Chapter Twenty-five

Days shouldn’t be sunny, and the first moments of twilight not serene when a heart is heavy with sorrow. The sun beat down around her, but judging from her slumped posture Christine barely acknowledged its warmth. Giving her the space she needed, Raoul lagged behind her as she hugged her shawl close and approached the crypt. His wife looked around the garden, but her unseeing eyes ignored the shadows of hundreds of flowering plants as they waved in the wind. Chagny had long since returned to its usual pace and its serene beauty since the funeral of their daughter. Raoul didn’t know her thoughts but wondered how could the world still move when a child was taken from her.

Christine made her way through the gardens and up the stone terrace pausing when she reached the top step and first saw the doors. A heart-shredding wind churned around her, spinning Christine’s back to those metal doors. Her grief nearly doubled her over. She’d not come anywhere near this spot since their baby died. He nodded for her courage as she forced a few deep breaths into her lungs and turned once more to face her daughter’s resting spot.

Evangeline Christine Marie de Chagny.

The sun cast a shadow of her trembling hand as Christine traced the outline of the letters. Surrounded by the aroma of the bouquets scattered on the ground were the dozens Raoul had brought over the weeks. They too were fading away in death. She looked over her shoulder to Raoul.

He hung his head. An empty womb and an empty heart were the same. He looked up and saw her trembling hand remove a neatly folded piece of parchment from her sleeve. She held it to her breast before she slid the paper under the door.

“A gift for you, my Angel.”

Raoul took a few steps forward, but to force his feet to go on. Christine calling their daughter that name instead of Eve could still stop his heart.

“Don’t ask me to speak of its composer,” she whispered, “just know you’re my Angel of Music too. I’ll let you rest in the peace I’ve not had since the day I met him.”

Met whom? Him or Erik? Raoul buried the thought. He’d become practiced at it. “Christine?”

Her breath hitched as if she had forgotten he was near. Christine’s eyes half closed she turned. Raoul didn’t let on that he’d heard her whisper. Turning to him, she took his extended his hand and accepted the guidance into his arms.

“I have you and André, Christine. Even if we’re never further blessed by children, I have you, him, and the memory of Eve.”

She cried for a long while on his shoulder. Raoul imagined they were tears of loss, love, and confusion. Likely she prayed she would have the strength to bury Erik, as she should have years ago.

Raoul allowed her the time she needed to rest in his arms while he stared at the name on the doors. He wrestled the hatred inside of him. Christine moved to lay a hand on the door of their daughter’s tomb. Her tears tore him apart. He hated hearing her call Eve an Angel of Music, and he despised her trying to reconnect with Erik via their innocent child. As ardently as he wanted to thrust open the doors and remove whatever note she had slipped beneath them, he couldn’t deny Christine her time of grief. He couldn’t bring back what was past, nor could he offer anything that would serve to cushion a mother’s pain. His eyes wandered to the older door sharing the ivy-covered house.

Below the massive gate, lying reverently at the foot of Philippe’s tomb was a fresh lily, its petals full and white. Christine slid from his embrace and walked down the path away from the tombs before Raoul could inquire about the lily. Bending to retrieve the flower, a glint of light flashed before Raoul’s eyes seconds before the gold ring spilled from the lily’s mouth to join the pebbles of the garden path. Confused, Raoul picked it up. The crown and sword of his family crest were as worn, yet the open palm signifying the Chagny outreach and philanthropy was unmistakable.

Raoul lost all his breath. The original Chagny signet gleamed before his eyes, constricting his chest as a panic edged upon him like an army at the ready. Raoul frantically searched the tree line edging the garden. The lily still wept at the stem where it had been severed from the plant. The bloom had yet to wilt. Raoul’s stomach fell to his boots.

He heard Philippe’s voice cry out his name as sure and loud as a thunderclap just as it had done years ago. Raoul slammed his eyes shut. The memory of his brother stumbling through the doors of their Paris flat—mugged and beaten within an inch of his life rose before his eyes. Blue and purple, swollen and broken, he remembered Philippe’s hand filling his, his finger robbed of the signet he had so loved. Even his beloved religious medallions, which had never left his neck, had been torn from his body. Raoul remembered all too vividly his brother begging for help and crying out in pain.

He opened his eyes and stared at the lily. Why would it show up at the foot of his tomb so many years later if not left by the man determined to kill him? It would be just one more way Erik toyed with his family. One more twisted, deranged way that man marked his territory.

A shaking breath seeped out Raoul’s mouth as he fought for control. Slip away, Erik, just this once. Slip away. Christine needed him now. She was his exclusive responsibility in life. He’d find Erik some other time.

With a final look around at the cover of the trees, he followed Christine down the hillside and toward Chagny. Her gaze wandered back to their daughter’s tomb.

“Raoul,” she asked. “Do you know what an Abendlied is?”

Raoul kept his focus in front of him, burying the agony those words caused. Christine had kept that blasted piece of music Loup had found so long ago? And she dare give it to their daughter? He could practically feel the salt being rubbed in his wounds. Raoul clenched his teeth for a second before he answered to the trees. “I believe it’s a lullaby of sorts.” He folded the signet into his palm and clutched it to his chest.

“A lullaby? How perfect.”

He paused on the steps as he watched her walk toward Chagny fighting back the feeling of knowing what she had slipped into his daughter’s tomb. The black of her mourning dress contrasted sharply with the colorful flowers abounding around her. He swore the trees watched him and the air they stirred the breath of her Angel and his Phantom fugitive.

Raoul rolled the signet in his hands and jogged down the stairs when a wrenching pain filled his chest, so profoundly that he lost his breath.

Grief pierced the armor around his heart. His body gave up its strength, and he sank to the steps below. One hand reached toward a garden wall, his fingers digging in deep to the moss as he braced himself from complete collapse. The gardens blurred until he could no longer distinguish the colors of the blooms. Christine’s form warped until she disappeared from his vision completely. Raoul pressed a knuckle to his lips and with it the signet in his palm. He tried so hard to control the torment in his heart, but couldn’t.

Alone, Raoul took one final look toward the crypt.

His eyes barely finished reading Philippe’s name when the long lost tears for his brother finally came.