A/N: I know, I know, I haven't updated in ages. But studying three languages at the same time is hard! But thankfully, I'll be studying Spanish instead of Chinese, so my time given for studying will be a bit shorter. Also, send a few thoughts and prayers for my family. It would really be appreciated.

Chapter 5

Her first impression when she woke up next morning was how much she enjoyed sleeping in a real bed after all those weeks, then suddenly wondering where she was. Her mind still blurry, she panicked at the sight of the candlelight being the only illumination in the room, with absolutely no windows letting the sunlight in.

All the anguish she had faced in the last few weeks suddenly gripped her at the throat, and the only way she found to chase it away before she would drown in it was to scream.

She heard footsteps towards the room and the door slamming open, as she saw Erik enter, visibly alarmed, and then making her remembering immediately what had happened yesterday. Her ears heated in embarrassment.

"What happened?" he asked in a single breath.

"I… I don't know…" she blubbered. "I didn't remember where I was, and it was dark, and no windows, and… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have cried and…"

"It's fine," Erik replied, dismissing everything with a wave of his hand.

"No, I slept very well, better than I did in weeks…" Meg remembered the beautiful music that had put her to sleep and finally smiled. "You know… you play beautifully. I mean it. I think… I never heard anyone play like that. Where did you learn?"

Erik perused his lips before responding. "My… mother taught me a few bases. I learned mostly by myself."

Meg's eyes widened in admiration as she clapped her hands together. "Oh, that's amazing! How… I didn't even think it was possible to do that! I mean, Maman always says that you only become good at something with a lot of practice. So because of that, she makes us do a lot of rehearsals. Sometimes I thought I really hated them, because there were rehearsals all the time, but it did pay off, I guess. Oh, and the melody! It was so pretty! What is it called?"

It took a few seconds for Erik to realize Meg had asked him a question. Her prattle, which he wasn't used to – well, he wasn't used to prattle in general – had caught him off-guard. He saw her tilt her head with a bit of a perplex expression, before he cleared his throat.

"I… improvised," he finally managed to mutter. "I tried playing something that I thought suited you. That's all. It's really nothing much."

"You improvised?" Meg let out a little yelp of wonder, before her face scrunched up in a way Erik couldn't help but find a bit comical. He felt the corner of his lips twitching up. He tried to keep them straight. But it was hard. "You're making this up to impress me," she said, unable to hide a mischievous glint from her eyes.

"Well, child, you'll just have to admit some people have genius within them, that's all." Erik smirked and smugly glanced at Meg, while she crossed her arms with a cheeky smile.

"Whatever. And I'm not a child," she added, even though it occurred to her that saying such a thing probably wasn't the smartest way to prove her point, especially as she saw Erik's smirk only widening. "Anyway, what time is it? I can't tell here."

"Last time I checked, it was eleven o'clock in the morning."

Meg gasped in shock. "Eleven? Eleven? I shouldn't be sleeping that late!"

"Well, your mother isn't here to tell you what to do," Erik mocked. But the words had barely escaped his mouth that he immediately realized his mistake, as Meg's features grew sad and worried. He had never learned to watch his tongue…

"Have you got any news of her? How is she? Is she… not treated too badly? Is…" Meg asked in one breath.

"I haven't received any news of her," Erik interrupted her. "But for all I know, as long as you're with me, she's safe."

She then clasped and squeezed her hands together, as she lowered her head daintily and nodded. An awkward silence then installed itself. Erik knew that it was his turn to speak to keep some sort of conversation going, but the issue was that he never really learned how to have one… Not to mention (though he was frankly quite displeased to admit it to himself) that his interlocutor was a girl, admittedly quite pretty. Oh, she wasn't quite his type – Erik would sometimes dream of a tall, willowy silhouette, a pale complexion, red lips, dark hair, a melancholic demeanor.

Meg Giry was quite the contrary. She had her father's blonde hair. She was so petite she barely reached his shoulder, and her cheeks were still round. Her features seemed to be a strange blend of a cherub and an puckish flower fairy. And there were her grey and expressive eyes, similar in color and shape to her mother's, now looking at him questioningly, straight in the face, in a way it made him frankly uncomfortable.

