The name I now carried – Rose Dawson – still felt new on my tongue, though I'd claimed it as my own since that night in April. Rose DeWitt Bukater had died in the Atlantic, along with so many others. Along with Jack. But Rose Dawson... she had survived, and now she sought redemption in the only way she knew how: through music, through art, through living as fully as she'd once promised.

Paris welcomed me with rain-slicked streets and grey skies that reminded me too much of that night. The Opera Populaire loomed before me, its scorched facade a testament to some long-ago tragedy. My driver had protested leaving me here, muttering in rapid French about curses and ghosts, but I'd seen enough real horrors to know that ghosts were the least of what life could throw at you.

The great doors groaned open under my touch, decades of disuse evident in their protest. As I stepped inside, a gust of wind swept through the foyer, slamming the doors behind me with a finality that made my heart jump. The sound echoed through the empty halls like a gunshot.

"Just the wind, Rose," I whispered to myself, my voice small in the vast space. "You've faced worse than old buildings."

I found a half-melted candle in my reticule – a habit I'd developed since the Titanic. Never again would I be caught in the dark. The small flame cast dancing shadows on the walls, revealing faded frescoes and blackened gilt.

"You don't belong in this opera house, mademoiselle."

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, rich and commanding, with an underlying melody that made my skin prickle. It was nothing like the coarse shouts I remembered from that night on the ship – this was cultivation wrapped in darkness.

"This is MY opera house!"

I lifted my chin, refusing to show fear. "Public property, I believe, Monsieur. And you are...?"

He materialized from the shadows like a figure in a dream, tall and elegant in evening dress that belonged to another era. But it was his face that caught and held my attention – or rather, the white mask that covered half of it. The visible portion was striking, almost beautiful, but it was his eyes that truly captured me. In the candlelight, they burned like amber flames, filled with the same kind of passionate intensity I'd once seen in another pair of eyes, now lost to the sea.

"Surely," he said, his voice softening to a dangerous silk, "you've heard the whispers of the Opera Ghost? The phantom who brought this temple of music to its knees?"

A smile tugged at my lips – the first real one in months. "I'm afraid American newspapers were more concerned with ships than opera houses, Monsieur. Though I must say, you cut a far more impressive figure than the average ghost."

He moved closer, his cape swirling around him like living darkness. "I am the Phantom of the Opera," he declared, and there was something in his voice – pride mixed with pain – that resonated deep within me. I knew what it was to wear a mask, though mine had been made of social expectations rather than porcelain.

"And I," I replied, meeting his gaze steadily, "am Rose Dawson. It seems we both haunt this place now, Monsieur Phantom."