Page 98 of Angel's Flight

“Yours,” Erik keened, his voice hoarse and thin because Christine’s hand was a vice on his throat – because she commanded his heart and soul and breath.

The knowledge made her snap.Made her break and convulse and come, letting go as she did.Erik gave a gasp and a spasm and she felt him begin to pour inside of her, savage and unmoored.

Ecstasy for a moment.

Then silence.Silence pierced only by the sound of their breath in the cooling dark.

What if all they had left was that?

Paris

Meg couldn’t fall backasleep.She’d practiced until her legs ached all afternoon because she knew herself.She had known she’d be up all night thinking about that ghostly voice, and what to do next.It had almost worked.She’d slept for a few hours, but now she was awake and had been since three o’clock.The witching hour.

The sky was growing light outside her window, and if they had lived somewhere with birds, Meg was sure they’d be starting to sing to bring the dawn.Paris only seemed to have crows and pigeons, and they were all still roosting in the Tuileries.

She crept from her bed to the low embers of the fire in the parlor.She curled herself into a ball, staring at the coals, hoping they would give her some insight.

“What are you doing up?”

Meg turned around to see her mother approaching, her face as warm as her voice.Something inside Meg uncoiled.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Meg confessed.

“And why is that?”Her mother sank awkwardly to the floor next to Meg, wrapping them both in her shawl, like a bird protecting her chick from the rain.“Have your adventures gotten away from you?”

“What?”Meg looked up at her mother in surprise.“I haven’t...”

“Meg.You’ve been out and about non-stop in the last few weeks,” her mother sighed.“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what you’ve been up to, and I’ve been patient, but don’t think I don’t notice.I’m a mother – we always know when something is amiss.”

Meg couldn’t control the way her chin began to tremble or the moisture that sprang to her eyes.She could name it now – the crushing feeling she had endured since Shaya had left her, and even before then.Even among her supposed friends and fellow dancers, she had felt it for months – loneliness.

She fell against her mother’s shoulder and wept, comforted by the embrace of someone who would never leave her.Who never had left her, all this time.

“Mama, I’m sorry, I just—”

“You wanted something of your own, I know,” her mother cooed, petting Meg’s hair.“Everyone wants adventure at your age, but it’s a lonely thing to take it on your own, even if that’s the way it must be.”

Meg sniffled and nodded.Sometimes, she forgot that her mother could be wise.“I’ve...I’ve been trying to discover who the new ghost is.Or something like that.It’s all gotten away from me.”

“Ah, so that’s where the letter went,” the elder Giry chuckled.

“You’re not mad?”

“Only a little.More so worried that you’re putting yourself in great danger.”Meg shrank into herself, remembering all the reckless things she had done and how lucky she was not to have been compromised or hurt.

“I’ve been so stupid, and for what?”Meg sighed.“I haven’t helped anyone or discovered anything.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s true.”

Meg blinked through her tears to look up at her mother’s kind face.“You don’t?”

“If you’re anything like I was at your age, you’ve learned quite a bit about yourself,” her mother said with a wry smile.

Meg paused to think those words over.Her mother, as usual, was right.In a few weeks, she had grown in ways she’d never even dreamed of.Done things that the little Meg of even a season ago wouldn't have thought possible.“Perhaps I have.”

“And you didn’t even have to sneak across the border into Prussia to do it like I did when I was your age,” her mother remarked with an easy shrug.

“What?”Meg gaped at her mother.

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