Erik remembered once again all the masquerade that had taken place only yesterday, and the way it was all arranged, at least in appearance and in a lighter perspective to shake the old bachelor he was out of celibacy.

And that it was going to be that little imp who was going to do so was simply unbearable. On a first impression, one could think she could be easily impressed. It was true, to an extent. But there was fire resting within her, and that, during all of her sheltered life, hadn't been teased. Now came the time where she would have to spit it out more and more. She was naïve, but she was quick on her feet. And it was obvious now that she didn't like to be stepped on said feet.

Erik started fearing for her, now that he thought about it. She was a little paladin heading straight towards danger, her sword and her head high, and towards heroism and certain death.

It could be said of her that she probably looked at mere people as if they were characters in a play. For all that she was intelligent and intuitive, she knew nothing of real life and of genuinely ill-intentioned people lurking around. Her mother certainly hadn't help the matters, but it was hard to blame her.

And now, he was in a risky position, and he had to shield Meg from the Persian court. He now realized that if something happened to her, Anouar would never forgive him. And to deceive the woman that had saved his life so many years ago was unbearable.

"How did you meet Maman, anyway?"

Meg's question suddenly jerked Erik out of his thoughts. He suddenly felt very reluctant to revealing it to her, and he was already thankful Anouar had decided for some reason not tell anything about him to Meg. His past was full of very unpleasant memories – exactly the kind he had always kept buried deep within him in order to keep on going, since it hurt too much.

The best thing to do was to give an explanation that was short, but to the point.

"I was a prisoner. Your mother saw me while she was out of Persia for a while and saved me, and brought me back with her. That's all."

He didn't want to remember the carnival. It was during those times where he still thought he was human, somehow, just like his mother. He had realized with time that it wasn't the case. But he knew that he was no animal either like all those people watching him in that freak show thought he was. Once free, he would look at all the other human beings around him, and realize that he was gifted in so many ways that they weren't, and that, in a way, he was superior to them. As the Angel of Doom, he had become more than a living being. An entity, rather, and that concept had made its way in his mind and settled steadfastly.

He wasn't human. He was perhaps more than that. And that was what had kept him going, coaxed in this illusion of power he had at court and that he hadn't broken out of yet.

Meg was looking at him questioningly. It was obvious she suspected that there was more and that he didn't want to tell. Erik was almost certain she was going to pressure him with questions until he'd be driven crazy, but to his surprise, she shut her mouth, while an awkward silence installed itself again.

Erik coughed slightly.

"Are you… hungry?"

"What?" Meg replied. He hadn't realized that he had muttered his sentence quite unintelligibly.

"Are you hungry?" he repeated very quickly. "Do you want… tea? Or… bread? Or tea with… bread?"

Meg smiled. "That would be lovely. Thank you."

To be honest, she was starving. She hadn't had anything yesterday morning, and in the past weeks, her distress had been so great she had had no appetite. Now, everything was far from perfect, but with this very small glimmer of hope that maybe, now that she could find allies with Erik and uncle Nadir, she could save her mother and run away, she had found her appetite again. It was a very naïve and certainly delusional hope, but the anticipation of a better tomorrow had always been Meg Giry's main motive to go forward.

She had settled herself in the parlor, near a table not too far away from the piano. A few minutes later, Erik had come back with what looked like some sort of bread, except that it was very… flat, and two cups of tea. Meg reached for a cup, thanking Erik, blew a bit on the tea in order to cool it down, and took a sip…

…to spit it back in the cup straight afterwards.

Then, realizing that she had been quite rude and that if her mother had been there, she would have been severely grounded, she lowered her head and blushed so much she felt her ears heating.

"It's lemon tea," Erik simply said, with a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Oh," Meg replied dumbly. She then attempted rather heroically to take another sip, and gave an inhuman effort not to wince. Tears came up her eyes as she finally swallowed.

"I think I'll have a bit of bread," she muttered, grabbing one of those flat things that didn't look even baked.

