The Mask and Mirror

Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower
This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the Fall

(Sting, 'Desert Rose')

You think you know. What's to come. What you are. You haven't even begun.

(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 'Restless')

We live as we dream: Alone.

(Joseph Conrad, 'Heart of Darkness')

Chapter 18

The desert.

She saw it in her dreams, night after night.

It was always the same: barren and lifeless. Rocks, empty space, the sky overhead like jagged blue glass. The ground was burning the soles of her bare feet. Christine wandered slowly, with no clear idea where she was going. She had the vague sense that she had been looking for something, but with miles of nothing but desert stretching out before her, could not imagine what it might have been.

Still she travelled onward, through stifling air and restlessness. Too hot was the soul of the arid wilderness.

Initially, it seemed only to be her own pulse, throbbing with a primal, restless beat, but it was coming from within the earth, passing through her body that responded to the insistent call. The desert was silent no longer and she wondered how she could ever have thought it so. And the song, deep and resonant and raw with emotion: it was the land given voice and she obeyed its insistent summons.

At first she thought it was a mirage, dancing and shimmering in the heat, a vague, indistinct blur. And out of the still sands rose the ruins of thousands of years ago, and her dream-self approached the long-abandoned walls with quiet reverence and deep awe.

The place was old. Timelessly old. She walked among the ruins and ran her fingers along the rough, ancient stone, feeling the heat rising from the cracked walls and the hard ground beneath her feet.

She had thought herself alone but the backs of her arms suddenly prickled sharply and she turned instinctively. Too late, she caught only the fleeting glimpse of a dark cloak disappearing around a corner, but she knew now to whom the voice belonged. Still, it compelled her to follow, its newly sinister notes of dark suggestion pulling her sinuously like a snake to its charmer. She took a step forward to follow him –

Then a sudden blast of chill wind swept through the walls, the current of air damp and cloying. Christine glanced down. She was ankle-deep in water, lambent green and dank, seeping through the thin hem of her gown. She was far beneath the surface of the earth, the tunnels under the Opera House, and still the music called her on, drawing her, binding her.

Hell is coming.

Erik turned to face her and the conflicting sides of his face seared onto her retinas in two distinct halves: the one noble and soulful and filled with indescribable yearning, the other fierce and furious, twisted with a primitive savagery. He held out his hands and drew her towards him –

The dream shifted.

She saw two figures embracing under a desert sun, one of them herself, and the other –

Then she was standing immobilised on the hard earth, as he lay stretched out on bloodied sand, unsheltered by the vast ruins that had vanished back into the earth. She wanted to call out, run to him, but the way was somehow barred. Blood seeped onto the sand; the mockery of vivid-crimson flowers blooming in the desolate wilderness. His eyes opened and they burned her like blackened suns.

Hell is coming.

Christine sat bolt upright in the narrow bed, her heart pounding furiously with fear and an odd, bitter yearning.

Nearly two months had passed since Erik stood on the edge of the world, hardly breathing.

Heat rose off the baked earth in a solid wave. In the distance, objects seemed to shimmer. He squinted slightly against the stretch of glittering white sand. It seemed dismally appropriate of his view of the world being a desolate, bleak and forbidding place. He stared at the silent wilderness, stretching out for miles. It seemed that something great and inexorable was waiting out there to be discovered, that would reveal itself to him. Or consume him whole.

It seemed the world could be remade, charred into dust and forged anew. Empires had fallen, risen, and fallen again. If only human caprice could be so easily eradicated and undone. But man's essential nature had always been the same.

In the Opera Populaire, he had been both puppet-master and god, king of a vast underground domain. Feared and despised he might have been by his subjects, but certainly not insignificant. But here… it was easy to lose his sense of self in this great vastness. He could almost scatter his memories to the wind. Could he find a new existence, a new life here to start from the ground up? Or had he merely traded one infernal world for another? The hell he carried within him was an internal one that had pursued him over the four corners of the earth. Why should he hope to find it any different here? The vast gulf between himself and his higher nature had become too great to overcome. He was marked, just as surely as Cain, burdened by the same vice of murderous jealousy. And he too was doomed to wander the earth, ever restless and brooding, unable to find peace.

