Page 82 of Angel's Flight

“Face them?”she scoffed.“Meaning you’ll drag us into more confrontations and violence?Where will it stop?”

“That’s not—” Erik shook his head, at a loss for words or some other comforting falsehood.

“I know you, my Erik,” Christine sighed.“I know you wouldn’t seek that violence, but somehow, it would find you.Find us.At some point, we’ll stop being lucky.I live in fear of the day this curse will take you from me.”

“Then we should go home and hide until it’s safe.”Erik’s voice was so sad, it hurt Christine to hear it.“I know it’s not ideal, but we could make it work, somehow.Like I did before.”

“You know we can’t,” Christine whispered, pitying him.She had spent so much time in the last months homesick for ideas of places that she could never go that she had forgotten that Erik had been forced to leave the only home and safety he had ever known too.

“I miss it, Christine,” Erik said softly.“I miss my books and my organ and my piano and my bed and my opera.”

“I miss it too,” Christine admitted, heart and soul aching.She let herself feel it for a brief moment, that bone-deep longing for the familiar, even if it had been flawed and dark.Erik’s house on the lake had been a tomb, home only to the dead.It was a place they had escaped, as much as they had left it behind.“But do you miss who you were there?”

“Sometimes,” Erik answered softly.Guiltily.

“We have to leave that behind too.”Christine hated to say it.Hated to tell him he had not changed enough.

“Is that really why you want to run off to my mother’s cursed village on the off chance of catching that woman?Not because she hurt you, but because it’s good?”Erik shot back.

Christine gritted her teeth.“Because there are innocent people in that town.People who deserve some warning about what’s coming or salvation from it if she’s already there.”

“Why do they deserve it?What have those deluded strangers ever done for you?”There was cruelty and bitterness in Erik’s voice that she had not heard in it for a long time.

“They deserve safety because they are people just like us, and we all deserve to live free of strife,” Christine answered slowly.

“No one lives free or safe in this world, and most don’t deserve it,” Erik replied, and it made Christine ill to hear it.She had to remind herself that he was angry, rattled, and hurt.“Especially backwards fools in forgotten villages.”

“Like the people in Lungern?”Christine asked, face hardening.

Erik’s eyes were shocked behind his mask.“What?”

“I know some slight you won’t speak of that drove us from the first place I thought we’d rest.I didn’t ask because I kept hoping you’d tell me and trust me, but you never have.”

“Because it was too shameful,” Erik whispered back, turning away.Hiding himself from her as he so often did when he wallowed in his guilt and self-loathing.

“You never need to be ashamed with me,” Christine lamented.“Haven’t I told you this enough?”

“Perhaps I don’t want to relive the pain of coming across a child in the woods when I was walking – like a fool – without my mask,” Erik said, fists clenching.“Perhaps I don’t want to remember how he screamed and ran; how he fell and cut himself when he saw my cursed face.Perhaps I don’t want to go to Coolaney because the same thing will happen there when someone alerts the village of fools about the monsters at the edge of town.”

“Erik,” Christine sighed with equal parts pity and frustration.She pushed Erik by the shoulder to face her.“I’m sorry you had to bear that alone.I wish you had told me.”

“So you could convince me to stay until some other disaster befell us?”Erik almost laughed.“Now you want me to go to the village that never welcomed me before.”

“I want to go and help people because I have to be able to do something!”Christine found herself growling back with an intensity that made her husband draw back in shock.“I don’t know what my life is or who I’m supposed to be anymore, but I still know what’s right and what needs protecting.”

Erik stared at her, and she wasn’t sure if it was in horror or wonder, thanks to the damn borrowed mask.“I’m sorry,” he whispered again with contrition that made Christine’s heart clench.

“We are here –Iam here – because of my choices as much as yours.We swore to face these challenges together,” Christine said as she grasped his left hand with hers, entwining their fingers so their wedding bands glimmered in the light.“We have to do this.I have to do this.Please don’t fight me or run away.”

Erik’s eyes fell on their hands, the battle raging in him evident from his shallow breath and tense shoulders.Christine squeezed his fingers, praying her touch could reach him in whatever dark place his mind had taken him to.Perhaps it worked, for his shoulders sagged as his breath left him in a defeated sigh.

“To Ireland then,” Erik said at last, and Christine felt at least one knot in her chest unfurl.

“At least it will be native soil for one of us,” Christine said, though she held little hope that it would be any more than a stop on this journey that never seemed to end.

Paris

In the past, Meg hadenjoyed being the center of attention in a rehearsal.Today, she hated it.She hated how her mother wouldn’t let her out of her sight.She hated how she had to repeat over and over what had happened and what it had been like to speak to the police and yes, the attack on Monsieur d’Amboise was the same as the others.The assailant had struck from the dark, unseen, and the incident had left d’Amboise convinced he would never set foot in the Opéra again.

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