The Mask and Mirror

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
But now I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

(Evanescence, My Immortal)

Chapter 5

Silken sheets slid like cool water across her bare legs, a luxurious, sensuous and unfamiliar feeling; one she had never experienced during her time in the Giry's apartment. She groaned faintly, pressing herself deeper into the silken depths, dark curls spilling across the vivid crimson as she turned her head against the cold draft that whispered along her skin. The air was as cold as a tomb. Was she at Raoul's? In the fogged depths of bewilderness, her disorientated mind could not understand why this would be… only think… had she stayed overnight at the chateau for some reason? Surely not… not after their… their…

Oh God, their argument!

Christine's eyes opened at once. The first thing to greet her hazy vision was an elegantly carven bed, its domed sides inlaid with intricate designs of baroque gold. Angels arced over the headboard, beautiful, vast-winged and terrible. Opulence spilled among the sheets and pooled in the rich crimson draperies. A soft, glowing light from an unknown source cast a faint gold illumination through the curtains that surrounded her. With a trembling expectancy she did not understand, Christine rose unsteadily, (why was her head so heavy, what was this dizziness that overwhelmed her?) white skirts falling around her legs, and she pulled the hangings slowly aside, only to find herself looking into a pair of eyes full of desperation, eternal loneliness and a ferocity in their burning intensity that pierced her soul -

A cry rose in her throat and died on her lips. She could not describe the emotions that overcame her. Speechless, she stared at the dark figure who was woven into the very soul of her being, an inextricable part of her past that would never release her, never let her go. Her sin and salvation. The coiffed ebony hair, the poet's shirt, the dark and sensual lines of his face concealed by the mask of white porcelain, all as she so painfully remembered. And beneath that, always that wildness - the prowling expectancy of a caged beast always lingering just below the surface -

A sick, pale clamminess stole its way over her palms and forehead. She was breathing, fast and shallow, and she realised with a sense of growing horror that she was probably going to faint at any moment. In order to counter this dangerous sense of light-headedness, Christine tried to speak, but her barely audible words were just as incoherent as the turbulent thoughts that overwhelmed her -

"Erik… you… oh God… oh God…"

Christine had turned so pale Erik had no doubt she was going to faint. He braced himself to step forward and catch hold of her should the occasion arise – and it was not an entirely unwelcoming one to him – when she appeared to master herself slightly. Her slender white hands clenched into fists; the bones showing alarmingly visible beneath the skin. Erik was crippled by the sense of frailty and cursed his helplessness to intervene. She would revile his attempts to help her, or worse, shrink away in fear. He had no rights where she was concerned. Except to kidnap her away from the man she loves and hold her here against her will. He cringed at the scornfully brusque thought. All that mattered was that Christine was here. Any part of her, it was enough. He would believe that. He must believe that.

She was gazing at him with a dreadfully blank expression. He stole a deep breath, willing himself to exert a patience not in his nature. She needed time to adapt. But she still did not react, merely remained frozen, speechless, staring at him without comprehension, and he began to feel rather foolish. What had he expected? That she would fall at his feet in ecstasy and beg him to sing for her? He almost wished she would raise her voice at him in anger. Anger he could endure. Anything was better than this terrible apathy. After all, it was indifference, not hatred, that was the true opposite of love. He could have derived some bitter solace from her hatred. Hatred was born of energy. Heat. Fire. Oh, how she had smouldered on that night of Don Juan! If he could only rekindle that flame he knew must still be buried deep within her... he would get past this – this barrier of hers he silently cursed the Vicomte as responsible for, adding it as another of the many injuries to be repaid.

However, at Christine's next distant words, he realised he was not facing indifference, but incredulity.

"I thought you were dead."