"They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way. Thirsty, their souls fainted in them."

He turned to Christine. "What was that?"

"It's from the Psalms. The verse just came to mind."

Her voice was absent. He saw her staring in terror and wonder at the isolation of it, the grandeur. Terrible, yes, but primal and powerful, and also palpably mysterious. He was no stranger to travelling and had seen many magnificent and terrible sights, but how small and woefully insignificant Paris must seem to her now! The gaudy extravagance and architecture she had once found so imposing would crumble into ash while this wilderness had stood thousands of years before, and would stand thousands longer.

Together, they stood under the hard, bright, violent sun, neither moving nor speaking. Christine shook her head slowly, seemingly unable to draw her eyes away from the view around her. "Why would anyone come to a place like this?"

"What do you think?"

"To find a meaning in life, perhaps."

"Or to end it, finally."

Erik's voice was as flat and lifeless as the surrounding wilderness. He could taste sand and salt carried from the sea behind them. There was a hollow sound in his ears, the likes of which he had never heard before. Even the slightest breeze raised clouds of dust. He could imagine the violence of the burning wind, whipped into ferocious sandstorms that could strip a man to nothing but bone, buried forever in an unmarked grave. Perhaps he, too, would meet his end in this place, waiting abandoned for a slow death, driven mad by thirst and exposed to the burning sun without shelter or hope. The world was a cruel place, but unlike people, at least nature was not consciously so.

Erik looked sidelong at Christine, unable to fully conceal his concern. He had not failed to notice the weight she had lost due to sea-sickness on their crossing from Marseilles. Even the gauzy shawl that covered her shoulders was insufficient to conceal how visible her collarbones had become. As a dancer, she had been lithe and lean, but now she was fragile and thin – alarmingly so. Her hair had come loose in the wind and hung in dark tendrils around her pale face. She looked both young and lost.

Erik swallowed hard, forcing down the pang of guilt. He wondered if he had been wrong in bringing her here. With her porcelain skin and delicate frame, she was not made for the harsh extremes of climate. But more vivid still was the memory of a stage ringed with torches, the setting a banquet hall in Seville, and Christine's eyes, dark with desire, her cheeks flushed as she sang words of longing. Deep beneath her goodness smouldered a fire he yearned to awaken. He had not imagined those slumbering passions, he had not. He silently vowed that this journey would be good for them both. For her, to be free of an engagement he had convinced himself would not satiate the true yearnings of her soul; and for him, he had wanted to come somewhere new, seeking endlessly, hoping to find –

"You never stop searching for it."

He realised he had spoken aloud when Christine turned to him, her eyes serious and inquiring.

"For what?"

"To find something to hold on to… to feel less alone."

"Then…" she frowned.

"What is it?"

"I thought coming here was to start a new life, to earn forgiveness and learn to live among society, but you bring me here… to the most lonely place in the world."

He shuddered. Christine didn't know – really know – what true loneliness was. God forbid that she ever find out. He kept his voice deliberately cool. "We're still only at the outskirts. When we get further inland you won't be able to move for the buildings and markets."

He had been right.

Christine was accustomed to the city life of Paris, but even at its busiest there was a sense of cool detachment, refinery and always the awareness that you were among civilised and enlightened nineteenth-century society.

No such decorum here.

Mustapha was beyond anything she had ever seen or imagined. She was pushed and jostled from all sides, were it not for Erik's firm hold on her, she would have been hopelessly swept away. People shouted across her, trod on her feet, pushed things into her hands and then loudly demanded payment. Tradesmen, children, dancers, whores, rogues, fools and livestock passed in rapid succession before her awestruck eyes. Life in all its multi-layered, earthy vitality, fast and fierce with its passions and pains and own sense of importance.