It wasn't too bad, though she wished she had a bit of butter for a while. Maybe butter didn't even exist in this place. Who knew…

"You aren't eating?" she asked Erik, remarking that he remained silent, sipping his tea while totally unfazed by its sour taste.

"I don't eat much," he simply stated.

"So that's why you're so thin," Meg said to herself. It took however a fraction of a second to realize that she had spoken out loud, as Erik stared at her in an unreadable way and as she slapped her hand on her mouth.

"I'm so sorry! I really didn't mean it!"

"Of course you meant it," Erik replied, his tone even. The only subtlety Meg could see was him biting what little of lips he had, as if he was retaining them from twisting upwards. "Apologies accepted. It's not a thing I'm especially worried about, if you see what I mean," he continued darkly. "My mother could barely nourish me when I was a child, so I guess I kept the habit of not eating much."

Erik had barely finished his sentence that a loud knock heard itself at the door. He grumbled something, probably some curse, that Meg didn't understand, as he rose to his feet and went to open.

Meg rose up as well, and soon saw Erik opening the door as a guard showed himself.

"I come from the Khanum's behalf," he announced in a heavily-accented French. "She was quite eager to know how you and your bride-to-be are doing."

"Quite fine, thank you," Erik snapped, and was about to close the door abruptly before the guard interrupted:

"She asked me to insist on whether you… enjoyed her," he added maliciously.

It only took Erik a fraction of a second – seeing Meg pale and swallow, and the guard's snide smile that only gave him a picture of the Khanum's current state of mind – to let out a cry of rage and grab the guard by the neck, dragging him inside to pin him on the wall.

It took a second for Meg to come back to her senses, after the initial shock, and to see that vicious glimmer in his eyes while he was not quite strangling the guard, but at the same time, it was obvious Erik was clasping his neck just tightly enough for the guard to gasp by fear that he would squeeze a bit tighter and then deprive him of breathing.

And of course, Meg's first reflex was the same as always.

"No!" she yelled, running towards Erik and trying to pull on his arm in order for him to let go. It was no use. Despite his skinniness, he was much stronger than he looked.

But she had at least managed to get his attention. He was now looking at her with surprise, aghast at the mere idea that someone had been brave enough to stop him.

"Let go of him. Now." There was no pleading in her tone. There was command, perhaps quite laughable because of all the girlishness it still contained. But shoving her away like a little girl would certainly do no good.

"He insulted you," Erik then sneered. "Don't come and tell me you're forgiving him. And if I don't give him a good scare now, believe me, they won't stop. What they want is a good show to gossip about."

"What do you mean?" Meg shouted. "Is that of their business?"

Erik let out an utterly humorless chuckle. "Of course not. But that's precisely the point. Don't you see, little Meg? The poor maiden forced to satisfy the appetite of a Living Corpse, how morbid! How amusing! They don't care about you, nor your mother. They're keeping her alive to make sure you stay with me."

He felt a sort of satisfaction to see Meg starting to tremble. But it was all because he finally saw that perhaps, the whole gravity of such a disgusting situation was finally starting to dawn on her.

But he was more than surprised to see her straightening again.

"Well, maybe if you overact like this, things will only get worse!"

"There's always the benefit of a doubt, little Meg."

"EXACTLY! SO LET HIM GO!"

She could shout pretty loudly, for someone so tiny and with such a bell-like voice. Erik let go of the guard but, furious to have been yelled at by such a little imp of a girl in front of a servant of the Khanum, stared at Meg, and straightened up, lowering his head in a way he clearly looked down at her with contempt, hoping to show in front of a witness who was in charge…

It was useless. Meg Giry was staring at him just as intently as he did, crossing her arms, her face scrunched in a scowl and clearing showing she was having none of it. She even had enough nerve to turn away from him, her head still high, as she asked the guard coldly:

"Was there anything, monsieur?"

"Yes," he replied, uneasily getting up and clearing his throat, with a slight tremor in his voice. "The Khanum also said she's having everything arranged for your wedding next Sunday. It will be public, of course, and there will be an outing for both of you in the afternoon following the wedding for everyone in Tehran to witness your happiness."