Page 65 of Angel's Fall

“To where?” Raoul asked in horror. “Tell me you at least saw where she was headed.”

“The train she boarded was bound for Brittany. That is all I know.” Shaya was surprised to see Raoul’s face brighten with hope. “I’ve tried to find some other clue, but—”

“I know where she’s gone!” The pure glee in Raoul’s face was concerning. “This is perfect. We can find her there! And bring her home!”

“What if she doesn’t want to come?” Shaya asked, but Raoul waved him off as he rushed towards the door. “What if he’s there too?”

Raoul spun back to Shaya with a new fire in his eyes that was nearly like delight. “All the better.”

“You mean to confront him?” Shaya balked. “Alone?”

“No, we do this together – the three of us!” Raoul crowed, bounding from the parlor towards the stairs. “Antoine! Where the hell is he?”

“You want to involvehim? He could be—” There was no more time to protest before the man himself emerged at the top of the stairs.

“What were you doing up there?” Raoul demanded. “Never mind. The time has come. We’re going to retrieve Christine.”

“Are we now? I’ll need to stop at home for what we discussed,” the taller man said with a smirk.

“What about your elder brother?” Shaya asked. “He’ll want to know where you’ve gone. I know what it is to worry over a brother. You should inform him.”

“He doesn’t have the stomach for what will need to be done,” Antoine replied, and Raoul’s dark expression was in agreement. “Do you have the stomach, Persian?”

“What is it you intend to do?” Shaya asked. “I thought you meant to rescue her.”

“Christine is not herself – she may resist or try to dissuade us from bringing Erik to justice.” Raoul held Antoine’s gaze as if repeating what he had been told. “We are simply prepared for that. If we need to hold him, we’ll be ready for that too.”

“Then we should be going, as soon as possible.” Shaya was glad to finally be making a move against Erik, yet there was something off about this, something untoward. Were they walking into a trap? Or was he choosing the wrong allies?

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The roiling sea lookedas unsettled as Erik felt standing on the bluff overlooking it, even with Christine at his side, her hand in his. The wind and remnants of rain danced around them, wild and cold, and he could taste the salt of the surf on his lips.

“I almost forgot the smell,” Erik murmured, amazed at all he had forgotten in his exile below Paris’s streets.

Christine smiled, eyes on the horizon. “There are tide pools further down on the beach, the smell is strongest there. I’d beg to go and explore and come home smelling of brine. But this place, right here... this is where Papa liked to bring me. The wind is stronger here. He said it would carry the notes out farther when he played. So the mermaids could hear.”

“How often did you come here?” Erik asked, and Christine smiled sadly.

It had been strange and terrible to stand with her next to the grave of the man who, in his strange way, had led Christine to him. Erik was familiar with the way graveyards felt empty and crowded all at the same time – of the strange feeling of exposure with the other ghosts watching one’s private grief. So he had asked her, in a weak attempt to guide her toward hope and away from the pain of the past, to take him to some place where she remembered her father at his best. Or at his happiest.

“All the time,” Christine answered softly, squeezing Erik’s hand. “There’s a little knoll down there, hidden from the wind. The first summer we came here, we camped there for a few nights, when it was mild and dry. You could see every star out here when it was night, and we’d have contests of who would see the most falling.”

“I can imagine it.”

“I came here after the funeral,” Christine said. Erik turned to her, ready to argue that this excursion had been meant for better memories. “I stayed until dark, waiting.”

“For an angel.”

“I felt something though,” she whispered. “I just didn’t want it to be real because it...didn’t match what I had hoped for.”

She turned to Erik, meeting his eyes and letting him see the unshed tears in hers. “What was it?”

“I felt him, I think, but I felt him at peace, finally released and going home to Mama. And I didn’t want it because it meant that he was truly gone. I wanted him to haunt me. And now...”

“Peace doesn’t mean he’s gone,” Erik argued as a tear escaped down Christine’s cheek. “Letting your pain and grief go doesn’t mean he dies again. He’s part of you. All the ones we love and lose are.”

Erik thought back on all the love he had known before Christine – how every single person that had meant something to him was gone or dead, so many of them because of him. He thought of Ramin Motlagh smiling out onto the sea the day he was taken from this life.

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