She could feel Erik's heavy presence as he stood behind her; his large brown hands tightened slightly on her shoulders to prevent the crowd from separating them. "Breathe in," he murmured in her ear. "Can you smell it?"

She did; and was overwhelmed by an exotic and heady combination of scents and sensations. Dust and sand, the sweat of hard labour and the hot hide and leather of beasts. More intoxicating still, the rich aroma of spices: turmeric and saffron. The pounding of drums and blood and gabbling voices speaking languages from all over the world. It set her pulses beating in low, strange anticipation for – for what?

She looked across at Erik to see if he felt as she did, but to her surprise, saw the living half of his face twisted in an expression of derisive scorn that was almost a grimace.

"Look at it," he said, harshly. "This is what you wanted. Taste it, smell it. This horrible world. And yet…" he murmured as an afterthought, almost to himself. "I could almost envy them."

"Why?"

"For living. Christine, you do not realise how much the dead envy the living, just for being alive."

Alive. Yes, this place was certainly alive, with its atmosphere of excess and abandon. Everything here was so strange – the heat, the buildings, even the people: dark skinned, with wide dark eyes, shawls pulled over their heads against the burning sun. Erik, heavily cloaked and hooded was passed by without so much as a glance. His striking white porcelain mask would later be replaced by a soft black fabric one when he went outdoors, which covered most of his face, serving also as a barrier against the dust and insects.

The white buildings reflected the harsh sunlight, forcing her to look away. The streets were crowded with people, women and children pressing around them. Erik had advised her to cover her face; when they had arrived in the crowded market, a man had come up to her and stroked her white cheek with a calloused hand, gesticulating excitedly. Erik had stepped in front of him with a warning snarl. After that, Christine always kept a black-fringed shawl over her face when she went out. She knew from many a summer at Perros that her skin would never darken.

Erik, however, was no longer the drear and macabre figure dressed in the sombre attire he had worn in Paris. Something – the heat, the earthiness, the energy – had invigorated him, added new mobility and strength to his body, his wide shoulders, the fluid way he moved. The exposed skin that was already tanned had become so dark it was almost swarthy. Beneath the mask, his dark eyes were both quick and savage. He looked so real, so vividly alive, that Christine wondered how he could ever have called himself a ghost.

Erik was in a foul mood. He was having trouble with a particular composition that had been consuming him for the last three nights, a letter lying on the table at his right hand informed him that the house he had recently purchased was still being furnished and was therefore unfit for habitation for another week, and worst of all, he knew that the Vicomte de Chagny was still in Algeria.

Erik glowered and slammed his coffee cup down so violently it cracked the saucer. An expression like thunder on his masked face, he shoved his chair back and went over to one of the cupboards where he had concealed one of his rare indulgences in this primitive place – a bottle of whiskey, a splash of which he added liberally to his coffee in an effort to make his morning more palatable. A man who enjoyed affluence and the finer things in life – and a good vintage was no exception – Erik had still never succumbed to the vice of drowning his pain in drink or stronger substances. Even if the lure of opium to cloud his emotional torment had its temptations, the very thought of indulging in anything that would diminish his creative genius revolted him. Music was where he lost himself, music was the beautiful world into which he retreated when the harshness of reality became too much to bear. The thought of his great talent dwindling or becoming lacklustre and dulled filled him with horror. Furthermore, he needed to be clear-headed to examine the problem at hand.

The young man had been on his trail like a bloodhound ever since they had left Paris. Despite various detours and his best efforts to remain hidden (after so many years, he had become rather proficient at it) still Raoul continued to pursue him unremittingly. Though angered beyond measure, he couldn't help but begrudgingly admire the Vicomte's persistence. It had been a long time since his cunning and ingenuity had been so tested. That was the reason he and Christine had been reduced to staying in a cramped lodging house in the busiest centre of the town, for where else could they be so well-concealed?

However, his fervent wish to use his ample funds to buy a house that would be their own self-contained paradise and to surround Christine with beautiful things had eventually won out over his more practical regard for caution.