That voice did not belong to her. It was the voice of a stranger; cold and brittle. There was something hollow and deadened in those subdued tones, like the dying of the year or withered autumn leaves. Nine months, thought Christine. Nine months she had resigned herself to the bitter truth that he was gone, believed he was gone. That he had met his fate beneath the waters in the opera cellars or perished in the winter snows; an ice angel preserved alone and unmourned. No tomb for poor, unhappy Erik. It seemed the inevitable fate for him. She had known it with certainty. But no, she thought suddenly, that wasn't right. Deep down, a part of her had known he wasn't dead – had always known it. She realised that now. The agonised vigil of darkness she had kept in those lonely hours through the night was not the grief of irredeemable loss, but of separation. She had left a part of herself in this cellar and it could never be reclaimed.

I thought you were dead. Erik's initial – and comically bizarre – reaction was to feel insulted. Had she honestly thought those inept fools of the Gendarmerie could have made an end of him? He, who had dazzled even the Shah of Persia with his mastery over the supernatural, the magic and the uncanny? But the impact of her words began to set in. He watched her carefully. The shock on her face that he had expected to see supplanted by horror or revulsion was filled only with resignation. The silence stretched between them, so long, so profound that he felt he must speak or they would both be driven mad. Well, he had long ago crossed that threshold. But he hardly wanted Christine tight-ropewalking the thin line of sanity. He knew no words were adequate, so attempted a laugh, trying to make light of the situation.

"Dead? That would be easier wouldn't it? For you, I mean?"

She looked up at him abruptly, dark eyes glistening with flashes of silver moisture that pierced him with the sharp clarity of cut glass. "How can you say that?"

He felt his defences starting to wither in the face of her hurt accusation. "You've given me enough cause to."

"You betrayed me too, Erik." The pain of that old memory rose up within her. It was something she could never forget, never truly forgive him for. She had been a grieving child, and he had stolen in like a thief in the night to take possession of her soul. And there had been no one to defend her, no one to warn her… and now she would never be free of him. She took a step towards him and faltered slightly, as an alarming light-headedness seized her for a moment. She stopped and clung tightly to the curtain, seeking to regain her sense of balance.

"Careful," said Erik quickly, moving towards her in concern. "It isn't advisable for you to make any sudden movements, until the effects of –"

Wounded dark eyes met his. "You drugged me," she said accusingly.

"A necessary precaution. But one I am truly sorry for. Would you have come willingly had I asked?"

Christine's head fell into her hands as though unable to support the unassailable thoughts that oppressed her. "No," she whispered. Erik had already anticipated such a response, knowing any other was utterly inconceivable. The knowledge was a bitter weight within him.

With a sweep of his gloved hand, he beckoned her through into his dwelling, and Christine followed with some trepidation, bracing herself once more to enter that forbidden world, a world that was rich and voluptuous and sensual and dangerous. She recalled it all so clearly; the scent of burning candles and clouded incense, soft lights glowing gold over the water-blurred stone, rippling shadows and the billowing fall of crimson, rich as the hue of a thousand crushed roses. The lulling ambience wrapping itself around her in dream of darkness, beautiful and otherworldly. Even now, it held a deadly power over her.

She wandered along the narrow pathway, almost unconsciously looking around in veiled eagerness for the beautiful objects that adorned his sepulchral home. However, all that met her eyes was wreckage and desolation. The candles merely illuminated the atmosphere of decay and loss and hopeless abandonment. The chill of the mausoleum pervaded the cavernous interior. Even the slight attempts at domesticity; the scores of music that littered the organ, the richly coloured draperies covering the worst of the damage, were woefully inadequate to conceal the destruction that was tantamount everywhere she looked. Christine's heart caught in her throat at the sight of the roses strewn across the table and stone floor, the petals blood-red and vivid in the lambent gloom. She froze, overcome by memories.

Fate links thee to me forever and a day...

The roses… the roses had led her here, the amorous invitation in that black-bound ribbon had drawn her towards the clouded mirror, and she had stepped through so willingly…

"The mirrors…" she murmured, unconscious she had spoken aloud.

