Page 107 of Angel's Fall

“What arrangements?” Julianne asked from far away as Adèle placed a blanket over Christine. Dear God, she wanted to sleep for a week.

“The wedding,” Christine muttered and slipped into sleep.

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Shaya woke before dawn. It was understandable – Darius had ushered him into bed before the light had left the sky. Now, he could smell food cooking in their little kitchen, and it was a small miracle. Shaya rose stiffly and shuffled down the hall, still aching and drained from the exertions and tragedies of the previous days. The sight of Darius working diligently over the stove to prepare tea and ash was beautiful in a way Shaya was not prepared for.

“What have I done to merit this?” Shaya asked gently as Darius stirred.

“Not dying, for one,” Darius replied without looking up. “I have told you many times: I would be quite put out if you expired without my permission.”

“Why? I’ve brought nothing but discord and displacement to your life as long as I’ve been in it.” Shaya smiled despite himself as Darius looked at him with the affectionate annoyance Shaya had become familiar with long ago. Yet it was not until now that he had recognized the love behind it. “Oh.”

“Sometimes I think you are a terrible detective,” Darius sighed. “At least when it comes to observing the people closest to you.”

“I think you might be right,” Shaya said thickly. “I was wrong. About Erik. And Christine.”

“Were you now?” Darius continued to spoon ochre sauce over the meatballs.

“He chose to let us all live, because of her and her love,” Shaya mused, thinking back to how Christine Daaé’s words had made him weep in that terrible room of tortures. “He changed. He chose to be the man who deserved her love. Ramin’s too.”

“Well, that is encouraging, but I sense there is more to this and your time with the police yesterday that you declined to discuss,” Darius countered. “I haven’t retrieved the papers yet for the day, but I imagine they will carry dark news from the Opera.”

“Philippe de Chagny is dead by the hand of a man who cannot be known or named outside this room: Antoine de Martiniac,” Shaya answered grimly. He took a seat at the table, suddenly exhausted once again.

“Why is that? I didn’t even know he had returned to Paris.”

“As far as anyone knows, that must remain what we tell others. Otherwise suspicions shall arise, and I do not want to explain to anyone but you... why I killed him.” He waited for Darius’s face to darken with shock or disapproval. He only kept stirring the ash as it thickened. “And I don’t regret it.”

“I didn’t assume you would. It was justice, was it not?”

Shaya nodded. “I believe so. I must.”

“What happens now?”

A knock at the door interrupted Shaya’s search for the answer. Darius looked between Shaya and the pot in front of him with an unmistakable message that he was busy and Shaya had to answer his own damn door for once. Bemused and weary, Shaya did just that.

The man leaning against his doorframe was thin and tall, and behind his beard and glasses, his skin looked pale. But it was the golden eyes that still gave Erik away, despite his disguise.

“Is that ash I smell? Darius must be relieved to have you home,” the man Shaya had been ready to kill yesterday and ended up killing for said in an exhausted tone. He looked as if he was barely able to stand, and Shaya wondered if under the mask Erik looked even sicklier than he had when he had left him at the gate out of the Opera’s underground, with Christine weeping by Shaya’s side.

“We’ll fix you a bowl if you come in and stop alarming my neighbors,” Shaya admonished. Erik stepped inside the flat and collapsed into a chair, groaning in either relief or pain, Shaya could not be sure.

“I’ve always wondered what it looked like in here,” Erik muttered, and Shaya raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve known where you lived for years, Daroga. It’s quaint. Lovely location, but I have to say these furnishings are rather pedestrian.”

“Pardon me for not having an entire organ installed,” Shaya grumbled as Darius peeked into the parlor. He gave both men a shocked look, clearly noting how unwell Erik looked. “Get this fool some tea.”

“Thank you,” Erik replied. Darius left for the kitchen and Shaya surveyed his rather melodramatic guest. “I hope he is not too concerned. I myself never thought I would be dying for love.”

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Raoul wanted it allto have been a dream. He kept his eyes closed as he listened to the steps of the servants and the quiet murmur of the household beyond his door and told himself that the phantasmagoria of the last few months was the product of a fevered brain. He had consumed far too much brandy and sweets after they had returned home from Christmas Eve services (at Philippe’s insistence, of course). Sabine had chided them for it, but she had joined in too, stealing a few bites of apple tart from the feast that Cook would be sad to see eaten early.

That meant it was Christmas morning. It was a special day, a day just for the three of them. Philippe had promised Sabine that today he would not mention his affair with Sorelli or insist that Raoul make another appearance at the Opera. Raoul knew better now, after the nightmare, than to follow that road. He would also be so glad to not have Antoine lurking about to leer at his sister.

Raoul imagined it, walking down from his room just like when he was a child to find Philippe already at the breakfast table. His cheeks would be ruddy, not pale. His eyes would be bright, not clouded and blank. There would only be laughter coming from his mouth, not an endless trickle of water from the lake that had taken his life...

Raoul sat up with a cry, trying to banish the image from his head. The valet asleep in a chair next to his bed jumped up.

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