Of course, Christine had no idea that her former lover was doing everything in his power to find her. Erik had not deemed it necessary to share that particular piece of information with her.

Christine. His soul and sin. Erik could not clearly remember when his feelings for her had turned from that of a mere mentor and confidant to an obsession. All he knew was that this love endured within him like a bloom of sickness. Even now the longing burned liked hellfire. He wanted to possess her. He was possessed by her. The months he had spent wandering in the aftermath of the opera fire had done nothing to quench his desire for her. In fact, time had only augmented it. He admired the new strength she seemed to have acquired, her refusal to allow him to intimidate her in his more overbearing moods, and her unflinching willingness to acknowledge the darker aspects of his soul instead of denying them with a child's stubbornness. Yes, she had had a taste of darkness now, he had seen to that. But instead of letting it consume her or leave her broken and despairing, she had drawn strength from it, being able to see the light that stood in opposition all the more clearly. If only he could one day have such hope and belief in life.

But the truth was, a gnawing, constant dissatisfaction had taken a hold of him that would not go away. He had succeeded in bringing her here, he had achieved what he wanted, so why could he not be happy?

He knew why.

It wasn't enough. Having her beside him day by day only made him more aware of the distance between them, having her so tauntingly close, yet so very far in all the ways that mattered. And it was not merely the physical distance, being unable to touch or hold her in the way he truly desired – though that he determinedly bore with increasing frustration – but also how guarded she was with her emotions. The former days when she had willingly shared all her thoughts with him with such innocent trust were long gone. Another had taken his place as her beloved confidant. She rarely spoke of Raoul – the subject was one that never failed to incite him – but her very reticence convinced Erik that she clung to his memory as firmly as ever. He did not dare think how she would respond if she found out he was nearby. Erik had been unable to pinpoint the Vicomte's exact location – Raoul at least had the sense to remain well hidden. Probably he knew that an undue 'accident' might befall him should Erik discover his whereabouts.

Yes, the Vicomte had better take care not to cross his path!

He was not yet willing to entirely divest of the Phantom's garb should the boy dare presume to up the stakes in this deadly game of cat and mouse. For the moment, Erik was willing to keep his distance while Christine was ignorant of her fiancé's presence. But should Raoul discover her whereabouts and attempt to communicate with her, then Erik would not hesitate to meet him for a final, dramatic confrontation.

The masked man smiled grimly.

Sleep easy for now, Chagny. Think yourself unnoticed. Go about your ferreting and amateur detective-work, and believe you have covered your tracks sufficiently. But you are playing with fire.

And those who play with fire always get burned.

After a restless and unsettled night, Christine rose late, her body feeling dull and lethargic. The sun was blazing in stripes between the wooden shutters covering the windows, and the clamour from outside told her the business of the day was already well advanced. She glanced in the mirror over the washstand and dragged a brush through her unruly curls. After an unsuccessful attempt to pinch colour into her cheeks, she reminded herself that there was no reason for her to be worrying about her appearance, and made her way downstairs. She knew Erik would already be waiting for her. He had probably risen with the sun. Even on those rare mornings when she got up at an hour she considered appallingly early, he would be calmly seated at the breakfast table and inquire what had taken her so long. However, she tolerated his amused indulgence, as it meant he never came and knocked on her bedroom door. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between them that he recognised the room as her private sanctuary, but it would take more than wooden walls and a door to truly secure herself against his influence.

Erik, the Living Corpse, the Opera Ghost, the Phantom, her dark angel of many names. The man she needed yet rejected, strove to redeem yet ultimately fled from. Was he her salvation or destruction? As a child she had thought the former. As a young woman, the latter. Now she was no longer so certain. Even after two months, she was still struggling to understand the unique and conflicted relationship that existed between them.