Erik shrugged indifferently, a heavy movement of the shoulders beneath the poet's shirt. "I destroyed them. I felt if you could not find beauty in me, then nothing could."

"Oh, Erik." He saw pity and fear in the glance she flashed upon him, her compassionate heart battling with the wiser instinct to flee. But she would not run. He would not allow her to. There was no corner of the world where he would not pursue her. He would be damned if he was going to give her up again. He would not endure another year in hell. Better her hatred. Better her fear. After all, fear can turn to love. And, oh, such a love, if she would only give him the chance!

"Do you want to – that is – take a seat." Erik motioned with a hand to one of the chairs, while inwardly writhing in spirit. God, what was the matter with him? Why could he not hold any semblance of command over himself for a single moment? But he knew why. He was enraptured by the graceful, girlish figure that moved like a heavenly muse through this cursed underworld. Each movement of her eyes, the tenderness in her expression with its unique and sublime clarity held him paralysed. Her entire soul showed itself in her features, breathed through every word and gesture. He could watch her forever.

Christine hesitated a moment, then sat down uncertainly on the edge of the rococo chair. A silence ensued which neither seemed able, or willing to break. Thousands of questions rose to her lips, but she could not make sense of them in her mind. Power of speech had, for the present, deserted her. Christine sat very still. The only sound was the gentle lapping of mirrored water against the portcullis. A warm glow of candlelight stole through the parted draperies and highlighted the swirling motes of gold that danced across the stone floor. She watched, without consciously seeing. These were sights and sounds that should not have held any interest for her, yet just sitting and watching delayed that awful moment when she would have to look up at the man before her and admit his existence to herself. Yet she could sense his dark figure standing over her, grim, brooding, waiting. She had forgotten how overpowering his presence was. This cannot be real. Yet it was, realer than anything she had ever known, and perhaps it was her engagement that had been the dream all these months. Perhaps she had never left here.

She must speak soon, Erik thought. This silence was unendurable. He was almost overwhelmed by the urge to shake her out of this apathy, to shout, for God's sake, say something!

At last, she rose to feet, lessening somewhat the disparity in height. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, almost detached. It was only the expression in her eyes that betrayed a real sense of emotion behind the words. "Where have you been all this time?"

Erik shuddered. Less than twenty-four hours ago Nadir had asked him that very question, but hearing it from Christine's lips, he was not able to answer with such mocking flippancy.

"I have journeyed through hell, Christine. What details do you wish from that? I hardly know how I lived in those first months. It is all a black darkness to me. But when I came to myself again, I went wherever I could. Wandering, trying to escape from – well, you know from what, though I doubt you know what it is to carry an internal hell with you." He gave a sharp laugh, but there was more cruelty than humour in the sound. "Perhaps you envy me a little. I hear all young people wish to travel. Believe me, Christine, the world is grossly overrated. I have seen things you cannot even imagine. Some you probably shouldn't."

She cringed at the bitterness in his voice. "Have you – I mean, did you… suffer?"

"Would you even care if I had?"

"Of course I would care," she retorted with perhaps more feeling than she had intended, but was stung by the callous tone of his words. Her dreamy eyes flashed. "Erik, I always cared for you, I never stopped, I –" Forgetting her initial shock, alarm, fear, and any sense of social constraints, Christine unconsciously leaned forward and laid a hand on his arm. The gesture was innocently intended, meant only to reinforce her words, but it sent an entire thrill through Erik's body. Ripples of heat and cold radiated from her touch, paralysing him for an instant before he recalled her betrayal, how she had screamed her tears for him had turned to those of hatred. Yet, in spite of this, in spite of everything, he could not bring himself to think ill of her. He stared some moments, trying to resign himself to the apparent contradiction that faced him. She looked so angelic, the gentle and beloved face of a Madonna, how was it possible she could be anything other than sincere? Then logic reasserted itself at the forefront of his mind. What was more likely, that Christine wished to punish him for his wicked treatment of her, or that she cared for him, a villain, a creature that walked among the dammed? Abruptly, he pulled his arm from her grasp as though burned.

