RoseBlood(44)

“I knew it . . . ,” I mumble, my pulse shaking the words in my throat. “You’re real.” I’m not sure if I’m referring to him being the Phantom, or the maestro from my dreams.

The bared half of his full lips twitches, as if debating whether to respond.

“It was you all along,” I accuse. “The bleeding roses, the torn uniforms, the dead bird.” It’s my voice, but someone else must be talking through me, because where would I find the courage with so much fear pounding inside my chest? I don’t have the presence of mind to demand the reason he did those things . . . maybe to lead me here, so I’d find him. But why?

Then it hits me . . . the only reason he could want me to find him. And I want it, too. I want it so much, my blood burns.

“Please tell me you’re here to teach me. To help me release my song, like you did for Christine.” I realize too late that I say her name wrong. It slips out before I can stop it, before I can even hear how insane I sound. How insane this moment is. I’m not blind to the irony: that my need to feel normal has driven me to seek the counsel of the abnormal.

I stare up at him, waiting. His silence reaches as high as the cathedral ceiling, interminable. In spite of his impressive size, he folds himself effortlessly, crouching to stretch out an upturned hand. I flinch, horror-struck, my pulse thundering a warning through my ears.

An expression of sympathy and supplication deepens his brown, hawkish eyes, before they fluctuate to that shimmery, coppery gaze I saw in the garden upon my arrival. The gaze that’s always there to drag me from the water in my dreams, and now in my reality.

Drawn by their magnetic pull, I become the cricket, entranced by her eight-legged captor. Despite every instinct telling me to leap away as fast I can, I take his gloved palm and push myself up with his support, my hips propped against the basin’s edge so my face is level with his sternum.

My eyes drift up to his—my other senses attuned to every aspect of his realness: The strength of his leather-bound fingers wrapped around my palm, the steady rhythm of his breath only inches from my forehead . . . the scent of his warm skin, wet and earthy, like moss on a forest floor, bathed in sunlight and dew.

Dread and hope grapple for control inside my heart, threatening to implode the organ. As though absorbing my inner turmoil, a faint glimmer of light spreads at his sternum, beneath his dark clothes, reminiscent of how I glowed when I devoured Ben’s anxiety.

“What are you?” I murmur.

The naked side of his face changes, softening to an expression so open and ethereal he looks almost angelic. “What are we, you mean to say.” His response reverberates around the chapel, deep and gruff—English words framed within a French accent. He winces at the rumbling echo, like it hurts to hear the hoarseness of his own voice.

To see him vulnerable, even for an instant, awakens that morbid hunger in me—a lust I don’t understand and can’t control. With my free hand, I touch his chest to reabsorb the glow he stole, not even hesitating. His gaze shifts down at our point of contact. The air seems to close in around us, pushing us closer together, although neither of us moves. The light behind his sternum deepens to green and seeps into my fingertips, then sluices through my veins, hot and intoxicating. My body wakes up, energized.

His jaw clenches and with a charged buzz, a green light ignites in my own chest. It snaps through my veins to my fingertips, then into him. The loss leaves me famished. Frowning, I concentrate, coaxing the glow toward me again, but it slips into the darkness between us. The light bounces back and forth as we wrestle for dominance.

Unable to choose, it stalls in midair—a sizzling, green ball—then bursts into a thousand pieces and floats upward, like luminous dandelion seeds, carrying away my insatiable appetite. All I feel beneath my fingertips now is his heartbeat, steady and strong. It matches my own, satisfied and controlled. It’s like coming back to a place I’ve been before, a place I’ve been trying to find again for years—maybe for my whole life.

Home.

That sense of peace and comfort swells to a rush of adrenaline, as hand in hand, I mentally climb with my partner onto some ancient, omniscient plateau, view our likenesses from the summit, and tread to the edge, prepared to swan dive with him into the cosmos.

Wait . . . what am I doing? I waver, afraid of the dizzying heights, anchored only by my palm, so small, wrapped within his.

Baring the straight, white teeth not covered by his half-mask, he bites the glove on his free hand, peeling the leather away. With his thumb, he touches my temple and silences the doubts within.

A throb ignites where he presses. A current, musical and pure, passes from my skull to my spine to my feet. I’m a quivering thing—the plucked string of a neglected violin, shaking off the dust of disuse until harmony resonates between me and my maestro, pure, sad, and sweet.

“Yes, we’ll conquer them, Rune.” I feel his grinding voice through my palm at his chest. The tenderness he attributes to my name, delivered on such a pained rasp, swipes through the chalky residue coating my brain. “The arias that haunt you.” His thumb caresses the hairline above my ear, and he leans so close I feel his warm whisper only inches from my lips. “I’m here. In your mind. Listen for my violin’s voice from your dreams. Shut out everything but me. Together, we already own the notes . . . every last one.”

Watching me intently, he drops his hands and steps back. My palm falls to my side and the musical current tethering us breaks. With a swish of fabric, he flourishes the cape to hide himself. A puff of glittery smoke, pungent with sulfur and ash, forms a wall. Once it clears, he’s gone, as if he vanished into the floor.