Page 81 of Angel's Mask

“But you are home. The Opera is your home,” he said, fearful and entreating.

“We’re still in the Opera?” Christine asked back, trying to stem her panic and he nodded absently. “How...where are we?”

He looked at her curiously, again giving her the impression of a fearful child, or even an animal worried it would be beaten again. “I can’t tell you.”

“But...”

“How can I trust you?” He asked, suddenly urgent. “You could tell them. The managers and the police or the Daroga and that boy. You could send them after me if I tell you the secret. Or if you go.”

She could see his mind racing as fast as hers, and perhaps his panic and fear were as great. “I won’t...”

He tensed, again like an animal, but this time a cornered one ready to pounce. “I won’t let them put me in a cage again, Christine, Iwon’t.”

“You can’t keep me in one either,” she said with all the firmness she dared and the coiled tension in his shoulders fell slack. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear it,” Christine went on, unsure of if she meant it. “Just let me go home.”

“No, you can’t. You have to stay...” he protested, pathetic and penitent.

“Why would you want me to? Why do you want me here now that I know?” Christine asked. Truly she had no idea what this man wanted from her as a prisoner in this dark place. He looked confused by the question, as if it was so simple.

“I told you, I...” he stopped. He had to know how obscene his words of love were, now that she had seen him. He swallowed and looked at her earnestly. “I would rather stay in your light, whatever you’d give me, than be alone again without you. I can be good for you, I swear, I can still help you. I can still be something to you. If you just—”

“If you want that, I need to trust you. You need to trust me.” Erik caught his breath at the sound of the words and Christine’s heart fell at the flare of hope in his haunted eyes. “And if you ever want me to trust you again, you have to let me go.”

“If I free you...there a chance?” he asked, pathetic and penitent.

Was there? Was there a place in her life for this fallen angel who had once been the very foundation of it?

“Yes,” she whispered. truly did not know if it was a lie, but she knew he believed it. He was desperate to. “If you just let me go. Earn my trust, let me earn yours. Please, Erik.”

“Alright,” he murmured softly. “But you must come back.”

“What?” She looked at him in fresh shock, and his gaze was nearly wild.

“I’ll send you back up there, I’ll trust you so that you’ll trust me, and then you have to come back. If you want to...to know all the answers and be my student and...” His voice faded and Christine tried to steady her breath. Perhaps he wasn’t ordering, perhaps he was begging. “Please, Christine. You don’t know how dark it is here without you.”

She shut her eyes to hide the tears that bloomed there, pity once again overtaking her. There it was. An immense, tragic love laid at her feet, too great for her to bear or comprehend. Slowly, she nodded.

“Come then.” He stood swiftly and walked away across the room.

Christine rushed to follow him out the door into another space. The room was even stranger than his bedchamber, packed with books and candles and a piano and...no, she had to be dreaming now, there could not be an entire pipe organ here.

“This way.”

She jumped at the sound of his voice close behind her and he flinched away from her as she spun. He had put on a long, hooded cape and looked every inch the Phantom now.

“I’ll take you the back way, we won’t need to use the boat,” he said, as if that made any sense. Without further explanation, he turned and walked to an ornate door that opened to pure darkness. But the smell from the blackness where he disappered was something like walking by the Seine.

“Did you say boat?” Christine asked, scurrying after him into the dark. Instantly a cold hand caught her wrist, stopping her at the edge of some sort of wooden walkway.

“Be careful, my kingdom is a dangerous place,” Erik said, and in the damp, echoing dark his voice was also a ghost’s once again. From somewhere he produced a lantern, and Christine was sure she saw the meager light reflected in glassy water.

He moved without a sound as he led her through the oppressive dark. He only stopped a few times, listening at the base of a staircase or a crossroad beneath a stone arch for movement ahead. Otherwise, he seemed to know the labyrinth like he was walking in broad daylight, all the while keeping a steady grip on her wrist. At last, they came to dead end. He turned back to her as he hung the lantern on a rusty hook on the dark stone wall.

“I cannot take you any further,” he told her as he released her at last. She rubbed the smarting place his hand had been.

“Where are we?” she asked, shivering from fear and the oppressive chill. She was still wearing her damn costume from the prison scene, and she could feel the cold from the ground through her insubstantial slippers.

“Where I first met you,” he answered wistfully, as he pushed the wall open, to reveal a heavy gate at the back of the Opera stables on the Rue Scribe. A horse whinnied as if to greet them.

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