"Is this a game to you?" he flared suddenly. "An amusing diversion in your lazy hours of indolence? Perhaps your noble betrothed has filled your time with persuasions on how to exact revenge on poor, pitiful Erik?" He felt a brief stab of remorse when she flinched as though physically struck; but he could not stop, he could not allow himself to be seduced by her seemingly innocent wiles. Not again. "For a paragon of Christian goodness and modesty, you certainly seem to delight in tormenting me in my times of utmost weakness! Oh, I do not blame you. I am sure it is no more than I deserve. But betrayal is one thing, outright falsehood is quite another. It seems even I underestimated the overwhelming abhorrence of your feelings towards me!" He was breathing heavily now, and for one awful, terrifying moment he thought he was about to cry. The deep shuddering breath he took in order to steady himself served as a pause in his accusatory tirade in which he stopped to register the impact his words had had on Christine. He was taken aback by what he saw.

Her face had flamed high with colour; fire flashed in her soft eyes. There was an uncharacteristically hard expression on her face as she took a step towards him. She was trembling uncontrollably. "You know nothing of my feelings," she said quietly, her voice shaking with passionate tears. She looked angrier than he had ever seen her. "What dark thoughts can lie within you if think I would resort to such a cruel and disgraceful manner of revenge? Do you not know me at all? Is your soul truly so distorted that you see mockeries every way you turn? No, I will speak –" She held up a hand, silencing his unuttered reply. "I have spent these last nine months enduring an existence with a part of myself missing, willing myself to ceaselessly, endlessly go on, to only hope that this emptiness would leave me, that I could be free of you; so how dare you tell me that that is not real, that I have somehow made this up or not suffered every cold and lonesome night even if I denied it to myself –"

"Suffered?" he returned harshly, trying to revive the hatred that had sustained him for so long: the hatred that was easier to bear than the dreadful barrenness of being alone, so terribly alone! "Have you ever suffered a mother who beat you and recoiled from you in fear? Have you ever known the degradation and confinement of a cage, rolling on the straw being lashed at with jeers and a whip, like some common beast?" His voice became louder as he pushed his hands through his hair in wild frenzied motion. Memories were crowding in on him, suffocating him, each raw injustice he had thought himself hardened to, thought he had suppressed rose within him. A warning bell was tolling through his head, don't look back, never look back… but he had already gone too far. "Have you ever seen the woman you love betray you for your rival, while knowing she must only look upon you with hatred and disgust?"

He turned away from her, shuddering, and watching his shaking shoulders, she saw he must have succumbed, at last, to tears. He was actually crying, crying before her very eyes, something that had never happened before. The realisation paralysed her. She was faced with the full horror and tragedy of his existence. Reeling, she tried to push away the confused rush of feelings that were surging upon her with the unremitting insistence of waves on a beach. She had always known he was a sensitive man. Hadn't the last months at the Opera Populaire taught her that? Emotional yes, volatile undoubtedly, but somehow it had never fully struck her how fragile he truly was. It was so easy to forget. In comparison to her own fears, her dependence on Raoul, she had hardly thought of his own weaknesses. His height and breadth, the ringing command his powerful voice was able to assume, the mask that so effectively hid everything that she had been unable or unwilling to see... All of this had concealed from her the blinding truth that had been facing her all this time. She, Christine Daae, was not the one who had been imprisoned, or entranced or betrayed. He had been in her power far more fully than she was ever in his.

Why did you never tell me… those long nights you comforted me and alleviated my pain… why did you never confide in me, allow me to be the solace you brought me in my darkest hours?

