Crescent Angel (A Phantom of the Opera Phanfiction)

Chapter 20: Bullets with Butterfly Wings

Here's another update for you guys! I know, they're really spaced out now, and I apologize. But with everything going on, it's hard to plow through writer's block. It's crap, I tell ya.

Anyways, enjoys the chapter!

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(Charlotte)

"If you can hear me, Maman... I'm sorry."

Sadness enveloped me like the wings of a Phoenix. It burned and charred my insides with despair and agony, all the while causing me the most stress I've felt in a long time.

"This is my fault. I left you alone for too long with the threat of him around..."

Swallowing thickly, I choked back stinging tears and set my hand over my mother's. "You will wake up and be fine, Maman. I will get to see your eyes again, and we will live a long time together." A single tear fell from my eye. It slipped off my eyelash and rolled down my cheek, dripping off and landing on my wrist.

"I love you," I whispered, leaning over her to kiss her cheek. She was colder than ice, her skin pale as a white sheet. Her lips were tinted blue, chapped and cracked. Despite her wounds from the previous night, one would think she was just sick. But she hasn't woken up in the past twenty-four hours. Her heartbeat was dangerously slow, and her breathing was shallow and weak.

There was an unimaginable amount of fear surrounding my heart.

With one last longing glance, I clenched my jaw and bit my trembling lip, closing the wooden door behind me as I left. Erik spared me one of his unused rooms for my mother's residence. He said it was the least he could do since she didn't spill his secrets about his lair. I had told him that my mother knew about us. Maybe Alexandre and my father tortured it out of her, getting the information about Erik and me being together.

But that wasn't important now. What was important was the fact that my mother was possibly lying on her deathbed because of a monster.

A hand pressed on my shoulder, startling me. Whirling around, I sighed in relief as my eyes met Erik's cobalt gaze. He seemed genuinely concerned for my wellbeing.

"How are you holding up?" He questioned, his voice deep and husky from the scare he had earlier. We hadn't much time to talk before, but I figured enough that he'd want to discuss pressing matters now. It was due time for it anyways.

I shook my head, inhaling deeply. "Not well," I confessed, blinking away hot tears. My heart was ripping into pieces as the moments wore on. Of course I wasn't holding together fine. My mother was dying, and it was my fault.

"I'm here, my love," Erik cooed gently, rubbing my shoulder blade with his ungloved hands. My beaten nightgown bared my shoulders, battered, with ripped lacing sleeves falling down my arms. It covered the bruises poorly. And since there was still that unfortunate, itchy wolfsbane in my system, I couldn't heal.

Not like I wanted to show Erik my freakiness anytime soon, but I just wanted to be better. And I wanted my mother to be well.

But we can't have everything.

"Come," my masked fiancé nudged me slightly, sliding his arm around my tender waist. Cuts and other injuries painted my body like a splatter piece. It was annoying, bothersome, to be this restricted and ill. "I will conjure a bath so you can relax and ease your pains."

When he said 'pains', I was reminded by the sharp throbbing in my neck and the stinging of my cuts. There was a rather large one in particular on my waist that screamed at me with a red, angry face.