Page 60 of Angel’s Flight (The Phantom Saga #4)

“Sounds expensive.” Shaya was learning, though slowly, what Bidaut was willing to do and how far he would go. His associate seemed to be the dangerous one. “Desperate, even.”

“We were growing impatient,” Bidaut drawled.

Shaya concealed his interest. Were. Past tense. “Has Monsieur Richard been particularly helpful then? He always seemed like a serious fellow.”

Bidaut gave another soft laugh and a rueful smile. “You are good. What was it you were called: Daroga?”

“Correct.” Shaya paused. This might be his only chance to make an offer. “I know Erik, and I must warn you that I don’t think using me will work.”

“We’ll see.” Bidaut looked suspect but interested.

“I could talk to him.” Shaya tried to sound casual. Hopeful. “I might convince him to provide some funds to your employer. Not everything, but something.”

“Oh, you’re very good indeed,” Bidaut said with a smirk.

Shaya gave himself a moment to smile before Bidaut heaved a genuine sigh. “It really shall be a shame to kill you, when the time comes.”

Coolaney

O ftentimes, back at the Opéra and even before, Erik had gone days without eating.

Not by choice, of course. Sometimes there was no food to be had, but more often, eating was a bother or a distraction.

He didn’t need much, and when he was in the throes of some composition or new fixation, he didn’t have time.

Of the many adjustments to marriage and living in the world with a relatively normal person (at least in terms of her food consumption), eating all the time had been one of the strangest.

Erik wanted to make all these points in his argument that he didn’t need supper.

He’d rather stay at the manor. He’d even said so, making some excuse about exploring the house.

Christine had not accepted that, especially given how hazardous such an exploration might be to his health.

She was hungry, so they had to go back to the pub for food, and she insisted eating would bring Erik to his senses.

He didn’t tell her that the real problem was he had come to his senses and saw everything clearly now. Everything in all its hopeless horror.

The village was different on foot as evening fell. There were distant lights coming from houses, warm beacons in the dark. The air was cool and fresh, carrying the smallest hint of the sea and grass.

At least he was able to convince Christine to purchase what they needed and leave.

He didn’t want the looks from people in the corners.

He didn’t want to see the curiosity in their eyes.

If only they knew how much worse he was than anything they could predict or imagine.

How he was a deadly thing who took pleasure in his degradation and pain. ..

Erik winced, new shame mixing with rancid anger and helplessness. He looked out in the dark on the road back to the manor. It wasn’t too far a walk, but it felt purgatorial at this point. Erik forced himself to breathe deep, to listen to the sounds of the night, to put one foot before the other.

“Someone is singing,” Christine whispered as Erik heard the voice too. It was distant, but clear. Maybe coming from a house tucked into the wood.

“Careful, might be one of the good folk trying to tempt you from the road,” Erik replied, not entirely joking.

Christine smiled in the twilight and took his hand. “I know that song. You sang it to me.”

“ Oh the summertime is comin ’,” the unknown voice lilted. “ And the trees are sweetly bloomin’ , and the wild mountain thyme grows around the purple heather .”

Music, as always, was magic. He wanted to resist, but its power was too strong.

Erik couldn’t help how it moved his heart to hear the song, even with the dark deepening around them and in his heart.

For a second, it was his mother’s voice, carrying a bit of her home in her heart.

And it was also his voice, singing to the woman he loved of all he would give her if only she’d follow him.

Now that she had followed him, could he give her anything?

“Has it changed much? Since you came before?” Christine asked, tightening her grip on Erik’s hand as they made their way down the road, the song fading behind them. She’d been doing that all day, holding him tight and close so he couldn’t escape. Couldn’t free her.

“The years have not been kind,” Erik muttered, his mood souring again as the air filled with the sound of crickets and frogs. “Nor has having such a useless lord.”

“It reminds me of Perros,” Christine remarked wistfully, which stopped Erik in his tracks.

It meant something, for Christine to compare this place to the closest thing she had ever had to a home.

She was still under the music’s spell. Or perhaps she had been enchanted before that.

“It feels ancient in the same way. Like it’s part of the landscape. ”

“It’s not as charming.” Erik knew he sounded petty and judgmental, but he couldn’t let her go down this path.

They passed the broken old gate and entered the yard of the manor.

“Look at this place. It’s a ruin built by a cruel kingdom far away, stuck in a dying village on the outskirts of civilization. ”

“Some things are more than they look, if I recall,” Christine argued lightly. Carefully. A prelude Erik couldn’t let continue.

“We can’t stay,” he said, slow and firm. He knew she had been thinking it all day.

“I didn’t say that I wanted to,” she argued back, but she was avoiding his eyes, looking at the decrepit house and overgrown garden. Anything but him.