She had come to know his personality and habits in ways she had never imagined knowing any man who was not her husband. She knew he rose early and retired late. She knew he was an intensely solitary man, and more than anything valued quiet and space to allow his creativity to flourish. At times, he would shut himself away for hours on end, not to be disturbed, looking like a man possessed in a fever, and hardly aware of her existence. Then at others, it seemed he wanted nothing more than to sit and talk with her long into the evening. He could converse knowledgably and fluently on any subject, and Christine felt keenly that were it not for a defect of nature, he would not be out of place among the most brilliant minds and politicians of the age. Mama Valerius had not been deficient in providing Christine with an education better than most girls of her rank could expect, and so in those times she found genuine pleasure in his company. He was a lively and enriching conversationalist, possessing an artistic mind and a wry sense of humour that emerged on infrequent occasions. However, he was also overly defensive, highly-strung and quick to take offence at the slightest remark. Christine thought it fortunate she was generally of a patient nature, as it diffused many a situation that had the potential to lead to an argument.

She also knew the subtle signs that indicated a change of mood: the rare twist to his mouth that revealed ironic amusement, the small lines that appeared between his brows when an idea absorbed all his concentration, the flash of brilliance in his eyes when he was moved by things of beauty, and the way he would sigh as though it satisfied some deep craving in him, even if it was only momentary. And, of course, the way he looked at her, as though –

No. She would not think of that. After all, since she had come away with him, he had never touched her or made any physical advances against her will, for which she was sincerely grateful. Although, even in her relative inexperience with men, she could infer – by the desire he could never fully conceal in his eyes, the way the pulse hammered in his throat when they were in close proximity and the involuntary shudder that would pass through him if she brushed against him in passing – just how much such restraint was costing him.

Living together had – almost against her will – created an intimacy between them that, if not physical, still felt like a betrayal to Raoul. With Raoul, they had always been out in public, or, when indoors, in the presence of servants. They had rarely been unchaperoned. With Erik, she was utterly alone. Even if nothing untoward had passed between them, this was still the man she saw first thing in the morning, and the last thing she saw before she retired. Then she would pass her nights in feverish sleeplessness, lost in frenzied dreams, or waiting at her window like Juliet (though no Romeo ever came to rescue her). Only a thin wall separated her from the man who was not her husband and the strain of that unspoken knowledge seemed to linger ever between them. She would feel it in those moments before she left him for the night, painfully aware of his jacket cast aside and his necktie loosened due to the nocturnal heat. It seemed a prelude to something more. She wondered if he too lay awake with that thin partitioned wall between them, imagining things that could not be spoken of in the light of day.

Christine braced herself and pushed open the door to the breakfast room.

He was seated at the table, and she knew he was aware of her presence even though he did not look up. He seemed to have preternaturally heightened senses: his body would tense, feline-like, piercing eyes appearing to read her deepest, darkest secrets. At the moment, he looked so forbidding that Christine was reluctant to disturb him although he must have heard her enter. She was gradually coming to be less offended by his caprices or frighteningly rapid changes in mood. Although their encounters were always intense, often his bouts of melancholy had nothing to do with her, and at such times, she either tried to be as considerate as possible, or keep out of his way.

"Good morning."

Then he did look up. She wondered what it was about his intense look that made her cheeks burn with heat. It almost made her back away. Almost. However, he merely acknowledged her with a curt nod before returning to his coffee. Christine sat down and poured herself a cup, resigning herself to a quiet breakfast with a feeling of relief. Being a slow riser, she hated having to appear cheerful and engage in lively conversation first thing in the morning. There were advantages to be had from Erik's complete disregard for social niceties.

"Your saucer is broken," she pointed out, after several minutes of silence.

"Faulty china," he said briefly.

He looked at her closely then, the stern expression on his face immediately replaced by one of concern.

"Are you alright?"

She shrugged. "I didn't sleep well."

"What is it? Is the room not comfortable? Tell me."

"The room is fine." His intense scrutiny was a little unnerving. Did she really look so tired?

"I can always make you something to help you sleep. In Persia, I was taught how to brew teas with the root of Valerian. It can soothe even the most restless of minds."

"No – it's – I'm just dreaming a lot, is all."

A gleam of curiosity appeared in his eyes. "About anything in particular?"

