“There is one more thing,” I said tentatively. “I want you to take off the mask. I want to talk to you without it. I want to see your face.”

“This is my face,” he hissed as he slowly turned his head my way, revealing the skeletal profile of the shining silver mask.

“No, it’s not,” I said, even as my heart sped up with renewed fear. “I’ve seen your true face. You yourself showed it to me.”

“The dreams were a lie,” he snapped.

“I’m not talking about the dreams.”

All at once, silence supervened.

I took a shaking breath, steeling myself for what I needed to do—something I’d already promised him I wouldn’t. But, well before that, in that dream full of roses and regret, I had also made him another promise.

“Walls between us,

Time and death, too.

Heartless, our worlds divide us.

Still, I hear you.”

Turning from me, he tensed all over.

In spite of my reservations, I continued with the lyrics that, just as he’d predicted, I’d memorized easily. Without even really trying to. And the melody? Well, I’d known that already.

“Silence deafens.

Shadows grow long.

Yet, in the soundless nothing,

Your name is a song.”

He pivoted to me then, a gloved hand gripping his crimson jacket, the bloodstain glistening black in the glow of the candlelight. I took a step toward him, though, and as I did, the blood seemed to recede. His form straightened, and his eyes beamed with a sharper light.

“Sing to me, angel.

Sing, and I shall come.

We’ll be but a breath apart

Before the night is done.”

I took another step. And then another. But then I paused, my breath stolen by his voice as, beautiful even in its distortion, it cleaved the darkness.

“Sing to me, my love,

Sing to me and see

All the dark hath kept hidden

From you and from me.”

Compelled myself, I went to him, my voice rejoining his, ringing in perfect harmony. Working also, somehow, to drive the blood back into him the closer I came until, as I stopped to stand just before him, it vanished.

“Walls between us,

Time and death, too.

Heartless, our worlds combine us.

Still, I—”

It had been the reflection of the firelight in his mask that had reminded me the barrier existed. My hand, rising of its own accord, took hold of the silver.

The mask came away easily.

Then everything went wrong.

He swung away, lifting his cloak with one arm while the other knocked aside the candelabrum, throwing the basement into pitch-blackness. Then a gloved fist gripped the wrist of the hand that held his mask. I tightened my grasp on the cold metal, determined not to return it to him.

He drew me to him, and helpless to resist, I went, an echo of muted, far-off pain cinching my chest as we came together. Still, I wasn’t afraid. Not even as darkness closed in on my consciousness, causing my legs to give out underneath me. Not even as, in almost the same instant, he swept me off my feet and into his arms.