? Never mention it again?

He was a strange man who made his living on hiding and keeping secrets. It only seemed reasonable to assume that if Erik didn't want Christine to know what the book contained, he wouldn't have given her such ample access to its contents.

Her hands flew to the leather strap and unbuckled it as simply as one would unbuckle their shoe.

"It's probably sheet music or old building plans," she said aloud, as if the air itself would confirm her thoughts.

This was Christine's first mistake.

Note: I haven't written fan fiction in years. Would gladly welcome comments.