Page 61 of Angel's Fall

“You’ve lost your mind.” Philippe threw up his hands and stalked from the drawing room. Raoul moved to follow, but Antoine held him back.

“Let him go,” Antoine reprimanded. “We need to discuss our plan.”

Raoul’s face hardened as he looked at the man who smiled so easily after doing such terrible things. “Wedon’t need to do anything. In fact, I think you should go. I need to think and I’m not sure I want you around Sabine after...” Raoul swallowed even as Antoine gave a wolfish grin.

“Oh come come, Sabine is a lady. She’s not like Adèle,” Antoine assured him. “And I will be marrying her, no matter what.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?” Raoul asked, his stomach falling as he imagined his sister’s wedding night with the beast before him.

“Because it is,” Antoine replied easily. “I am marrying your sister and I swear I shall be as gentle as a lamb with her... Unless you try to get in my way. In that case, I may need to be more forceful as a husband. To remind both of you of your places.”

“You wouldn’t dare—” Raoul gasped as Antoine took his shoulder, holding him tight. He recalled the way Antoine had gripped his neck the night before and braced himself.

“I would. You know I would,” Antoine said, eyes like ice before he smiled. “But you don’t need to worry. Sabine is a good woman, the only good woman I know. There will be no need to be anything less than a gentleman. Now – to the plan. We do need to hurt him, you’re right. I have some ideas.”

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The Opera had neverfelt so empty as Erik walked the dark halls and salons. There was no one in the galleries and rotundas, just the living shadow that stalked up the great staircase alone. It was cold and desolate, this palace to art and splendor. Erik hated it.

He hated the excess the upper classes had poured into this place to celebrate nothing but themselves and their power. He hated the cold marble and the shining crystal. And he hated the yawning depths beneath, where he had hidden for so long, a den for a wounded animal. Now, it was hollow – his nest of useless trinkets, filled with compositions no one would hear. Christine was gone, and he couldn’t go home to their empty bed.

You did this. You drove her away with your monstrousness, the other ghosts whispered in his ears.You’re just as horrible as his other spawn, you coward. You fool.

Erik turned, as if he could catch the memory that spoke, and gasped at the figure that met his eyes: a shade in a pale mask with glowing eyes. A phantom. Something so far from alive and human, it couldn’t even step into the sun without fear.

“You fool,” he said to his reflection, staring at himself for the first time in six years. “You coward.”

His heart had pounded when he had followed them onto the roof. Even in the fading light he had shied away and kept to the shadows. The glancing sun that had caught in his eyes as it set and stung like acid in a wound. How could she ask him to be in that world when only a few moments of daylight were torture? And yet...

Christine had confessed to whom she belonged. She had been true until she had learned of another terrible lie. The boy was going to steal her away, and Erik was as trapped and helpless as if he were back in Klaus Steiner’s mirrored torture chamber that he had built and rebuilt for himself throughout his cursed life. He was still a trapped child – still afraid to run to freedom even when the door was right there.

Even now, the door out to the balcony loomed behind him in his reflection and it might as well have been the false forest in the torture chamber below: an illusion meant to drive a man mad thinking he was free. What if the illusion wasn’t the mirror?

If he was in a cage of his own making, then didn’t he have the key?

Erik turned from his hated reflection, riding the impulse like a wave that pushed him to the door and out into the fresh air of the night. It was simple to climb and jump down from the balcony and onto the near-desertedAvenue de L’Opéra. He knew the way so well it was a trial not to run. His fear of humanity spurred him too. It terrified him to know people might see him and his mask, even with his hat low to shadow his face.

Not soon enough, he was on theRue Notre Dame des Victoires, doing as Christine had asked and entering through the front of the building to climb the stairs to the Valerius flat.

He hesitated at the door, hand poised to knock. What on earth would he say, other than begging forgiveness? Was that worth anything? Especially when he didn’t deserve an ounce of grace. Still, he had to try. He knocked. And waited.

After an agonizing span, the door of the flat swung open only to reveal the face of... Julianne Bonet. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Is she—”

“No. She’s not here. Now fuck off.” Erik blinked at the young woman whose dark eyes were full of defiance. “Or were you asking about Adèle? The woman who’s actually been hurt. Or do you not care about that either?”

Erik’s mouth hung open, a new shame creeping under his skin. He’d been enraged when he learned what Antoine had done, but it had been subsumed by so much else. “I do care. I... I’m sorry.”

“Men are always sorry after the fact,” a soft voice came from inside the flat, and Erik peeked around Julianne to see inside. Adèle was there, wrapped in blankets, the light from the fireplace illuminating her bruised face. “Doesn’t ever change the past.”

“I could kill him, if you’d like,” Erik offered and ignored Julianne’s look of horror in favor of meeting Adèle’s tired eyes when she turned her head.

“Would you make it slow, if you do?” Adèle asked languidly.

“Very,” Erik replied, and Adèle nodded.

“Good. Bring the whole damn Opera down too while you’re at it.” The bitter exhaustion in the woman’s voice chilled Erik to the bone.

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