Christine felt a bitter taste at the bottom of her mouth, dry and gritty, something like ash. She wanted to flee, to hide herself, to put her hands over her ears so she would not have to hear this man breaking down before her eyes, moaning like a wounded animal. Each painfully suppressed groan driving into her with the sharp precision of a knifepoint her selfishness, her hypocrisy, her callous indifference to a heart she had broken even more fully than had she torn it from his breast and crushed it beneath her heel. Had she really been so cruel as to make him believe she hated him? Sudden, terrible guilt washed over her. It swelled outwards through her entirety, choking her with its strength. Why had no one ever told her? Why not Raoul? Madame Giry? She had never known, never stopped to think in all that time…

What sufferings have you endured these past months, and all at my doing?

What was this judgement that had been brought upon her? There must have been some great wrong, some great evil she must have done to bring such pain upon another. She tried to understand it, to justify it. Where had it begun? What could she have done to change it? What fatal flaw within her had made things as they were?

If things had been different… if things had been different…

What must I do? All she had done was fall in love with a kind, noble, generous man, and how could the world condemn her for that? Yet it was her fault. It was her fault. Her hands rose to her face, pressing against her icy skin.

How can I atone for what I have done? My past, my pains… it is all nothing compared to yours -

"I never hated you, Erik."

His head jerked up at the sound of her quiet voice. The constricting spasms in his chest ceased as a blinding shock overcame him at her words. Not hate him? Impossible. This was nonsense, a misconception, a delusion. He passed a shaking hand across his fevered brow. What else but hatred could have induced her to betray him in the infamous Don Juan? In an attempt to master himself, he said in a breaking voice, "There is no need to protect me, Christine. You at least should know I would appreciate honesty rather than a comforting lie."

"And you should give me the credit of believing me when I speak the truth." The soft voice whipped like a lash in the space between them. There was something shining and brilliant in the eyes that met his unflinchingly. "I have never hated you. Never. Do you believe it was hatred that led me to fall on my knees every night and send desperate prayers to God, believing you still alive, yet fearing you were dead? If I despised you as you seem to believe, why was it that I held up my hands to heaven, begging forgiveness for my betrayal of you? Yes, I prayed Erik, I prayed and I wept! What else could I do for you, in my ignorance and uncertainty?"

All at once, it seemed his very heart had stopped beating.

She had been praying. Praying for him. He tried to swallow the constricting force that had suddenly become caught in his throat, for once utterly lost for words. He was facing the unthinkable. Never, in all his long bitter years walking this earth, could he recall another being who had prayed for him. Not even Nadir – a reluctant smile twisted his distorted features in spite of himself – for all his goodness. The Persian had lectured, scolded and comforted by turns, but even this caring diligence paled in comparison to the sublime devotion he saw radiate so sincerely from Christine, so purely that she already seemed on the threshold of that glorious world he feared would ever be denied him. A sense once more of his wretched unworthiness enveloped him.

He was suddenly back in the cellars of the Opera. Water lapping at his waist, cloying, drowning, ready to pull him under as he stared in silent stupefaction at the girl who had pressed her lips against his with such desperate intensity and abandon. A million thoughts and feelings were running through his mind, almost as piercing as the trammels of heat and cold that shook his body. Her hands cool against his face, and her eyes – those pure, shining, untainted eyes – still awash with tears but brilliant in their act of supreme self-sacrifice. In the whirling, turbulent confusion, one single thought had emerged with startling clarity: that he could not do it. He did not deserve her. Not Christine. Not this ardent, high souled and generous girl. He had no right dragging her into his internal madness. No, if there was one thing he could do for her, it was to make her happiness, even if it came at the cost of sacrificing his own.

Erik's dry eyes burned at the memory. Again, he felt a sense of disgrace compared to her sincerity and goodness. While he had been consumed with heat, fired with the desire for vengeance, or frozen with cold, bemoaning his fate in bitterness, this good – too good! – creature had found it in her heart to forgive him. Forgive him; even after the horrors he had put her through? How could it be possible?

