Page 36 of Angel's Fall

“Is it though?” Julianne asked back. “Can half a life be enough?”

Christine swallowed. “I think so, if there’s enough love.”

“Are you sure?”

Christine closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure, but this was what she had: Erik and the Opera and the music. It had to be enough. She shivered to recall the dream of her father telling her as much.

“I should start getting dressed and warmed up.” Christine ignored Julianne’s concerned look. “I can talk to Jammes, if that would help?”

Julianne winced. “She doesn’t like you much.”

“Because I’m a backstabbing whore who doesn’t deserve this role or any?” Christine tried to laugh.

“Because she was convinced for a while that we were having an affair, remember?” Julianne chided, shaking her head. “I told her you were very much taken.”

“I’m sure she was relieved.” Christine drifted to where her costume forFausthung ready to be laced on.

“You shouldn’t listen to those bitter shrews. They only gossip and ignore your talent because they’re jealous. They couldn’t even dream of being half as good as you.”

“But they’re right,” Christine argued reflexively. “I wasgivenall of this.”

“By someone who recognizes that you’re extraordinary.” Christine smiled at that. “Don’t tell me you don’t trust your illustrious teacher.”

“I trust him more than anything.” Christine thought of seeing her blood-stained chemise this morning and the few secrets he didn’t know. Her gut ached for a new reason.

All too soon, she was dressed and running through scales, then behind a scrim as the illusion of Marguerite, there only to tempt Faust. She felt that way on stage sometimes, she mused, as if when she stepped under the gaze of a thousand members of the audience, she ceased to be a person or even a character. Marguerite was an idea, a symbol, and she, Christine, disappeared and didn’t matter. At least not to them. She mattered to the man who had filled her and claimed her on this very stage, and they would never know.

Christine sensed Erik watching. When her time to sing came, she felt his love through the limelights and the smoke and the sound. When she sang of jewels and angels and love, she sang to him. Carlos Fontana was there, holding her in his arms, but he was just an illusion too, as empty as the applause. Erik was there, watching in the dark, and his ears and admiration were all that mattered. When the crowd rose to their feet in ovations, she looked up to box five and smiled at the shadow there.

She was exhausted when it came time to put on a new costume, this time her favored gown of crocus-purple silk. She wondered if Erik would be watching from somewhere, hidden in the walls of the mirrored Salon du Danse. She hoped not, knowing it would only make him suffer more. At least this was the only time she’d see Raoul today. Soon he would be gone, but what then? Just more of this? More empty performances just to survive?

Christine winced as Julianne tightened the bodice of her dress and aggravated her cramped womb, then pushed down another insane wave of disappointment. She should be glad her blood had come. She should be relieved to be free, just like Erik said.

“Are you alright?”

Christine turned to her, plastering on a smile. “I will be when it’s over and I’m home.”

“I didn’t think you even remembered Adèle’s address.”

Christine found herself giving a genuine, secret grin. “I didn’t say I was going to Adèle’s. I said I was going home.”

“Well then, get going so you can do that,” Julianne chuckled.

It was more performing when she met Robert Rameau in the hall for him to escort her, more false smiles and straight spines for everyone to see. She swept past the women of the chorus who sneered at her, and into the Salon du Danse to more worthless applause. The managers were there already and Moncharmin tapped his glass as soon as he saw Christine to gather the attention of the masses.

“Mesdames et Messieurs!” Moncharmin crowed. For a moment, Christine thought he was looking to her for reassurance before Robert gave him a smile. “We are happy for you to be the first to hear an exciting announcement. Before the end of the year, we will be bringing to the Paris Opera a work unlike any we have staged in this theater’s brief history. Our first work by the great Richard Wagner—”

The room exploded in chatter before he could finish.

“Well, there we are,” Robert murmured at Christine’s side.

“And it shall beLohengrin!” Moncharmin cried over the din before Richard pulled him into a corner.

“German opera?Here?”

Christine turned at the familiar sound of Philippe de Chagny’s voice to see that he was flanked by Raoul and, unfortunately, Antoine de Martiniac. Between Antoine and Raoul was a handsome woman who Christine had not spoken to since she was seventeen and being told Raoul could no longer see her. Sabine de Chagny was radiant, her brown hair perfectly coiffed, her modest pink dress as perfectly executed as her polite smile. She was in sharp contrast to Raoul, who looked rather green and grumpy.

“It’s high time we do something more modern,” Robert said. “Don’t you agree, my dear?” It took Christine a beat to realize he was speaking to her.

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