Christine hesitated. "I don't remember."

"I know this place isn't ideal, but the lodgings are only temporary," he said brusquely. "We should be moving out shortly."

"Assuming I am still –" Christine caught herself before she could complete the utterance, but Erik's eyes darkened menacingly, as he knew what she had been on the verge of saying.

"Assuming you are still with me, you mean? Or do you believe I will be cured by then? That over thirty years of darkness and hunger and rage will have been purged from my soul and I'll be ready to walk among the good and righteous?"

It sounded so hopelessly improbable when expressed in such a way, and Christine was suddenly furious at him for trivialising what she saw as so vitally important, the fact that she had only come on this exhausting, unrewarding journey out of her earnest desire to help him. She pushed her chair back and stood up. Her hands trembled with passionate anger and her eyes flashed condemnation.

"If I did not believe you could be cured, as you put it, Erik, I would not have come here in the first place! If I truly thought there was no possibility of purging that darkness and rage, I would have left a long time ago and abandoned you to your fate!"

"That makes it sound like a matter of will. Perhaps you do not leave because you cannot."

Christine slowly raised her eyes to his dark, shadowed ones, suddenly nervous, though not of his anger. "What do you mean?"

Erik rose, drawing closer, closer along the length of the table until he was standing beside her. She breathed unsteadily, inhaling the spices of the clamorous market outside and the scent of some rich cologne. He rested an arm against the side of the surface and her gaze was drawn down to his gloved hands that unfolded like they held some hidden promise.

"I have lived a long time, Christine. I have travelled continents, met people from the lowest slums to the most opulent palaces seen this side of Paradise. And there are certain people in this world who are gifted… rare, unique. Like listeners who capture a trembling thread of music, a delicately vibrating melody that no one else can hear. They are… attuned. Blessed or cursed with some divine genius. Though to others, it might seem like madness. Yet their gifts are godlike. We will never be like others. And when we try to walk in the world, we are shunned, cast out, made aware of our otherness. And eventually the loneliness becomes… unendurable. Until perhaps… if we are fortunate enough, we meet someone. Another who shares our rarity… and our loneliness. Shaped by tragedy, the need for belonging, for love… We are special, Christine, unique. We are not like others. The mundane world holds no charm for us."

The spell of his voice, his lyrical words, drew her irresistibly closer. Entwining her in those silken promises that whispered of greater realms, of secrets to be discovered, of worlds as yet unchartered… The wariness that had filled her had quite vanished as her pulse quickened into life.

It was with an effort that her rational mind reasserted itself. "So you think we are – superior? Better than others? You would have me look down on people, to be devoid of all empathy or compassion?"

"I would have you realise your true worth. To no longer deny your nature. You will never be ordinary, Christine. Embrace it. Free yourself from the confining shackles of this narrow world and let your genius soar, your gifts flourish."

Unconsciously, she found herself leaning in, spellbound in fascination. What was this strange connection that seemed to exist between them? He understood her as no one else in the world did. Always adrift, ever seeking, the passion for music beneath everything, guiding the soul. He offered her everything. She was Eve in the garden, tempted by the serpent… No, it was more familiar than that. She had been here before. The laden table, with delicacies fit for a wedding feast, the burning heat of the harsh climate, all of it drew her irresistibly back… he was Don Juan and she was Aminta, poised on the brink of seduction. The warmth, the stirring of blood, the sweet velvet promise in his low tones... She stared at those delicate, artistic hands cased in leather. Would his touch be as soft as his voice?

No. She had been down that road before, and it had ended in violence and madness and fire. She would not get burned again. The thought alone was sobering enough to pull her back from the edge. She was here to exorcise his demons, not dance with them.

"Not if the price is my soul. Or yours."

Erik smiled then, cruel and mocking. The moment had passed and he was indifferent and disdainful once more. He made a great show of removing a fleck of dust from his glove as he remarked smoothly, "You appear to have such faith in my soul, Christine."

"I know that it must be a thing of beauty to create such music."