"Why – Christine, I –" He spread his hands helplessly, unable to find any words sufficient to express his remorse. "I don't know what to –"

"Let me go," she said quietly.

Erik heard, but was unwilling to believe. His voice rang with mastery, but something shattered and broke inside him. "I'm afraid that isn't possible."

Christine pressed her hands against her face. It would be easier to fight if she were not so tired. Tired of everything: her engagement, her uncertainty, her past that she could not seem to escape… She dreaded what new torments he could bring upon her. For nine months, she had buried her past, and within moments he had awakened every emotion she had thought banished from her heart. "Erik, I know you cannot keep me here against my will. You tried before and failed."

"Things have changed since then."

"Things have changed. I have another life now. One that –" she hated herself for the necessary cruelty of her words – "One in which you have no part."

A shadow fell across his masked face. Only the eyes glowed within, like unhealthy coals. His silken voice a laced threat. "It's not so simple. You let me in. I will always be a part of you."

At his words, a tremor of foreboding ran through her veins. She could not live with this endless, suffocating pursuit of her. He called it love, but it was annihilation. Complete and endless. "Erik." She felt desperately sorry for him, but was unable to comfort him, not in the way he wanted. "This infatuation, this – obsession – has to stop."

"I don't think you understand," his voice was determinedly quiet, belying the tormented thoughts within him. Release me from this helpless state. I hunger and I burn. Your form before my eyes, always. I have known fire and fury and piercing despair, oh, but with you, I could forget and forgive all! "Christine, I love you –"

"Love!" She exhaled in mingled frustration and hopelessness. "This isn't love! This is lust. And a desire to possess."

"Do you really believe that?" Erik tightened his gloved fists, feeling the furious control he had exerted over himself nearing breaking point. Those words wounded him more effectively than any declaration of hatred. The purity of his love was being coarsened and cheapened to nothing more than a vulgar profanity. Had he not proven throughout this night that he would never touch her against her will? What of his resolutions to do good, did it all mean nothing? Then so be it. She would not love him, so she would have to settle for fearing him instead. Bitterness flowed through him like blood. I was willing to be tender and gentle. It was you who demanded a monster. She thought him a monster just as surely as she had once thought him an angel. The moment she had seen his face, it had all been over. I should never have revealed myself. Then she would never have known his true self or looked on him with such agony and betrayal.

"I thought you loved me. When you showed yourself willing to sacrifice your own impulses to set me free, I admit, I was convinced of it. But now –"

"What more proof do you need? I would die for you –"

"That's just it." Christine looked up at him; her expression was almost pitying. "Love. Death. Destruction. It is all one and the same. What you cannot possess you would rather destroy."

"You hardly called it destruction when you first came to me: a heartbroken shell of a girl with no hope, no purpose in life. I healed you. Do you dare to deny it? And you… you made me feel more than I can say. But perhaps I should try. Perhaps that way I might make you understand. Before you came to me," he said slowly. "I was dead. Oh, my heart was beating, I was still breathing, but it meant nothing. They called me the living corpse, you know. And I was. Lifeless, emotionless, passionless. Until one day… hidden in the wings of the Opera House… I heard your voice, and for the first time… I felt… alive… God, Christine, what you do to me -"

"Stop it, stop it!" she pleaded in an agony of hysteria. "Stop it!" She could listen to this no longer. His wrath was terrible but his misery was worse. Oh God! It is my pity, not his passion, that will be the undoing of me. How can I watch him suffer and do nothing, knowing that I am its cause?

Erik saw something of unyielding stubbornness in her trembling slender frame; all the sweet gentleness he loved in her was gone. There was a dash of fire in her; an agonised desperation about the set corners of her mouth; the straying dark curls a halo in negative. Her eyes were wide and wild, shining with passionate tears.