“We’re strangers here. They’ll turn on us as soon as they realize we’re here because of a lie. When they realize what I am.”

Christine spun to glare at him. “You’d say that about any place.”

“Because I’ve been to every place, and everywhere I go, it turns out the same!” His voice was too loud and too harsh, but he couldn’t help it.

“Things are different now! You have me!” They’d been over this, he knew, and he knew she was right, but it didn’t feel like she was.

“But things aren’t different, and they never will be.” Erik spat, hating that he had to say it. “We should—”

“I can’t run anymore!” Christine’s voice echoed against the empty walls of the manor. “I’m tired and I’m not like you. I need a home.”

“What happened to being each other’s home?” Erik countered, his voice brittle and bitter. It was a cruel thing to say, but it was necessary. He had to convince her to let him go.

“Saying that and living it are different things,” Christine said softly and sadly, reaching for him. “It can be true, if we choose a place to stay. It doesn’t have to be here! We can go back to London and our friends.”

“You want it to be here so you can help people you’ve never known,” he sneered, pulling away from her touch. Her face hardened with resolve.

“Because I have to be something of use to the world!” Christine protested, voice breaking. “I have given up everything I wanted to walk this path with you! I did it with joy because I love you, but I need more than just that in my life.”

“And you suddenly think saving a dying town that would throw you to the wolves if it suited them will give you purpose?” Erik scoffed, digging his nails into his palms with the effort of being so callous in the face of her dreams. “You’ve known this village for half a day.

There are other places in the world to worry about. ”

“Then pick one! We’ll go there and leave everyone else to rot!” Christine cast a look to the carriage house where their goddamn hostage waited.

“I thought you wanted to pay her off,” Erik countered, as cruel as he could bear to make himself sound.

“I want to do whatever it takes to live,” Christine whimpered. There were tears in her eyes already and Erik hated them. Hated that he needed her to cry them. “I want to really live.”

There it was: the ultimate truth he could not escape. The one thing he could never give her. He had started this by telling her yes, by surrendering to her light and going with her, but it was so hard and he was so weak and so broken.

“Then you should not have married a thing made of death,” Erik whispered back.

“What did I do wrong?” Christine asked now, her voice small and contrite. “All day you’ve been insisting on madness. Did I go too far last night or ask too much? I can’t reach you and—”

“You did nothing wrong. That’s the whole problem. You’re good and you deserve a home, like you want. You shouldn’t have to reach me,” Erik sighed. “You shouldn’t have to repair me or punish me. You shouldn’t have to lower yourself—”

“Will you stop deciding what I want or need!” Christine yelled with a force that echoed off the walls of the manor into the dark of the night, shocking Erik into mollified silence as he stared at her. There was true fire in her eyes, righteous and dazzling.

“I am my own person. I chose you. I chose this. Marriage is about continuing to choose one another day after day. I choose you right now. Can’t you do the same?”

A choice, once again. One he had made before and rejoiced in. One he had to make again... for love.

“I want to,” Erik replied, voice rough now. “I want to, I do; but I don’t know if I can. Or if I can, I don’t know if I can do it right or be enough. I don’t know how. I can’t bear to rest. I don’t know why.”

“Then let me help,” Christine said, taking his hand, and at last, he let her. He felt the ice he had fortified around his heart the whole day melt away the moment she touched him. “People can’t heal when they’re running, and both of us need to.”

It was as if a thorn had been deep within a wound that she had plucked out. Erik understood, finally, not only what she needed to be happy and whole, but the work he had to do to feel the same and help her heal too. He had to stop. He had to stay.

“I’m afraid I’ll fail again,” he lamented aloud. “If I choose a home, I’ll just lose it. Even this miserable place could be somewhere you learn to love, and what if I’m the reason you must flee?”

“We don’t know that disaster will strike. We have to have hope and bravery,” Christine answered, pulling closer. “Whatever we do, we do it together. That’s the point.”

Erik stared at her, at a loss. She was so perfect, so good, and he was tired of thinking constantly that he didn’t deserve her.

He wanted her and to be with her more than anything, even if it was wrong.

He wanted to make her happy, and he couldn’t do that by running.

He couldn’t fly from her and he couldn’t fly with her forever.

He had to come down to the earth, but what if he fell? What if he failed?

Maybe she was worth the risk. Maybe his penance lay somewhere else than in his pain. Maybe it was in the work of living.

“I want to. But I have to...” Erik swallowed. He felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. “I have to help too. I have to solve problems, not just cause them.”

“Alright,” Christine replied slowly. “What does that mean?”

Erik turned and strode towards the carriage house. Moving before his resolve could fail. “I’m going to end this chase. Once and for all.”