Erik stiffened and the dark scorn fled from his features. She knew immediately what memory her words had provoked. That first night in her dressing room, embalmed with the scent of roses and half-faint with ecstasy and strange terror as his voice echoed from above…

Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. The angels wept tonight.

"So that is why you came all this way. For my… soul." His shadowed face was unreadable.

"I feel responsible." Christine stared at the floor as she said this, but still she felt the old pull of his voice: beautiful, hypnotic, deadly.

"Why am I not convinced?"

She looked up and met him with the hard, honest truth. "That's your problem, not mine."

His raised hand paused a hairs' breadth from her face, but she could imagine she felt it brush against her skin – a light, scorching touch. She tried not to look at the expression in his eyes, dark, erotic and strangely secretive. Christine held herself deliberately rigid. She had thought herself past this.

"Or were you hoping that if you cooperated, I would let you go? Is that what this is?"

"Yes," she said instinctively, before her mind caught up. "I mean – no – Erik, don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't make it sound as though I want to deceive you."

"It sounds to me as though you don't know what you want." That intense look in his eyes had begun to express itself in his low voice.

"I want you to move on with your life."

His hand fell away as his expression hardened. "I'm not sure I'm willing to do that."

"You cannot keep me here forever, Erik."

"Is that so? If I were to let you leave now – to walk out that door and return to Paris, to be that pale and sick little angel again, would you go?"

His face was lit with love and rage, and when he saw she didn't move, he gave a slow, triumphant smile. "You cannot. You don't trust me enough to leave. You never know when I might lash out… say something, do something. Who might get hurt."

His words filled her with foreboding, more so, because she knew he would not hesitate to carry out what he darkly hinted at. She had seen what he was capable of. He was being openly, ruthlessly calculating, holding the threat of future lives over her head should she dare try and resist him. Christine pressed her suddenly icy palms against her forehead, feeling the pulse beating in her temples. She needed to think. She needed to be alone.

Past images flashed through her mind, scenes of horror that time had done little to dispel. Carlotta's humiliation, Joseph Bucquet dangling from a rope's end, Raoul tied to the portcullis, a lasso tightening around his neck – but no. She couldn't. Thinking of Raoul was too painful. She could sense Erik standing very close by and she didn't want to think about that either.

Christine shuddered as she pictured her strange, fierce, defiant Phantom and wondered if he really was any different from the masked murderer who had snatched her from the Parisian streets all those months ago. That darkness was a part of him, and she knew that it would never entirely leave him. Perhaps this had been a mistake, agreeing to come with Erik, giving him hope where there was no hope. Was he really seeking redemption, or had he just said what he thought she wanted to hear? She had never before known a man whose spirit was so wild and ungovernable; was there ever any chance of her hoping to redeem him? Or would he go on, day after day, year after year, descending ever deeper into darkness and pulling her along with him? Christine closed her eyes and imagined herself in Don Juan once more, falling down and down through rings of fire, the all-consuming heat within his arms and the plush embrace of his voice.

The worst of it was that she could remember what it was like to be so deliciously lost in her own senses, every part of her being alive, every rational thought a thousand miles away. She cursed herself for being so affected by him on such a primitive level. It was this – this proximity, the pervasive heat, the knowledge that had Erik not taken her, she would have been initiated into those mysteries of the marriage bed with Raoul by now, instead of suffering loneliness and thwarted desire night after night. How long had it been since she had last been kissed? Held in a lover's arms? She had been snatched away on the brink of marital fulfilment and her body and heart were dying –

"Christine." Erik's voice brushed against those dark places in her mind she had no wish to revisit. "You haven't answered me."

"I have to go," she said quickly, turning to leave the room.

"Go where?" he demanded. "You haven't eaten anything."

"I can't eat," she said dully. "I can't sleep. My appetite, my peace of mind, my freedom, my future are all gone. You wanted me here, Erik, and you have me." Christine raised her dark, haunted eyes up to his in hollow desperation. "But I don't know for how much longer it will be."