"Christine, you do not understand what you are asking me to do!" Erik growled, his darkened gaze passing from her deliberately still face to his shaking hands with such rapidity that for a moment he looked almost crazed. "I have whispered your name in longing, behind the stage of the Opera, screamed it in despair concealed in the cellars beneath the surface of Paris. I have muttered your name in the freezing snows of Russia and in the blazing heats of Spain. I tell you, Christine, you have stolen my past and present. I am begging you, do not rob me of a future too."

In an attempt to move away from him, from the terrible words he was saying, she fell back into her chair, but in a movement of fluid grace, Erik sank to his knees before her. Her skin shivered at his closeness. Gloved hands caught in the fine satin of her skirts, and she could feel their heat burning through the leather. Artists's hands, musician's hands. Murderer's hands.

"Do you want me to beg?" he demanded in a voice of such forced quiet, it was harder to endure than if he had shouted. "Because I will. I give you my word." She found herself gazing into the old madness that had returned to his dark eyes. His half-exposed face was filled with love and rage and insanity as he continued ruthlessly, his tones low with intent, "I will beg you. Stalk you. Haunt you. Anything it takes."

She heard the unspoken warning in his voice - the terrible destruction he could wreck when his desires were thwarted. Christine looked entreatingly into his face and she saw no mercy. His eyes were wild with fury and possession. The fires she glimpsed within burned her soul. No, he would never stop pursuing her, never stop wanting her. She knew she could no more entreat him to find another muse than she could ask him to cast his own heart from his chest. She knew it just as she knew she would never sing again. One only ever sang once like that. After what had passed between them in those unearthly lessons, nothing in this world could hope to compare. Music had been the great meaning of her life, but the music needed Erik and that cost was too great to herself. He demanded her love, and that she could not give. Renouncing her music had been the greatest sacrifice of her life, and she had done it all for Raoul. The betrayal to Erik had been a terrible one, but how could she have done otherwise?

How much easier it would have been if you had cursed and despised me… but what am I saying? My greatest act of evil led to your greatest act of goodness… one that broke my heart with agony and longing… tell me that the soul I glimpsed in that moment still resides within you…

A soul as creative and inspired as his could not be beyond redemption - she would not believe it. And yet… when he looked at her with such cruelty and possession, darkening his face with such forbidding lines -

Demon or lover? He crouched before her, fiery-eyed and menacing. She would not forget that expression of raw, ferocious longing until her dying day. The strong planes of his face were stubbornly set, as though carved in marble. His powerful hands had closed around her like a vice. Large, mobile hands that could break her in an instant. She had not forgotten - could never forget - the deaths at his hand. How could one man wield so much creation and destruction? She thought suddenly of Raoul and blue eyes, and longing filled her heart.

She leaned forward, her face framed by its coronet of dark hair. Her slender white hand clutched at the voluminous skirts, gently trying to prise the delicate material from his impassioned grasp. Erik swallowed hard, his gaze smouldering and intent, fixed on the delicate bones of her wrist, the smoothness of her pale skin against the coarse darkness of his own. To feel that ivory flesh without the barriers of leather and clothing between them, to awaken her senses as he had done once, so long ago… God, he must have been mad to release her. Why had he given her nine months to harden her heart against him and fall ever deeper in love with her Vicomte?

His grip unconsciously tightened, resisting Christine's efforts to free herself of his hold.

"Please don't make this harder than it has to be, Erik." The words fell softly from her lips. She felt the tears fall in slow, burning rivulets down her face, immersing her skin in a baptism of pain. "If you truly love me, let me go."

"I can't," he said heavily.

