The Angel's Shadow || The Phantom of the Opera || Book Two

12. Once A Monster, Always A Monster

Chapter Twelve || Once A Monster, Always A Monster

Mélodie

I told the carriage driver to take me home. It wasn't until after I got my few belongings down to the lair and locked off all the entrances that I began to absorb all that just happened. I stood in the middle of the lair overlooking the lake.

Silence. Such deafening silence.

I felt everything sink in slowly, excruciatingly slow. It started in my fingers, and then my toes. It then traveled up my legs, my arms, consuming me, taking me hostage, draining me. In a matter of minutes the grief filled my weary body and I crumbled to my knees, my screams piercing the deadly quiet like a thousand flying spears. My tears pooled in the palms of my hands. My forehead pressed to the cold stone floor as I bowed over my bent legs.

How could he? After all she had done to him. After all the pain she put him through. How could he?

Cold and numb, I went up the ramp to our bedroom. I needed sleep. I needed rest to clear my head. I needed an escape from this pain, an escape from this reality. The nightmares in my sleep were comforting compared to the nightmare I am living.

My brows knit together in confusion when I saw the tangled mess of bedsheets.

Strange.

I left the bed neat last we were here. Erik and I closed off the entrances when we moved out so no one could have been here. Last we were here was when we came to the opera and I hadn't come down here. Unless...

I staggered back.

I heard them calling for Christine during intermission when we came to watch the show. She was late. She was with Erik! Here! In our bed!

I felt my insides threaten to turn out, wanting to dispel all the toxic grief and fury that poisoned my system.

And I had thought he was so silent because I hadn't watched the opera with him. He wasn't even watching the opera. It was his idea to come to the opera. He planned that. He had planned to see Christine! He had planned to sneak her away while I was busy with my friends.

Once a monster, always a monster.

I curled up onto the couch we had bought after we got married. I fell asleep on a tear drenched pillow, my sobs replacing the music that used to fill the air.

~*~

"Do you want to know what else we share?"

Leave me alone. You have caused enough troubles.

"We share Erik. We are bonded by him."

Shut up, Christine! Why can't you give me peace?

"Erik is mine."

Take him. He was never mine to begin with. He was always yours. I knew that from the moment I laid eyes on him.

"Look at yourself, Antoinette."

In the floor length mirror I saw my form sitting slumped in a high back chair. I looked tired. Worn to the bone. Wanting all the torments to end. Wanting the pain to end. Wanting life to end.

From behind the mirror a pair of green eyes floated over to me in the darkness.

Erik. My Erik. No. He isn't mine. He was never mine.

A light brightly exposed the body belonging to the haunting emerald eyes. What stood before me was not Erik. It is Gustave. Small Gustave. So young. So gifted. So...innocent. So Erik's.