The sight of Christine's body sinking lower in her chair was almost enough to make him repent, but not quite. The sight of her pale, passionate face, her dark eyes full of sorrow, made it even harder to endure. She was so frail even in her defiance, enhanced by the glaring contrast of strong crimson velvets against the pallor of her skin. He was overwhelmed with the horror that time was trickling away, the minutes, the hours, the days. How many months, years even, had already been wasted? He had thought often of death – yearned for it in his times of utmost despair – yet his inherent strength and the inward heart of passion meant that he had always endured. Now here was the very meaning of mortality exposed before him in all its bitterness. This was a young woman – barely out of girlhood – who by rights should be tasting the joys of life, not sinking under its intolerable burdens. He saw her reduced to this, and raged against it, even as he felt something inside him collapse with that same heavy weariness. Words were no longer eloquent to convey such depths of resonating anguish –

"I can't," Erik repeated hoarsely. "I can't bear… seeing you like this."

"Then release me. Please. Let me return to my life and be happy." Yet how could she live, happily, knowing that he suffered?

"But you are not happy. Your face has lost its colour, and…" he wandered over towards the organ, pausing before the instrument as though deep in meditation… and then… oh, then…! his fingers played a few slow, lingering chords that echoed softly around the abandoned dwelling.

Christine closed her eyes, her soul burning. How was it that he could make her experience any emotion? The resounding glory of the divine when she believed him to be an angel, the passionate and seductive power of Don Juan, but this… it drew her whole spirit, hope and imagination and remorse and a strange, ethereal pain. It could have been years ago, the night she first heard him playing winter melodies beneath a Chopin moon and a frozen sky, the exquisite sounds passing mournfully through the walls of her chamber, setting her heart astir with such a strange, fleeting longing.

The music transfixed her. She had never felt anything so heartrending in all her life. The melancholy strains were devastating in their fervent expression of eternal sorrow, yet stirring in their unimaginable beauty. This was no quietly contained sadness, but a wild, uncontrollable grief. As though every pang of misery, every unfulfilled yearning, all the tears of unrequited passion he had ever shed in the hours of isolation now poured through his fingers, coming alive through the instrument. Deeper and more penitent than anything she had ever heard, like the sobbing wrenched from the most wretched of souls… the memory of a night in the holy chapel where a child had crouched, weeping inconsolably… ah, she had never known such hopeless despair! And she was so cold, so cold. Words whispered into the dark, nocturnal silence -

I know that you are gone from this world and can no longer hear me, but sometimes I imagine that you are close by, watching over me, and this conviction overcomes all reason. I cannot sleep… I have visions, strange, terrible visions that devastate me – scenes and images I do not understand, only there is always music… oh, such music! Beautiful and unearthly it surely comes from heaven itself, though it shivers through me, down through the floor and into the depths of the earth and – oh, it breaks my heart to listen to it…! I can hardly bear it... though to never hear it again would mean death, a fate far worse than any I could possibly imagine, because that music has become more than life itself… it is in the air, the sky, the silence, in my very pulse… it is all one, yet it is nothing, dear father.

And still the music went on. Christine listened, speechless with emotion. She was beyond weeping. A sharp pain convulsed her. She could not bear it -

Words burst from her, passionate, frenzied –

"Erik! I can't - oh, God, my heart! I feel as though I were dying… that they have laid me beside my father in the cold earth and my heart is frozen… What is this, Erik? I feel so sick with hopelessness."

The music came to an abrupt halt.

Christine opened her eyes to find they contained tears. Erik was gazing at her, fierce and sombre; she saw her own desperate intensity of feeling reflected in the depths of his shadowed eyes.

"I thought you had forgotten," he said in a low voice.

She put out a shaking hand, her mind reeling. His music still coursed through her. Forget? She could no more forget than she could forget her own existence -

Do you know how I felt when I thought I would never, never see you again? To think that the music accorded to us from afar, that had been destined by heaven, was to end forever, that we were to be severed as though it never were - how can I describe the emotions that passed through me? It was as though I had been frozen, blinded, taken to my death… do you understand? Do you understand?

In a trance, as though some unknown force outside herself guided her actions, she found herself slowly walking towards the instrument where he was seated, his dark head bowed over the keys, seized in the grip of some delirium. Sensing her presence, he looked up – and his eyes were no longer preoccupied.

"Sing with me," he whispered.